You don't have to do anything to prepare for this practice.
The breath is already moving on its own for you.
If you put no attention and no effort towards breathing,
The breath will move at its own natural rhythms.
Different moments,
Different feelings,
Different thoughts,
Different experiences will call out certain rhythms in your breath.
Certain cycles and patterns.
When all you're doing here is watching,
What cycle,
What part of the cycle,
What rhythm is my breath flowing in right now?
So notice if you're breathing through your nose or through your mouth or both.
Notice what the air feels like as it flows in and releases out.
Can you feel that coolness on the inhale and that warmth on the exhale?
If you're breathing through the nostrils,
Is one nostril more open while one is more closed in a big obvious way or in a really subtle way?
And the air as it moves down the throat and back up and out the throat,
What does that feel like?
Are the muscles in your throat constricted?
Are the muscles in your neck and jaw tense?
As the air flows down to fill the lungs,
What do you feel?
Where are the edges of your inhale?
Where do you feel yourself releasing on the exhale?
What does it feel like to breathe here now?
Are there pauses in your breath?
Are the inhales or exhales longer or shorter than the other?
Where do you feel your breath most on the inhale?
Where do you feel your breath most on the exhale?
Are you breathing high up into the chest,
Feeling that expansion and release in the collarbones and upper back?
Are you breathing further down into the chest,
Maybe feeling that movement in the ribs?
Maybe feeling the breath in the lower ribs,
The upper belly,
Or the low belly,
The lower back?
Are you breathing all the way down into your pelvis?
What is your natural rhythm in this moment?
Don't change it.
Don't ask it to be different.
Just be with it and let it tell you what's going on.
Instead of trying to speak louder than it and force it into a certain channel or onto a certain path,
Just let the breath be and see what it has to tell you.
Just listening with your awareness,
Listening with your embodied presence.
What is your physical experience of the breath right now?
What does the breath have to tell you right now?
And for one final breath,
If you feel called to move it in a certain way,
Then take one brief,
Intentional breath.
