Welcome to this meditation on parts of the breath with Peter Radcliffe.
Meditation on the breath is perhaps the oldest and most common meditation there is.
And there's good reason for this.
The breath is always with you.
It's also very calming.
And the breath is connected to both our body and our mind.
So when you're ready,
Bring your mind to your breath.
And you can concentrate on either the wholeness of the breath or just concentrate on part of the body where you can feel the breath.
Either the ribs expanding or contracting,
The diaphragm moving up or down,
Or the feeling of the air moving in and out of your nostrils.
Wherever you place your attention,
Just be aware of this calm,
Wave-like form of the breath entering and leaving your body.
As you concentrate on the smoothness of the breath,
It will assist your mind in becoming more and more relaxed.
So in this meditation,
We're going to start by becoming more focused on the breath by dividing it into parts.
So we're going to divide the breath into three parts.
The in-breath,
The flow of air entering your lungs.
The retention,
Where we hold the breath or we pause for a moment between the in-breath and the out-breath.
And the oxygen oxygenates our blood.
And then the out-breath,
Where we exhale all that used air.
These three parts will bring more focus and more intensity and allow you to stay on the meditation object a little bit longer.
You may find that by adding more complexity to just meditating on the feeling of the breath alone,
It may cause more tension or anxiety or it may even change the rhythm of your breath.
This is okay and it will pass in time.
Because in this meditation,
We're beginning to bring more focus of our mind to the meditation object.
Continue in this way for as long as possible before finishing the meditation.
