Centering Breath

This simple meditation and breathing practice balances polarity and opposition within the mental, emotional, and physical states. This practice is excellent for times of heightened stress and anxiety. This is also a very easy practice to incorporate into your daily life and rhythm.

Transcript

Hello and welcome.

The following is a guided meditation by Renee Seals,

A somatic movement educator,

Energy worker,

And astrologer.

This meditation is intended to help support your embodied meditation practice.

If in the recording you are prompted to do something that doesn't feel good for your body,

Please adapt and modify to make it work for you.

Please also note that the content of this meditation sometimes explores deep and subtle states and memories,

And sometimes guided visualizations.

You are encouraged to work with discernment as you practice with them.

If any of the guidance Renee offers feels too activating or uncomfortable,

Please listen to your body's knowing and pause the recording until a later time if you wish to return to it.

These guided meditations range anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes and do not require any supplementary equipment to participate.

We hope you enjoy.

So I want to introduce a breathing practice and it is fairly simple.

You can do this anywhere.

I'm going to suggest that you do this either seated or lying down or in a still place,

Probably not doing a movement practice or walking just because there's a lot of internal movement that we're inviting to happen.

And if there's much external movement,

It's hard to keep your attention deeply in.

So find a place to be still and then close your eyes and let your eyeballs and your forehead and your ears all relax.

And take a couple of deep breaths in and when you exhale allow yourself to sigh out your mouth.

Let your whole body relax and that if that means that you slump that's totally fine.

So feel the places where you're pushing or striving to be in shape or upright and just let it go.

Really give yourself to gravity for these few breaths so that as you exhale there's a total surrender of effort.

And as you inhale you simply allow your breath to come into your body.

So I'm going to suggest that you breathe through your nose.

If you're congested or something and you can't breathe through your nose it's fine.

But I'm going to suggest that you breathe through your nose if you can inhale and exhale.

And as you breathe just notice the sensation of your breath.

So feel how as you inhale the touch of the air your outer nostrils is cool.

And as you exhale feel how the touch of your breath is warm.

And that's all just for the next two or three breaths noticing the temperature of your breath.

You can start to follow the sensation of your breath further into your nose and back into your sinuses and see if you can feel how the movement of your breath travels up into your forehead.

You might even be able to feel a kind of move to the sides into your cheekbones or back into the top of your throat.

As you feel the touch of your breath and the movement of your breath relax your brain totally and many many of us have a slight tension in the brain consistently that's like the the brain is kind of pushing forwards towards the forehead and if you can imagine that your brain is first of all just floating in your skull but then that your brain is broadening and resting into the back of your skull and there's a little bit of space spaciousness in your forehead area so there's not a pushing forwards but just a expansion and a resting.

Now without changing your breath at all count how long it takes you to inhale and do this a couple of times it might be slightly different for each breath and that's okay but without changing how you're breathing so you're not trying to make yourself breathe for longer just count how long it takes you to inhale and then what you'll do is you'll begin to match your exhales and so if your inhale takes you like five or six beats then the exhale will be the same and if you've had more of a variable rate in your breath like one time it was five the next one was six just choose one and so we're just going to match the length of the inhale to the exhale and make it consistent and you're moving you're breathing with your own count and don't don't imprison yourself with your practice so if you need to take an extra little sip of air that's fine you don't want to create a feeling of anxiety in your body but just kind of relax like it's okay if you know here or there it's not exact but in general you're just looking for a balanced rhythm and take a few more breaths like this still just counting the length of the inhale and the exhale matching their length and feeling the sensation of your breath now as you're ready I'm going to invite you just to direct your attention to one or the other side of your nose and I'll speak it first so exhale all your breath out and then inhale with attention in your right nostril so you're just inhaling and feeling your right nostril and then when you exhale exhale with your attention in the left nostril and then we'll go the other way so when you inhale inhale with attention in your left nostril and when you exhale exhale with attention in your right nostril and then we'll switch again so inhale attention in your right nostril and exhale with attention in your left nostril and exhale with attention in your left nostril and then again inhale attention on the left exhale with your attention on the right so now continue at your own pace keep doing this and you're just switching and you're switching attention always at the top of your inhale and some of you might be familiar with the practice where you use your hands to kind of block off the airflow from one nostril to the other and you're welcome to do that I kind of prefer this psychic method but you can do whatever you want and as you breathe you're just continuing the same practices so if you can continue the same length of breath between the inhale and the exhale and continue to feel your breath and you're just paying attention to the sensation of breath more on one side and then more on the other side and we'll continue this breathing practice for another three or four minutes and I'm just going to be silent you can hear the music and one last time I'll say the instructions you're just inhaling with attention on one side and then at the top of the inhale you switch your attention to the other side and exhale then you stay on the same then you stay on the same side and inhale and then at the top of the inhale you switch your attention and exhale on the other side and while you're breathing you're feeling the sensation of your breath and you're trying to breathe in a fairly measured way with the same length inhales and exhales so so so so so so so after the next time you inhale,

Excuse me,

When you exhale feeling the right side when we started you can just let it go and let go of the counting just allow yourself to breathe feel both sides and notice just how your inner state shifts with that kind of practice so and then you can bring your attention to your back body and feel the space behind you so and you might imagine here or just give a little nod hello to the space behind all of us in time so all of our ancestors all who have gone before who have experienced in their own times conflict and upheaval and peace and joy and then without losing attention or awareness in your back body just feel the space in front of you as well and remember that there's so much that we don't know there's absolutely no way to know what the what the future has in store and it's been a personal mantra of mine for a long time to say renee you can say this to yourself you're not dead yet someday you're gonna die you don't know how and you don't know when but until then you're blessed and feel that there is no need to control there's actually no option to control the future we don't know and we can't do it so the only choice we really have is to just be here in this moment and then if you bring your hands together and feel the touch of your right hand and your left hand against each other acknowledging in your own body that there is always polarity there are the two sides there's the ways that we are pulled and torn between beliefs and thoughts preferences attractions repulsions that part of our human experience is to experience polarity part of the the practice of becoming an awakened human is to know that we experience polarity and that we can consciously practice balancing so again feeling your breath feeling the right and the left nostrils space behind you in the space in front of you and the space between your two hands and no matter where you are or what your beliefs are maybe we can all just offer a prayer and ask that no matter what happens anywhere at any time that we may be shown how to treat one another with love and with compassion and that the changes that are happening now are changes that will serve the health and the healing of our planet and of those who live on it and will live on it and just offering a prayer for the the peace and contentment in the hearts of our leaders and peace and contentment with what is and what they have without a need to have more and in ourselves feeling peace and contentment a willingness to put down a fight and to work towards mutual understanding so i hope that that we can all look inside of ourselves and see the places where we make choices based in fear and grasping and decide to make different choices and i hope that we can support our leaders and gather our collective power to support choices and directions that are based in love and compassion so i know it's there's a lot of fear and there's a lot of stress in the world and a lot of reasons for all of that and when and if we can to take a moment and to check in to find internal balance and to check in to find internal balance and to breathe is not only helpful for ourselves but helpful for everyone that we're relating with so i hope that we can do that together thank you i wish you a really good rest of your day good rest of your weekend and the best in all things going forwards and may we feel and remember each other strongly regardless of where we are and may we just keep strengthening those connections together and trusting them much love to you and yours all right peace