Mindfulness of the Breathing Body

A 20-minute guided meditation using mindfulness of the breathing body in the abdomen to settle thoughts.

Transcript

Whether you're lying down or sitting up,

Bring your awareness to your abdomen.

And notice how as you inhale the belly expands,

And as you exhale the abdomen gently contracts.

When you inhale the navel draws away from the spine.

When you exhale the navel draws towards the spine.

And as I give you these instructions and you start to give attention to the way your body's breathing,

Notice the way you manipulate your breath and see if you can reduce your effort so that you can feel the way your body breathes on its own.

Your body knows how to breathe.

So you're not changing your breath,

You're just changing where you're noticing your breath.

You're shifting where you're noticing your breathing so that you can feel the breath behind the navel.

So take your attention underneath the surface of your belly,

Underneath skin,

And see if you can bring your awareness behind the navel,

So the side of the navel that's facing the spine.

And see if you can feel the gentle movements,

The waves of inhaling and exhaling behind the navel.

And as you do this,

Allow the tongue to be quiet and the mouth to be spacious.

Whether the eyes are gently open or closed,

Let the eyes get still.

And place your attention just behind the navel.

And with a quiet mouth,

Quiet hands,

Feel breathing.

Feel how your body breathes.

Sometimes when we begin,

Paying close attention to breathing in a particular area,

We might focus on the visual dimension of that area.

So see if you can move a layer below the visual and feel breathing at a level of raw or pure sensation.

Just feel the sensation of breathing in the abdomen.

And every time attention slips off into the future or the past,

Storytelling,

Thinking,

It's okay.

You don't have to push the thoughts away.

Just gently come back again to the feeling of breathing.

Inhaling and exhaling with an alert,

Receptive and calm abdomen.

Alert,

Receptive and calm abdomen.

That's feeling breathing.

And again,

Feeling the breath not so much in terms of surfaces like the skin,

But feeling the breath deep behind the navel,

Which is more subtle and more quiet.

But nevertheless,

You can feel the movements of the breath there.

The current of the breath behind the navel.

Keep taking your attention there so that your attention isn't watching the breath.

Your attention is the breath.

So the breath is becoming intelligence.

The breath becomes awareness.

Intelligence and breathing become one thing.

Feeling breathing.

Feeling breath.

Feeling breath.

Imagine you were walking near a river with a small child,

Two or three years old.

And they kept wandering off towards the water.

And so very gently you reach for their hand and you guide them back along the path.

And then again,

They wander off towards the river and with kindness and steadiness you put your arm around their shoulder and you gently guide them back onto the path.

We're doing exactly the same thing with mindful breathing.

The attention wanders off and with kindness and with an attitude of interest we gently bring the attention back.

Back into the body,

Dropping attention behind the navel.

Feeling breathing in the abdomen.

And it's interesting to notice how when you're caught up in something like thinking or fantasy or images,

If you're an image-based person,

When you're caught up in something and then you gently come back to your breathing again,

Whatever it is you were caught up in,

If you really come back to the breath,

Whatever you were caught up in changes,

Becomes something else,

Or passes away altogether.

So just like mindfulness of sound,

When we're mindful of the breath,

We're receptive to the way the body breathes.

When our attention slips off that practice,

We notice it.

And then we gently come back to the breath again.

And then we harmonize our breathing with our attention.

So attention and breathing are one.

It's not like there's an attention that's watching the breath.

It's not like there's an awareness watching the breath.

The awareness and the breathing are one.

The breath is pure intelligence moving behind the navel.

The best technique is feeling.

.

If you feel like there are parts of the inhale that are rough,

Like canvas,

Don't give a lot of attention.

And same with the exhale.

There's parts of the breath that are tight or rough or knotted.

Just keep feeling the breath.

And don't get too focused on whether the breath is smooth or long or short.

Just let the breath keep changing.

And our practice is to give the breath a lot of space and keep feeling it behind the navel.

If the breath is like silk,

Feel it like silk.

If the breath is like sandpaper and parts,

Notice that.

If some part of an inhale or exhale has constriction,

Just notice that with lots of space.

You don't have to add any meaning.

Just feeling the breath without adding anything to it.

Just feeling the sensations of a body that's breathing.

And if you have stories about your breathing,

Get closer to the breath.

If you're telling yourself stories about how you breathe,

Get even closer to your breathing,

Feeling a gentle,

Natural breath.

And the closer you get to the breath,

The more intimate you get with your experience.

And the more intimate you are with anything,

The less personal it is.

The more intimate you are with your breathing,

The less personal it is.

Just the breath in the abdomen.

Just the breath in the abdomen.

Just the breath in the abdomen.

Your breath is medicine.

Feel the nourishing quality of natural breathing.

And let your body receive the breath.

Just notice if you're controlling your breath.

Sometimes if we have unprocessed grief or old wounds,

We're used to controlling our breathing.

So see if you can keep the body alert,

Upright,

And at the same time softening enough that you can be receptive to breathing.

And this is an art.

How do we let the body get calm while at the same time maintaining some vitality in the posture?

Mindfulness of breathing means feeling breathing from the inside out.

Feeling the breath behind the navel.

And then letting the breath become natural.

And every time the attention wanders off,

Just come back to the feeling of the breath.

Now,

Elongate your breathing.

Feel the space behind the navel.

And as you open your eyes,

See if you can notice the space in the room.

You can pick one or two or three objects and look at the space between the objects.

And then move the eyes around the room.

And just notice not so much the form of the room,

But the space within the form.

Just noticing space.

And then see if you can connect that to soft breathing.

As we bring our attention now to our environment,

We can start to move the body without losing this connection to spaciousness and to nourishing breathing.

Thank you very much for listening.

Reviews

thank you for this wonderful guidance and experience, a deepening of my embodied awareness 🙏

Wonderful insightful
Muchael has aythered some gois books too.

A very good exercise towards grounding the breath in the space of the body and the body in space. I found that the transition from watching the body breathing to feeling the body breathing to be useful.

Excellent, nuanced, effective guidance into the spacious quality of mindfulness of the breath, in the abdomen.

Feeling spacious , at ease

OMG! I feel clocked. All the Work I've done was in prep for the Work tonight with your guidance. Such an opportunity of synchronicity!

Thank you for this simple, yet powerful meditation. I especially liked the analogy of gently guiding a toddler back to the path away from the river. I appreciated the guidance to notice the spaces, rather than the surfaces.

Very clear instructions inviting kindness and compassion. Very soothing

One to do again and again

nice..... VERY nice

Thank you Michael. Hope you’ve found peace :)

Great session 👍🏻 Thanks

Michael has such a gift. It’s so wonderful that this gift continues to give. I have been struggling for a while with seated meditation and this made it effortless and a joy~ thank you.

Great! I feel regretful to never have received any of his teachings while he was alive

As always, Michael Stone’s teaching of meditation is simple yet so profound. The pacing and timing is perfect and has once again helped to deepen my practice. Thank you. Peace and love to you...you are so missed, Michael! 🙏🏼

Just lovely. Thank you and Rest In Peace dear Michael 🙏🏼✨

I'm so grateful for these meditations and teachings you have left us with. I will continue to listen, learn and hopefully grow from them. You are missed.

You are the best Michael. Miss you.

So beautiful thank you

Allowed me to be completely present and at ease. I feel so spacious.