Breath-Based Practice (8 minutes)

This short breath-based meditation will help you gather your attention and cultivate relaxed, open awareness. Feel yourself slip into an effortless, free flowing, natural and rhythmic state of being. As you drop deeper into this practice, embrace a state of pure contentment and calm.

Transcript

Welcome to this breath-based meditation with Jonathan Faust.

In this practice,

You'll be focusing on your breath,

And when your mind naturally wanders,

You'll be guiding your attention back again to the experience of your body breathing.

I find this practice to be enormously helpful for calming and giving me a sense of gathering my attention in the here and now.

As you're ready,

You might begin to deepen and smooth out your breath.

Where do you feel the breath,

The most predominant on the inside right now?

How intimately can you feel your body breathing?

And as you're ready,

You might now release all control of your breath and just sense the breath free-flowing,

Effortless.

In this practice,

You might like to focus your attention in one of three ways.

The first is to explore the breath of the belly.

You may find the more you soften your belly,

The more intimately you can feel the belly rise on the in-breath and fall on the out-breath.

A second option is to feel the breath at the nostrils,

Either at the rim of the nostrils or at the septum.

And here again,

You might notice the natural movement of the breath.

A third option is to feel the natural whole body breathing all by itself.

Selecting one of these focal points,

Let your attention settle here.

Feeling the natural movement of the breath right at your point of concentration.

When the mind wanders,

Bring your attention back to the direct experience right here.

How intimately can you feel the breath right now?

You might observe,

As I breathe in,

I am aware of breathing in.

As I breathe out,

I am aware of breathing out.

And as I breathe in,

I am aware of breathing out.

In this form of practice,

You begin again and again.

Where do you feel the breath right now on the inside?

Is it possible in any way to soften or relax?

And feel the natural,

Effortless flow of breath.

Thanks.

In these remaining moments now,

You might now deepen and lengthen your breath.

Could you relax on the breath out?

With your eyes closed,

You might let your head drift from side to side,

Sensing the movement from the inside.

Take some time to stretch.

What has shifted for you through this time of relaxing and feeling the breath?

As you reflect on moving from inner quiet back to activity,

Sensing what is most important.

Reviews

Very grateful for this. Thank you

I liked having options of where to focus my breath. Very helpful.

This was helpful and relaxing. Thank you so much teacher

Very nice! Basic breath awareness practice

Short and well-directed. Calming. I liked the low flute tones at the intro and the chime at the end.

Excellent meditation for connecting with our breath. Thank you! 🙏

Great practice when I’m feeling distracted or tired. I’ve really appreciated this sweet re-set lately. Thanks, Jonathan! 🙏🏽

Thank you for this. I have struggled with letting my breath go and not controlling it during meditation. This has really helped and I’ll return to it often. Again thank you.

..so simple and so superb, thank you 🙏

Simple, clear, calming.

Clear,pleasant, concise, ample quiet. A very effective meditation to reboot. Thank you. 🙏🏽💕

I enjoyed the meditation! You don't realize how shallow your breath gets until you start paying attention to the part of your body you feel it most. Thank you!

Great breathing meditation
Thank you

Thank you Sudir, it felt simply clear, offering stillness. Happy to find you hear. Did not realize you were on Insight Timer. Continue to be well and happy🙏🌹

Love Jonathan Foust’s guided meditations!

Very relaxing and soothing, it's probably said a lot of times but that is the most important thing for me. Thank you.

So calming! Thank you

That was perfect! Calm voice and not too much talking. Nicely done. Very relaxing.

Very grounding. Appreciated the moments of quiet as well as the clear suggestions for the breath. Thank you!

Thank you! This is a very high quality meditation.