This is a meditation on breath and the use of breath to create a profoundly calm and stable quality in the mind and body.
It is important for you to find a comfortable seated position that you can sustain.
Use whatever props are necessary for your comfort and allow your spine to be tall.
Bring your awareness to your natural breath.
Allow the breath to flow effortlessly and without any control.
Simply observe the body breathe.
As you watch the breathing process notice if you're holding any unconscious tension in the throat,
Chest,
Solar plexus or abdomen.
Use three long slow deep breaths to begin to release this tension.
Breathe into the spaces of tension and feel that you're creating more space inside the body and as you exhale feel the unclenching of that tension.
Let your breath now return to normal and again simply observe it.
Once again deepen your breath this time by about 15% of the natural flow.
No strain or struggle.
Feel that this enables you to start to participate in the act of breathing.
Feel breath becoming more of an experience than simply a background function.
An experience that the whole body is participating in,
Not simply a localized phenomenon occurring in the lungs or torso.
Feel the subtle swelling of the inhale expand everywhere in the body flowing into every cell,
Nourishing,
Opening and feel the settling quality of the exhale,
The body grounding,
Becoming more relaxed.
Each time you breathe in there's a sense of space and nourishment.
The body in every cell is becoming more enlivened and each time you exhale there's a sense of release,
Even purification as tensions and worries,
Concerns,
Distractions and agitations are dissolved,
Carried out of the body and mind through the current of the breath.
Now move into a deeper level of refinement.
Start to bring attention to balancing the length of your inhale and exhale.
Bring a sense of equality into the length of each flow.
Invite your inhale to be about five seconds long.
You can count mentally.
Match your exhale length to also be five seconds long.
Over the course of a couple breaths become familiar with how deeply or shallow to breathe to create an even flow of the breath across the span of those five counts.
Feel an equal exchange of the breath flowing in with the breath flowing out.
Feel an equal exchange of the breath flowing in with the breath flowing out.
Feel agitations in mind and body continuing to settle even more like the surface of a disturbed pond calming after a breeze.
Now invite a very soft whisper sound in the breath through a subtle contraction of the throat.
Let the sound be mostly internal and very gentle.
Through this technique find that the breath can become very smooth.
Disturbances in the breath,
Irregularities in the breath become ironed out.
Feel the body and the mind responding to this quality beginning to adopt the same quality.
Feel that through this technique you're setting a new rhythm that all other agitated energies are dissolving into.
All energies in the body and mind out of sync with this one consistent uniform rhythm yield into it.
The whole body and mind start to embody the stability and calmness.
As you continue to build this very refined quality of breath start to feel as though you're in a canoe gliding across a still lake.
The surface of the lake is completely calm,
Free of all ripples,
All disturbance.
And the breath is like the canoe gliding across this glass-like surface.
Feel the mind and body becoming completely tranquil,
Deeply calm.
The breath is tranquil,
The body is tranquil,
The mind is tranquil,
And the lake around you,
Your whole environment is pervaded by an atmosphere of complete tranquility.
Relax the techniques of shaping your breath.
Release all effort.
Rest for a few moments,
Now just embodying a complete and total atmosphere of tranquility.
You're no longer creating it,
But now you simply are it.
Bring your attention back to your whole body.
Feel your body sitting,
Calm and grounded.
On your next exhale,
Allow your head to lower gently.
Begin to slowly open your eyes.
Feel that it's from this place of deep peace you re-enter the movement of life,
Clear,
Centered and fully available to this moment.
