Whole Body Breathing

When you activate lateral networks in your brain, you can strengthen your ability to take life less personally, and experience everything around you as a whole. Join Rick Hanson in this meditation of whole body breathing.

Transcript

Before we do the practice,

I want to give you a little bit of information about your brain which gives us a rationale for the practice.

Why am I doing this?

So in terms of your brain,

When anyone does self-referential thinking like,

Why are they so mean to me?

Or how can I get them to be nicer to me?

Or do I want Chinese food tonight?

Or Italian?

How would that be for me?

Or other forms of self-referential,

It's called processing,

Feeling,

Wanting,

Thinking,

And so forth.

When we do that,

Usually what we tend to do is increase activation in midline networks in the cortex,

Medial networks in the middle of the head,

The top of the head.

And on the other hand,

When we have less sense of self,

There's less referential processing.

When we disengage from the idea or sense of self,

These activations in midline networks tend to decrease and there are increased activations in lateral networks on the sides of the head,

Especially for right-handed people.

Pardon me,

Especially on the right side.

And this is true for right-handed people,

Maybe roughly half of all left-handed people.

And this finding is just reversed for roughly half of all left-handed people who have visual spatial processing on the left and language processing on the right.

But I'll mainly talk about the right side of the brain.

Okay?

So you see the distinction?

Midline activation,

Lots of self,

Lateral activation,

Especially right-sided for less sense of self.

What activates these lateral networks if you're interested in having less sense of self?

One way to activate them is through present moment gestalt awareness,

Awareness of things as a whole,

Like an image as a whole or the sensations of breathing in your body as a whole.

And repeatedly having this experience of abiding as a whole body breathing will repeatedly stimulate these lateral,

Mainly right-sided networks and in the process of repeatedly stimulating them,

Since neurons that fire together wire together,

Strengthen them.

So it's easier for you to go into a kind of present moment awareness in which there's less sense of self,

Often with frankly bonus benefits of really coming into the now,

You know,

Being very much in your own experience,

Not caught up in worrying or planning or regretting.

And as a bonus benefit,

Another bonus benefit,

If it is of interest to you,

This sense of experience as a whole,

Which you can repeatedly train in,

Is a doorway into one of the major factors certainly in Buddhist contemplative practice of deep meditative absorption,

If that's of interest to you.

So that's why we're going to be doing this practice of whole body breathing.

And I'll take a little time with it here.

You can certainly slow down this practice by putting the video or audio on pause as you know.

Okay.

So here we go.

Coming into yourself is kind of coming home,

Taking some moments to just become aware of how we conventionally,

Ordinarily pay attention to breathing.

And you might notice that attention kind of skitters around from one sensation of breathing to another.

Even if you're focusing on one part of your body,

Like the sensations of breathing at the upper lip,

Even there,

You can often get a sense that attention is foregrounding or the spotlight of attention is skittering around to one sensation or another.

So I'll just be kind of quiet here for some moments as you explore the ordinary way that we are attentive to the sensations of breathing in the body.

Okay.

And whatever you saw or experienced there is fine.

And now we're going to move into the heart of this practice.

So to begin with,

See if you can get a sense of your chest as a whole breathing,

Especially the central torso,

The central area of your torso.

In other words,

Instead of attention moving from sensation to sensation in your chest,

You are getting a sense of your whole chest as you breathe.

In other words,

Instead of the spotlight of attention being like a laser,

You're fanning it out to include your chest as a whole.

Every sensation related to breathing in the chest appearing in awareness at the same time as a single gestalt,

A single unified percept.

I'll be quiet in a moment for you to do this on your own,

But I first want to say that in the beginning,

As was certainly true for me,

It could take a little while to get a stable sense of this,

Or you might get a sense of it for just a second or so,

And then it crumbles.

But then it's normal.

That's normal.

Just come back to it and see if you can increasingly stabilize the sense of the sensations of breathing in your chest as a whole.

It might help to start with a smaller area,

Like,

You know,

10,

20 centimeters across,

Four or five inches across perhaps in the central area of your chest and then fan out from there.

But however you do it,

See if you can start getting more of a sense of the sensations of breathing in your chest as a whole.

