Welcome.
Meditation helps you to better focus on what matters.
With a consistent practice,
You can filter out a lot of the noise and the clutter in your mind and stay connected to what's most important.
This practice of filtering distraction and maintaining focus carries over into your life in many ways.
One area that might be especially relevant is maintaining focus when reading or studying.
I'm sure you may have had the experience of reading a paragraph and getting to the end and realizing that you didn't really process any of it or your mind was gone wandering the whole time you were reading so you didn't read it or comprehended rather.
Mindfulness helps us to realize these moments where our mind is wandering and helps us to train that muscle to return it consistently because the mind is going to wander but it's on us to notice when it goes away and flex that muscle returning it and then sustaining it.
And so by training the mind to be able to focus on something as boring or uninteresting as breathing might be for you,
Imagine how that ability to focus will carry over into things that are already interesting to you or to things like lectures where you might be somewhat interested but it's not that amazing.
All of these things are probably more engaging than your breath but once you begin to practice the focus,
Focusing on the breath,
You can really apply that focus to anything whether it's supremely interesting to you or not or something that you need to pay attention to but maybe haven't been able to in the past.
So let's begin by finding ourselves seated,
Tall and comfortable and alert and finding that physical sensation of the breath moving in and out of the body.
You might feel this feeling of the body breathing most clearly in a few different places.
This could be in the rise and fall of the chest or in the expansion and contraction of the belly or in the flow of air through the nostrils or somewhere else,
Anywhere else in the body.
So taking some time now to find wherever you feel breathing most clearly and then resting attention there.
Combining with your breath.
Breathing in,
Feeling the in breath.
Breathing out,
Feeling the out breath.
Not controlling or manipulating your breathing in any way,
Just feeling it.
Feeling how it flows in and flows out.
Feeling the waves of your breathing.
When you notice that the mind has wandered,
Congratulate yourself for noticing.
This is totally normal and it's what minds do.
Just acknowledging that and returning attention back to the feeling of breathing.
Just beginning again in this moment.
Every moment is a new moment.
Beginning again right here.
Feeling the breath.
Noticing the many distractions that you might have.
Just feeling the distractions and filtering through back to this breath.
Relaxing in the face,
Bringing a slight smile.
Softening in the forehead,
The eyebrows.
Face between the eyebrows.
Letting the shoulders drop away from the ears.
Softening the belly.
And settling back into the breath.
Breathing out.
And throughout the day your mind may wander,
Get distracted or overwhelmed.
Again,
This is okay.
It's part of having a mind.
And if this happens,
Know that your breath is always with you and you can connect with it at any moment to settle the mind on the moment.
To refocus and reconnect with what's most important right now.
And so right now coming back to your breath one last time.
And taking this awareness of the breath,
This refocusing and resetting and resettling practice with you into the rest of your day.
