Breath For Transition

When things around us and within us are changing it can be helpful to practice grounding with our breath.
The seasons keep turning, our world of impermanence keeps us adapting and evolving, we are called to flow with the tide rather than cling tightly to what we hold dear. This 30 minute breath practice offers you the opportunity to feel the seasonal flow through your natural breath whilst anchoring into the stability and home coming of your pelvis.

We can be both - in flow and anchored.

Transcript

Welcome.

We offer these meditations freely and your donations make a real difference,

So thank you.

We will get ourselves comfortable.

We're going to be doing a breath practice focusing on the pelvis.

So maybe I'll start with a little bit of movement.

So getting comfortable and since we are doing the pelvis,

Genuinely it makes a big difference if you can come to a seated position where your knees are lower than your hips.

And that for most people is not sitting cross-legged.

And if you are sitting cross-legged then there's usually quite a lot of pillow and cushion and whatever else is beneath you to give you that height.

I've got a meditation cushion and a cushion under that.

It's a stack,

A little stack of cushionage.

So when our knees are kind of floating up in the air,

That does actually,

That's quite tiring for the inner thigh muscles that are holding you in place.

So it will really prevent you from being able to drop into the practice.

Instead you can be in a place where you feel held and supported.

The foundation or the ground beneath you can come up to meet you and catch you and that's a different practice entirely.

One where we feel held.

So let's play with that feeling.

And of course you can always lie down,

That's an option too.

Okay,

So letting your spine come tall.

You think about pelvic floor muscles and just drill them inwards and up.

So in and up and then notice how that gives you a bit more support for the lower back.

Everything feels a bit stronger.

And that might have a ripple effect all the way up through the spine so you find that your sternum rises.

Just tuck your chin under so the back of your neck can lengthen.

And we might start by sensing how it feels to take an in breath and how it feels to take an out breath.

So we come into awareness of all the different layers or the different fields of awareness that we have.

You can keep your eyes open or you can have your eyes closed,

You choose.

Let's tune into our hearing,

Our sense of hearing.

Notice the sounds that are around you.

Avoiding getting tangled up in that's a good sound or that's a bad sound.

We're just taking a step back from that and noticing sound.

There's really no need for any judgement with that.

You might be curious about what's the furthest away sound that you can locate.

Then you might bring your hearing in closer so that you notice the sound of your own breath,

Your own body.

You might be able to sense your place,

Your position,

How you're lying or sitting and where you are in relationship with the walls and the furniture.

The ceiling and the floor,

Your foundation.

That might expand out so you feel where you are in relationship with the garden,

The trees,

The buildings,

The neighbors.

What else can you sense behind,

To the front,

To the side,

Above,

Below?

Maybe you can get a sense of the entire cosmos,

Infinite space and time.

Maybe you can get a space,

A sense of the earth beneath us.

So whatever it is that you're sitting on,

The foundation of the building that you're sitting on,

The sense of the soil or the sand or the earth,

The rock beneath that,

Layer upon layer of rock heating up to become fire right in the middle of our planet.

Do we find ourselves sitting in relationship with all things?

Just notice what's going on in your neck.

Maybe start to do some circles if that feels comfortable,

Dropping ear to shoulder and then sweeping chin down towards chest.

Other ear comes across to other shoulder.

You might just use semi-circles or if you want to do the full circle,

Try not to drop your head back,

Come up and over.

Slowing this movement right down.

It's early in the morning.

It's all just a curiosity.

How does it feel today?

And this phenomenal body of mine.

How does it feel to switch directions?

Making your way back to center.

As you're taking in breath,

Bringing your shoulders up towards your ears,

Rolling them back and then taking them down as you exhale.

Perhaps there are sounds or sensations as you circle.

Maybe the elbows join in.

Maybe the arms extend.

Taking up space and moving in the way that feels as helpful as it can.

It doesn't need to look a certain way.

And then resting hands on knees,

Settling the heart like you're drawing a circle around the hips.

We're moving slowly so we get the opportunity to feel it.

And then switching directions.

Notice how the breath and the movement start to play with each other.

So they become in relationship with one another.

And then coming to center,

We're going to start to play with movement of the pelvis.

So let's just rock the pelvis.

It can be helpful to hold the knees.

It gives you some stability.

As you exhale,

Take the tailbone back.

And that will have a ripple effect up through your spine.

Your heart will lean back.

And then as you inhale,

Turn the pelvis so the pubic bone moves forwards.

Keep the shoulders away from the ears.

Feel the elbows in tight to your side or close to your side.

And your heart will rock forwards with that.

But we're really curious about the pelvis.

There is also a ripple effect moving the whole way through the torso as you move backwards and forwards.

You'll start to notice how the movement feels.

Sometimes it feels silky and almost serpent-like.

Sometimes it feels jaggedy.

Sometimes there's not much movement at all.

Other times there's loads.

So what's true today?

Then coming to center.

And we'll take the weight across side to side.

So coming onto your right sitting bone,

Let your left sitting bone just almost come a little bit off the floor.

And then moving across to the left-hand side,

Allowing the right sitting bone to have a release of weight and pressure.

And we're going to go side to side.

