Simple Breathing Practice

I'd like you to begin this meditation by appreciating yourself for taking the time to do this.

It's not only to benefit yourself but to benefit really everyone that you interact with on a daily basis.

So good job.

And go ahead and settle into your seat.

Find a comfortable seated position,

Upright and awake and energized,

Not rigid but awake.

You want this to generalize to your everyday activities and interactions.

So this isn't a practice of falling asleep but it's a practice of being fully awake.

And so go ahead and settle into your seat.

Feel your body sitting here.

Feel your connection to the ground beneath you.

Feel the gravity pull you to the ground and the ground and the earth fully supports you as it always does.

And you can close your eyes if you feel comfortable.

If not,

Just hold your gaze a few feet out in front of you in one spot.

But if you feel comfortable,

Go ahead and close your eyes.

And you can relax the muscles around the eyes,

The muscles of the face.

Just let those muscles soften.

And you can notice if your jaw is flexed or rigid at all and you can soften that.

You can relax the shoulders.

You notice if the stomach is tense or flexed,

Sometimes we flex our stomachs without even realizing it and that can be a manifestation of stress and anxiety that sort of subsurface.

So just notice if your stomach is flexed and you can just release it.

And fully settle your body into your seat right now.

And I would like you to just notice what's arising in your experience right now.

What's on your mind?

And notice that these are all just sensations of energy that can become objects of our attention.

So just very gently pay attention to them.

These sensations can be noticed as sounds that you hear,

The feeling of the skin or smells that you smell with your nose,

For example.

But these can also be the activities of the mind.

Mental images,

Specific thoughts that you're thinking,

Or more general emotions or moods.

In this retraining of the mind,

We are gradually becoming aware that these mental activities are just like the sounds and sights and smells that we perceive.

They are just sensations that arise and fall through our consciousness.

Just like the sound or the smell is not you,

The mental activity is also not you.

And this takes a lot of time to fully appreciate.

But for now,

Just be curious about your conscious experience in all of its mystery.

So let go of any desire to change or resist what's happening right now.

Just pay mindful attention to whatever is arising for you.

And now begin to notice the sensations from within the body.

This could be feelings of touch or pressure,

Tingling,

Warmth,

Coolness,

Movement.

Just allow yourself to notice these sensations.

You can actually feel inside the body.

You can sort of survey all the way from the top of the head,

All the way down through the body down to the bottom of the feet,

And back up.

And notice there's any particular energy anywhere that's sticking out.

You don't need to search for anything specifically like we're looking around with a flashlight.

Just be open to what is happening and make a mental note of whatever it is that stands out to you.

This is your conscious experience.

And now begin to focus on the sensations of the breath as it comes in and as it goes out.

Feel these sensations in detail wherever they stand out to you the most.

That could be in the rising and falling of the belly.

You can even feel that if you would like.

Could be in sensations in the throat,

Feeling air coming in and going out.

Or it could be particularly helpful to notice the sensations of the nostril.

And the air comes in and it's cold,

And then as it leaves it's warm.

You can focus on that sense of temperature.

So just feel the breath as it comes in and as it goes out.

And you might notice if the out-breath is restricted in any way.

Sometimes just like how we flex our stomach muscles without knowing it,

We restrict our out-breath in one way or another.

And so notice if you're doing that.

And if you are,

Your body knows how to let the out-breath go completely.

So just let go and let everything go when you breathe out.

And sometimes while we're focusing on the sensations of the breath,

Our attention will wander away from it.

And we might get caught up in stories that we tell ourselves.

This is our narrative.

So thoughts about the future or the past or any sort of imagination.

We may even forget that we're sitting here.

We may just be feeling very restless for this to end and get on to the next thing.

And that's okay.

This is just a part of the process of training the mind.

This isn't its normal way of being.

Or at least that's how we've evolved.

To constantly be thinking about the future and constantly be thinking or ruminating about the past.

This is normal and this will always happen.

So it's okay.

The training is to become aware of that.

To notice that your mind has wandered and just come back to the breath again and again.

This is the skill that you're training.

The skill of paying attention to what's actually happening right now.

And the ability to see it clearly.

And we use the breath to do that because the breath is always here in the present.

So it's our bridge that we can cross to tie the mind and the body here in the present moment.

And so you just come back to the breath and the sensations of the breath again and again.

And that's your training.

So whenever we notice that we're distracted,

We just come back to a calm awareness of what is happening right now.

And so again,

Take a few moments to just focus on the sensations of the breath coming in and going out.

And if it's helpful you can say in your mind,

Breathing in and breathing out.

Breathing in and breathing out.

And as we come to the end of this meditation,

You can take a few deep breaths.

And you can breathe all the way from the top of your head all the way down to the bottom of your feet as you breathe in.

And then when you breathe out from the bottom of the feet all the way up through the body,

Out through the top of the head,

Connect to all the energy that's swirling around inside of you right now.

And when you breathe out,

Let everything go.

Everything from the day,

From the past week,

From the past month.

Just let it go because that's in the past.

And so just be here.

This is the practice of being here and being fully awake in the present moment.

And take one last deep breath.

And as you breathe out you can open up your eyes.

If you have them closed you can move around in your seat and just be ready to engage with the rest of your day.