The coping three-stage breathing space recorded by Gemma for the owl and the coconut.
You can practice this breathing space regularly in your day or whenever you need to if you feel troubled,
There are thoughts,
Feelings,
Physical sensations in your experience that might be hard to be with.
So just bringing yourself into the present moment by deliberately adopting an upright and present posture and asking what's going on in this moment.
Just noticing what's happening in your thoughts,
Feelings,
Bodily sensations.
And you might find it helpful to describe,
To acknowledge,
To identify what's going on for you and putting your experience into words or images.
For example,
Saying I hear self-critical thoughts or perhaps anxiety is here or there's a tightness in my neck.
And then just gathering your attention and taking it to your belly,
Redirecting your full attention to the sensations in the belly.
Just seeing if you can follow the breath all the way in and all the way out for a few moments.
Just being with the sensations of the breath.
If it helps you to keep your focus on the breath when there are strong thoughts or feelings present,
In addition you could count the breaths.
So for example,
Breathing in,
Breathing out,
Count one,
Breathing in,
Breathing out,
Two and so on until you reach five breaths and just starting to count back from one again.
Beginning again on an in-breath and letting go on an out-breath.
Beginning again and letting go.
And now allowing your attention to expand to the whole body,
Holding all of the sensations in the body,
In awareness right now just as they are.
And in the case of any difficulty or any senses of discomfort or pain,
Tension or resistance,
And taking your awareness there by breathing into this on an in-breath and breathing out from there on an out-breath.
Just softening and opening to the sensations on each out-breath.
Perhaps saying to yourself on each out-breath,
It's okay to feel what I'm feeling.
Or it's okay not to feel okay.
Let me feel it.
It's okay not to feel okay.
And as we start to bring this practice to a close,
Maybe seeing if you can bring this awareness into your next few moments or the rest of your day.
We're simply allowing things just to be as they are already,
Allowing us to see and to hold the difficult experiences within our awareness.
The coping,
Breathing space can allow us to step out of automatic pilot in a way that allows us new and creative responses.
