This is a 20-minute mindfulness of breathing exercise done to strengthen mindful awareness and a connection to the physical body.
The body is a great stress detector,
A great wellness detector,
A great ally in resilience.
Developing a stable connection with the body and sensations in the body can help us calm down turbulent thoughts and emotions,
Even when things get intense.
To practice this,
Find a relatively quiet place where you won't be interrupted.
Switch off your phone.
You can do this on a chair or meditation cushion.
We'll start by setting up our posture,
Which is very important,
Especially having your hips significantly higher than your knees.
So you may need to sit on an extra blanket or cushion to get your hips high enough.
If they aren't higher than the knees,
It puts a strain in the lower back.
And so if you're on a chair,
Slide a little forward away from the back of the chair and maybe roll just slightly forward onto your sits bones.
This puts a gentle curve in the lower spine and helps us to hold the chest and back upright.
And supporting our back by ourselves without leaning back helps us to stay awake and alert.
If we lean back,
It's very easy to become drowsy.
And so now bringing the chest upright,
Letting the belly relax out,
And rolling your shoulders back.
With all our screens and devices and procedures,
We're so used to hunching the shoulders forward.
But right now,
Rolling them back,
Letting the chest open,
Letting the belly relax out,
And letting your hands rest in the lap close to the body so they don't pull the shoulders forward.
You can let your eyes close if that's comfortable in your particular setting or just lower your gaze.
And make a mental note of how the body feels right now in this upright posture with a sense of uprightness we're going to use this sensation of the whole body in this upright posture later in this exercise.
And so we'll start by bringing attention to physical sensations in the entire body.
Just noticing what sensations are already here.
Maybe there's pressure where your body contacts the seat or floor.
You might notice some sensations in your hands or face.
And letting go of any tension in the body that can soften,
Letting the jaw relax,
Maybe letting the face and eyes be soft,
Letting the shoulders relax if they're tight.
And now taking the whole body in sitting here.
All these sensations.
And within that field the sensations of breathing.
Noticing where you feel your breathing most distinctly or where it's most pleasant.
It might be air in the nose,
Moving in the nose or the throat.
It might be rising and falling in the chest or belly.
So aiming your attention now to where you feel this most or where it's most pleasant.
And noticing how easy it is to feel these sensations.
We can just notice them and get curious about them with a light touch.
So letting the breath breathe itself in its own natural rhythm and steering the mind to these physical sensations.
Noticing the in-breath followed by the out-breath.
So letting attention rest on these sensations of the in-breath and the out-breath.
So continuing to track the sensations,
Noticing the uniqueness of each in-breath and out-breath.
Some might be long,
Some might be short.
And if you notice the mind wandering,
No need to make that into a problem.
Just noticing and coming back with this easy curiosity to the sensations of breathing in and breathing out.
And so noticing after the in and the out-breath there will be a pause,
A little gap.
It might be long or short.
And during that gap,
Which is where the mind often will start wandering,
Instead we'll direct attention to the sensations of the entire body sitting here in this specific upright posture that we talked about earlier.
And then as the next in-breath comes we'll aim attention back to the sensations of breathing in and so on.
So it goes in-breath,
Out-breath,
Sense of the body in the upright posture,
In-breath,
Out-breath,
Posture.
So giving that a try for a few moments now.
Sensations of the rising breath,
Falling breath,
Body,
Rising,
Falling,
Body.
Some curiosity can really help and looking into the finer details.
So noticing the beginning of the in-breath,
The full duration sensations of the full duration of the in-breath,
The exact ending of the in-breath if you can catch it,
Then the beginning duration and end of the out-breath,
And then the sensations of the body in the pause.
So coming back when the mind drifts,
It doesn't take a lot of force to come back,
Just a simple decision and a light touch.
So don't worry so much about the frequency of times that the mind goes off track.
This is a learning curve and where the work of building mindful attention happens.
So when you notice the mind is off track,
Just gently steer it back,
Escort it back onto the sensations of the in-breath,
The out-breath,
And the body in the pause.
You you you you you and just noticing when the mind gets distracted and steering it back to the physical sensations of the entire in-breath,
The entire out-breath,
And the body in the upright posture during the pause.
You you you you you you you you you
