Meditation With Breath As The Anchor

This is a soothing and centering, 12 minute guided breathwork meditation, led by Kirra, allowing you to become present in the moment and notice the sensations you are feeling in your strong, and beautiful body. By focusing on the breath, you can shut out any unwanted thoughts and slip into a deep state of relaxation.

Transcript

This is going to be a simple 10 minute meditation.

We're going to use the breath as our anchor.

So go ahead,

Get started,

Sit up nice and tall.

Find yourself in a comfortable seat.

So either have yourself with crossed legs,

Sukhasana or Siddhasana,

Or perhaps you'd like to sit on your shins,

Sitting up on a block or a cushion so that your hips are up higher than your knees,

So you can start to relax and get a little bit more comfortable in your hips.

Once you've found that tall spine,

That comfortable seat,

Go ahead and close your eyes.

Rolling your shoulders up and back a few times,

Allowing the shoulders to soften down,

Falling flat and down on the back as you pull up through your spine,

Reaching up through the crown of your head,

Creating space for all of your organs.

Allow your ears to be in alignment with your shoulders,

Shoulders in alignment with the hips,

And then feel the sit bones rooting down into the ground or into your cushion or into your block,

But feeling that support from whatever it is that you're sitting on.

I'd like you to start to tune in towards the breath and just noticing,

Simply noticing the rise and the fall of the belly and the rib cage with each inhale and each exhale.

Feeling the length of your breath and the depth.

Are you breathing into your belly?

Are you expanding?

Are you contracting?

Or are you perhaps breathing short and shallow into the top of your chest or just in towards your throat?

So without judgment,

I would just like you to take notice.

And then let's start to expand and lengthen these breaths.

So with each inhale,

I'd like you to expand through the belly,

Through the diaphragm,

Front to back to side to side.

Think about blowing up a balloon so everything's expanding and then on the exhale we're releasing,

Letting everything go,

Feeling the contraction.

And again,

Inhale for a count of four and releasing for a count of four to six.

A couple more just like that.

Full deep inhale and release.

Last one,

Inhale through the nose and exhale release.

All right,

Allow your breath to come back to its natural state.

And then go ahead and bring your attention right to the tip of your nostrils.

Feeling the cooler air on the inhale as it hits the tip of the nostrils and then the warmer air on the exhale.

And the goal is to try to keep your attention on the anchor.

So the anchor is the tip of the nostrils for this meditation.

And being that we're human,

Our mind has a tendency to wander and that is completely normal.

It's called monkey mind.

So it jumps from one thing to the next,

To the next,

To the next.

And all of a sudden you're somewhere deep in the past or deep in the future.

And when we hang out in the past,

It tends to bring a level of sadness or even depression.

Wishing things were the way they were when they were good or perhaps a level of negativity around the way that things did go.

Wishing they went better.

I could have,

Should have,

Would have kind of mind frame.

Or if we're deep in the future,

We tend to have this level of anxiety that comes with us.

So planning,

It has to go this way.

It will go this way.

Specifically this way only.

When in reality there are infinite ways that any one situation can go.

So by creating a pinpoint direction,

It's almost guaranteeing suffering,

Dukkha.

So it's great to have goals.

Though with our goals,

We need to come in with a level of openness and understanding that they're going to shift,

They're going to change.

Our goals are going to evolve.

Our ideas will change.

So this level of acceptance of change.

So when you do find your mind running,

When you catch it,

When you notice it,

That's when we step into awareness.

And you're welcome to label.

So you can say thinking mind,

Planning mind,

Self-critique,

Whatever mind is coming up,

You can label it like that.

And then come straight back to your breath,

To the tip of your nostrils,

Back to your inhale for four.

And exhale.

Feeling the cooler air in the inhale and the warmer air in the exhale.

And perhaps you have to continuously bring your mind back to present over and over and over again.

And this is also normal.

It's time to strengthen the mind,

To find the space in between the thoughts.

So doing this with a really non-judgmental perspective,

Whenever you catch your mind wandering,

Simply label and then bring it straight back home to your anchor.

Letting it chase and look for the right time.

Last couple of minutes we're really just going to focus in on the breath along with the idea of compassion towards the self for when our mind wanders.

Knowing that our home base is within and we can always come back to our home base.

And our anchor is going to help us come back to our home base over and over again.

Coming back to your breaths.

Okay let's start to bring the attention to your fingertips.

Feeling any sensations,

Any tingling sensations,

Any humming sensations and that's going to be the nerve endings,

That's some of the energy within the body.

Feeling into the blood pumping right through the body,

Through the fingers.

Perhaps you can feel the heartbeat in your thumbs and your hands.

Feeling the,

All the life.

Start to wiggle through your fingers,

Wiggle through your toes.

So they start to open the eyes.

Let's try it one more time.

You you you

Reviews

Very effective. Thank you🙏

I’m enjoying your meditations from Sydney

Very good. Simple, calming, centering. Just what I needed when dealing with multiple “things”! The soothing voice paired with the background music is great!

Very nice and relaxing Kirra. I love the reminders to come home and use of an anchor. The music was very fitting I feel. The only constant is change so having a home base to remind us of this is what practice is all about. I look forward to more from you. 🙏

Very relaxing breath work.

A terrific, well paced, short breath based meditation that also includes some insightful thinking. It’s good to reminded that thinking about the past events or future outcomes can have a down side.

Excellent sound quality too. It’s on my playlist !

Beautiful way to begin my day 🙏 going to my 'space between my thoughts' I'd the perfect definition. Namaste.

The Music, the calm voice, the insight. 👌

Excellent! Thank you!

I wouldn’t mind sitting longer with this teacher. Clear, concise instructions and plenty of silent intervals. I appreciated the reminder about the “anchor.” Thank you

Fantastic. So well done and effective. My new favorite. Thanks.

I was feeling good but wanted to check in with my breathing and body before I start my day - this was perfect.

Really lovely. Thank you.

Good direction ! I got to be in the moment ! Thank you.

I like what you said about “pin-pointing.” Thank you.

Namaste- wry helpful

Simple, straightforward yet powerful