Hello and welcome to this breath awareness meditation.
The purpose of this meditation is to spend just a few minutes bringing attention to the natural rhythm of your breath,
Asking yourself a few questions about the breath,
Getting curious.
And in doing so we're also dropping down into the body,
Taking a moment to notice what's going on there,
As well as dropping into the present moment.
As and when you feel ready to,
Just finding your way into a comfortable position that might be seated,
That might be lying down.
Whatever it is that you prefer,
The choice is yours.
Taking a moment to settle here,
Taking a moment to find softness in the face,
Between the eyebrows,
Around the jaw,
The shoulders and the belly.
You might even bring hands to rest onto the body,
Perhaps bringing one hand onto the heart,
One hand onto the belly,
Or both hands stacked and resting onto the belly.
We're going to start just by bringing attention to the breath,
Just observing the natural rise and fall,
The rhythm,
The flow of the breath.
And as much as we can,
Try not to change the breath.
This can be a little bit challenging.
Often when we bring our attention to the breath,
We automatically want to change it.
And that's fine,
That's completely normal.
But as much as possible,
Just seeing if you can let it do its own thing.
Inhaling when you feel called to inhale,
Exhaling when you feel called to exhale,
Taking a step back and taking on the role of the witness to the breath.
We're going to be asking ourselves three questions about the breath.
The first question being,
Where in my body can I feel my breath?
Where in my body can I feel my breath?
And with all of these questions,
Seeing if we can drop out of our logical,
Busy,
Overthinking mind that will love to give us an answer before we've even taken a moment to notice.
Just letting that get quiet,
Letting that move to the side.
Instead really asking the question and really listening to the response.
Where in my body can I feel my breath?
And there's no right or wrong answer,
There's no good or bad.
In some ways the answer is way less important than the act of just asking the questions.
Moving on to our second question now,
How long are my inhales and how long are my exhales and how do they compare to one another?
So now we're beginning to notice the length of the breath.
And you don't need to count the breath unless you want to.
Instead just feeling the breath,
Feeling into the length of the inhales,
Feeling into the length of the exhales.
Following that wave.
And just seeing what you notice.
You might find that they're actually a similar length or you might find that one is longer than the other.
Again,
No good or bad,
No right or wrong.
And then next we'll be moving into our third and final question.
What is the quality of my breath like?
What is the quality of my breath like?
And the quality of your breath being,
As you inhale does that inhale feel open,
Smooth,
Choppy,
Restricted?
How is your body receiving that inhale?
And the same for the exhale,
As the exhale leaves the body how is it leaving?
Do you feel like there's a lot of space for the breath or do you feel like there might be some tightness?
And the inhale might feel quite different to the exhale.
And the exhale might feel like there's a lot of space for the breath.
And that's okay.
It's all right,
It's all welcome.
We are as we are today.
We don't need to judge ourselves,
We don't need to feel badly of ourselves.
Just the miracle of breathing is enough.
As long as you're breathing you're doing great.
So now that we've asked ourselves these three questions,
Now that we've spent some time getting to know our breath,
We might spend a little bit longer here enjoying this connection that we've made with ourselves.
And then whenever you're ready to,
You can begin to bring some gentle movement back to the body,
Fluttering the eyelids open,
And continuing on with your day from this deep place of presence and knowing.
