This mindfulness practice is your breathing anchor practice where you root your awareness into the present moment like an anchor that roots a ship to one place.
Please be gentle with yourself.
It may take some time and practice to keep your awareness in the body.
Allow yourself to develop a tolerance of awareness in the body.
It may not have always felt like a safe place.
This can help you to dissolve anxiety,
Decrease stress,
And allow the body to heal in a relaxed,
Peaceful state.
So to begin,
Get into as comfortable a position as possible.
You can experiment with different positions,
Standing,
Lying down,
Sitting,
Or even walking.
My guidance will assume you're sitting,
But adopt the instructions to whatever posture you have chosen.
Sitting with your back upright,
Get relaxed with your spine following its natural curves.
See if you can establish a position that feels alert and yet relaxed,
And allow your body to settle,
To rest down into gravity,
Letting it be supported by the floor beneath you.
And if it feels comfortable,
Gently close your eyes.
This may help your awareness settle by lessening external distractions.
Gradually allow your awareness to gather around the sensations of the breath in your body.
Where do you feel the breath most strongly?
As you inhale,
Expand the abdomen,
And on exhalation,
Let the abdomen sink back down towards the spine.
Be curious about your actual experience,
Letting go of what you think should be happening,
And being with your experience without judgment.
Now,
Very gently rest your awareness within the whole torso.
Can you feel your belly expanding on the in-breath and subsiding on the out-breath?
Can you feel any movement and sensations with the breath in the sides and the back of the body?
Gradually inhabit your body a little more deeply with a sense of kindly curiosity towards whatever you're experiencing as you breathe.
Practice accepting whatever's happening.
See if you can cultivate a precise awareness of the sensations and movement of the breath.
Moment by moment,
Breathing in,
Breathing out.
Allow your awareness to be utterly receptive as it rests upon the natural movement of the breath in the body.
Now,
Become aware of any thoughts and emotions.
Remember that mindfulness isn't about having a blank mind.
It's normal to think.
Mindfulness is the training whereby we cultivate awareness of what is actually happening physically,
Mentally,
And emotionally.
So you can gradually change your perspective and feel you have more choice in how you relate to life.
Can you look at your thoughts and emotions rather than from them?
Can you be aware of what you're thinking and feeling without either blocking experience or getting overwhelmed by it?
And remember,
Thoughts are not facts,
Even though we often think that they are.
As you develop perspective on your thoughts and emotions,
Including undermining ones,
Can you let go of being so caught up in them?
Can you come back to the breath?
Notice how thoughts are continually changing one moment to the next.
Exactly the same as the way we breathe,
Breath is always changing.
Your thoughts and emotions are not as fixed,
As solid as you perhaps thought.
Everything in this world is changing moment to moment,
Including thoughts and emotions.
Using awareness of the movement and sensations of the breath in your body as an anchor for the mind over and over again.
Follow the breath all the way in and all the way out.
Each time your awareness wanders,
As it will,
Simply note this and return to the breathing anchor time after time after time.
Moment by moment.
Making sure you're very kind and patient with yourself,
Even if you have to start again a hundred times.
It's OK.
This is what the training is all about.
And remember that each time you notice you've wondered is a magic moment of awareness,
A moment where you've woken up from a distraction,
A moment of choice.
So when you catch yourself having wandered off,
You've succeeded in the practice just as you're succeeding when you manage to stay with the breath.
What's happening now?
What are you thinking?
Just note this and guide your awareness back to the sensations of breath in the body over and over again.
Now,
Gently begin to bring the breathing anchor practice to a close.
If the eyes are closed,
Open them and be aware of the sounds around you inside and outside the room.
Feel your whole body and gradually,
Gently begin to move,
Making sure you give yourself time to make a smooth transition from the breathing anchor practice to whatever you're doing next.
