Breath Awareness - Experiencing Breathing

In this beautiful meditation, we explore what it means to be alive and breathing right now. As usual, we start by taking 3 deep breaths and grounding. We then allow for the breath and awareness to meet each other and start getting curious about where we might be feeling the breath just now, duration, temperature, and texture of the breath. We take the time to relate and explore distractions during meditation and to come back to the breath which is always there.
This meditation has prolonged periods of exploratory silence and, as such, it is best suited for regular meditators.

Transcript

If you feel already set up and ready to go, You could just join me in taking three deep breaths if that's comfortable for you. So with these three deep breaths at the start of the practice, We're just letting our body know that we're here, Inviting the weight to drop down into the points of contact with the floor. Each out breath, We're really grounding here. And then with the in breath, We can also feel into how the body naturally expands into space. Breathing out, Connecting with the stillness of the ground. And breathing in, Connecting with the spaciousness all around you. And in the spirit of the radical embrace, We can also just take a few breaths here to notice what's alive for us in our heart minds, Thoughts, Emotions, Mood might be present and just creating space for all of it to be here as it is. So welcoming the fullness of how we are just now. So I'm going to lead us in a breath awareness practice where we can start to get curious about the qualities of the breath. How is it to be alive just now? What's this experience of air coming and going in the body? And we'll just allow that to bring us into a deeper, Fuller sense of being here. Present to and available to whatever else is here in our embodied experience. Which includes the mind, So the mind and body, Not separate, But deeply connected, Mutually co-arising. So firstly, Just finding the breath, Whatever that means for you just now, It could be through sensations of movement, Or the feeling of air just on the edge of the nostrils or the lips. It could be belly or chest rising and falling as air comes and goes. Just initially picking up the thread of the breath here with gentleness, Curiosity. And if that's too much for you for any reason, You can just choose any other object, Anything else that you're aware of just now could be sounds, Could be the sensations where the body's in touch with the ground. You could even bring in self-touch here if you wanted to put a hand on the heart or the belly or anywhere else in the body and just feel that contact and just stay with that. Feel free to get creative here around where you bring your attention, I'm going to keep guiding around breath awareness and feel free to modify as needed. And before going any further, We can just appreciate the mind's amazing miraculous capacity to choose to attend to something, Anything in our awareness. And the invitation is to choose to turn towards and start to attend to breathing. Directing our awareness to different qualities of the breath as it comes and goes and staying with it. And I'll just name a few things we can get curious about here. So the first is just where you might be feeling the breath just now, Noticing any sensations here, Movement, Pressure, Tingling, Flow, Expansion, Contraction. We can also get curious about how deeply the body feels the breath, Just noticing as you breathe in, How far can that go without forcing anything? How far does a natural breath for you reach into the body? You might also notice the width of the breath, Meaning how widely can you feel it from side to side and front to back? This could be as subtle as feeling the movement of clothing against the skin as the body gently expands with the in-breath and contracts with the out-breath. You might also notice the duration of the breath, How long or short it is. You don't need to get out a measuring tape or anything here, You can just have a sense of the length of the breath. How long does it last? You might notice this is changing from breath to breath. Another thing that you might notice here that might also be changing is the temperature of the air as it comes and goes. And then just noticing anything about the texture of the breath here, How it feels as it comes and goes. Maybe it's got the texture of sandpaper or maybe it's got the texture of silk or something in between the two. Some breaths might feel smoother than others. How is it? And how is it to stay with it? So one thing we might notice when we bring an intention to be with the breath is that eventually the thinking mind pulls our attention away into thoughts of the past or the present or the future. So if you've noticed that, The invitation is to just appreciate that that might be a part of you that is trying to take care of you. Maybe it's worried that you might get bored or you might get overwhelmed. So it's pulling you into something a bit more familiar, A bit more comfortable, Maybe even a bit safer than being here with the moment-by-moment unfolding of the breath in the body. So that can be happening and we can simply return to the breath, No problem. So in that moment of awareness, Noticing we've gotten distracted, We're already outside of the distraction, We're already back in presence. And then it just takes a little bit of effort to allow awareness in the breath to find each other again. So I'm just going to leave you with a bit of time here to explore that on your own. What's it like to get distracted, To become aware of that and to come back? And what supports you to come back? Whatever's happening, We can always begin again. And one way we can support the system to know that that's true is to just shake it off. So feel free to just give your body a shake, Make any noises that feel good to you, Shake it off, Shake it off, Shake it off, And then start again. And you can start in the ground again, Just coming back to sensations of contact there. You might want to even just have a little look around. Oh yeah, I'm still here, Everything's all right, Closing the eyes and you feel ready again, Sensing into the spaciousness that's holding you here. And then just gently allowing these two things that are always present when we remember awareness in the breath to find each other, To merge with curiosity, To begin to get interested in life through the breath. And if you're beginning to feel sufficiently absorbed, You may just begin to broaden the awareness, So the breath coming and going in the body, Revealing this deep mystery we call the physical body at deeper and deeper levels. So beginning to open to the whole body breathing from head to toe, Side to side, Front to back. As we breathe, Countless sensations coming and going endlessly with each breath feeling the aliveness, The energy, The vitality of the body. Even if you're tired, You can still know that fully as sensations. So again, I'll just leave us for about five minutes here to explore what it's like to breathe with sensitivity to the whole body. Sensitive to the whole body breathing in, Sensitive to the whole body breathing out. So for the last couple of minutes here, There's an invitation to also just notice any sensations that have the taste of freedom here. Any bits of deepening ease, Relaxation, Steadiness, Stillness, Calm, Relief, Release. Could even just be a really subtle softening in a place in the body that you usually hold tension. Taking a few breaths here to appreciate that shift and the invitation to know a calming body. Calming the body breathing in, Calming the body breathing out. Knowing the signs and sensations of settling. And if that's not available to you right now, You can just appreciate the efforts you've made and maybe just hold yourself a little bit more gentleness. Don't need to strive for anything here. So in a moment, I'll ring a bell to mark the end of this practice.