In other words,

You're focusing on the sensations of breathing,

Becoming increasingly absorbed in them.

Other things may pass through your awareness,

But you are increasingly giving yourself over to the sensations of breathing,

Especially the sensations of breathing taken as a whole.

To do this,

It can help to have a receptive sense of the breath coming to you.

It can help to relax and receive the breath,

Opening out into it.

And now I will start to suggest widening the field of awareness to include larger and larger regions of your body in terms of all the sensations of breathing in larger and larger parts of your body taken as a whole.

And feel free to go at your own pace,

Adapting my suggestions to your own needs.

So including a sense of the diaphragm just beneath your ribs as it rises and falls along with all the other sensations of breathing in your chest.

So we're going to be expanding out from the chest slowly but surely to include the whole body.

In the chest and the diaphragm as a whole.

Including the internal sensations of the lungs as part of the whole.

It's kind of like a song in which you hear all the instruments at the same time.

All the sensations of breathing in your chest,

Your diaphragm and lungs.

Going further to include your belly.

As they're included.

Also,

Feeling your back as you breathe,

Including the sensations there.

All the sensations in your torso of breathing.

Bring an awareness all together at once as a single unified experience.

Moment after moment.

The whole torso breathing.

Including your throat,

Coolness of inhaling,

The warmth of exhaling.

Also,

Including sensations around your nose,

Your lips,

Your face as you breathe.

Your neck and head.

Your shoulders and arms.

All the sensations of breathing in your upper body known all together in the wide open field of awareness.

All the sensations of breathing in your lower body known as the inner body.

You can also include sensations in your hips.

As your chest rises and falls,

There's sensation in your hips.

Your lower back all included.

In your legs moving subtly,

Sensation there too related to breathing.

More and more abiding as a whole body breathing.

If your mind wanders as normal and fine,

Just come back.

To peacefully resting in this moment as a whole body breathing.

No need to make sense of anything,

Plan for anything.

Just giving yourself over here and now being whole body breathing.

Taking a last minute with this.

Establishing an awareness of your body as a whole,

As a single field of sensation related to breathing.

One last minute here,

Aware of the body as a whole,

Present,

Breathing and at peace.

Being a person,

Breathing peacefully.

Okay.

Starting to finish up registering this experience,

Whatever you've been able to find in terms of a sense of experience as a whole,

Sensations of breathing as a whole and knowing that you can like me,

Practice this and like me if you want,

Get better and better at it.

So it's easier and easier and more and more natural for you to drop into this space in which as I think you found,

The sense of self starts falling away while you continue to be a person going on being,

Breathing peacefully.

Reviews

Works very good for me together with the sentence : " what do you have to do with me" Thank you Rick

Especially enjoyed the 2nd part of the meditation!

Thanks Rick your teachings always reminds me where home is

Thank you very much.

I have much gratitude for your teachings and practices, feeling peaceful.

Interesting info about the brain and why this helps, followed by a lovely and powerful practice

Perfect amount of silence and guidance. No music which is a change for me. I enjoy the silence today.

Thank you for giving me hope that I can slow down my breath and find peace...

Got lost in my breathing. It was an experience I plan to learn. Thank you so very much

It was interesting and effective.
for the most part took me away from the constant musings of my mind and into my body and consequently the now.
Thank you.
It’s always a pleasure listening to one of your guided meditations.

Focused, cleansing breaths..helps me feel centered and great way to start the day.

This kind of awareness is a perfect way to start my day. Thank you!

Wow - my breathing really slowed down and I was incredibly relaxed. I will definitely practice this technique in future. Thank you 🙏🌻🥰

Wow, just wow! I'm speechless. That was so simple and effective. It reminds me of a slightly less mind-altering holotropic breath work session. Thank you for sharing this practice with us 🙏🏼

Breath work through your hole body... That was new for me. And that was awesome. Thank you.

Great experience and awareness thanks

Tried this after a busy day at work ❤️. Felt very relaxed after 😊 will def revisit this meditation 🙏

Extraordinario 🙌

Great balance between verbal direction & quiet to try out the experience. Thank you for your teaching. 🙏🏻

Thank you for such a beautiful teaching guided meditation. I will try to keep practicing it more