It's not uncommon to be much more dominant on one side to the other.

So it's quite interesting to notice how this feels.

Then making your way back to center.

Let's take the soles of the feet together.

Wrap your hands around the toes so the knees drop out to the side.

And just let the knees become like butterfly wings.

They can just gently move as if they were flying,

But nothing too extreme.

It is early in the morning.

You might gently start to move your heart forwards.

And then take whatever wriggle is needed to inform yourself as to how this is feeling.

And then bring your hands down behind your back.

Let the knees come together in front of you.

And walk the feet slightly apart so they're wider apart than your hips.

And we're just going to sweep the knees from side to side.

So they're moving like windscreen wipers.

And we get to feel what's going on in our hips with this movement.

If you're lying down,

You can do the same.

Knees bent,

Feet apart.

Just gently rocking knees from side to side.

And then making your way back to center,

Settling back into a comfortable position.

And hopefully with quite a lot more awareness of what sensation you can find in your hips.

Now perhaps the eyelids drop,

Or maybe the gaze is just down towards the floor.

The tongue is resting up into the roof of the mouth.

And we're just going to breathe in and out through the nose.

Unless,

Of course,

Your nose is blocked.

In that case,

Just gently breathing through the mouth.

But if you're able to,

Breathing in and out through the nose.

And we're observing that breath.

Usually just the act of watching and observing the breath is enough to let it start to lengthen and deepen.

There's nothing more loving than turning your awareness onto something.

And your breath is no different.

As you bring your awareness to your breath,

Your breath starts to feel loved,

Important,

That it matters.

And it will open up and expand under the warmth of your awareness.

Not miss this.

Noticing for yourself if you are more comfortable with the outbreath or more comfortable with the inbreath.

And then taking a moment to explore the space between the breath.

So at the end of your next inhale just hanging out in the place where the lungs are full but you're not yet taking an outbreath.

You're just suspended for a moment with your lungs full.

Sometimes that moment can last quite a long time once we get into it.

And then diving into the exhale when you're ready and at the end of the exhale resting in that space.

The lungs are empty and we're just suspended in time a moment.

Before we then travel into our next inhale.

The way that you feel as you do this practice is entirely unique to you.

We're all doing the same practice but each of us having our own individual experience of it.

So listen out to what's happening,

What you feel.

There may be clues.

Clues leading to what I don't know but self-awareness maybe.

So this four stage breath that we're doing it holds the seasons in it.

The inhale being the spring,

The new beginnings,

Shoots pushing through the soil,

Buds bursting out from branches.

And then the hold with the lungs full is the summer where everything is abundant and full and busy and exciting and sociable and literally full to bursting.

And then the exhale is the autumn,

The leaves drop and everything starts to get mulched by what's no longer needed.

It's this amazing time of decomposing and regenerating and nourishing.

As we exhale we're really letting go of what's needed and that becomes something that will feed what's coming next.

And then we come into winter and it's the hold where the lungs are empty.

Just like in winter you look outside and the soil is frozen solid and it looks dead,

It looks like nothing's going on.

The trees are bare and it all feels if you're of the wrong or the of the mindset to see it as such it feels like everything is very barren and empty and harsh.

But we know that's not true because actually what's happening is huge amounts of regeneration,

The soil is doing what it needs to do.

Underneath the soil there are there's so much life happening,

The turning of the bulbs and the coelom and even in the trees restoration and regeneration so that spring can be whole and it's exactly that as you hold with the lungs empty.

It might feel like nothing's happening but that's not the truth.

We're in the territory of the unseen.

So as you take your four breaths just notice for yourself which season feels most comforting because the seasons of the year they're just a fractal there's like moment to moment seasons.

This breath practice later in the day will feel different even though collectively here in the UK we're coming into autumn so the exhale is likely to feel most nourishing.

As you inhale see if you can bring your in breath right the way down through the spine or through the midline of your body and draw it right the way down into the pelvic bowl and then as you exhale release.

As you exhale the breath dissolves it can move in all directions.

So inhaling down to the pelvis,

The very purposeful in breath and exhaling letting go releasing out in all directions.

You might take your in breath to the very centre of the pelvis,

The heart of the pelvis.

See if you can sense and feel as you breathe into the very very very very core of the pelvis how that feels.

It is not uncommon for this to not feel available in which case you might just imagine you might get curious and explore your imagination of how it might feel to take your breath into the very core of your pelvis and then letting the exhale expand out in all directions from there.

You might take your awareness across to the right hand side of the pelvis,

The territory over on the right hand side.

As you breathe in maybe the breath can help your awareness travel.

You might notice what you find there.

Again bringing awareness back to centre and on your next in breath taking awareness across to the left hand side of the pelvis.

Noticing what you can sense or feel.

Staying curious.

You can always drop into imagination.

Starting to create a map of what we sense and feel within the pelvic bowl.

There might be different temperatures,

Hot and warm in one part,

Cold in another.

It might be more subtle than that.

There might be textures.

Might feel fluid and flowing or it might feel dry and brittle or it might be subtler than that.

It might feel soft like velvet or sharp edge like metal.

Bringing your hands to your heart and dropping your chin towards your chest.

Knowing that whatever it is you do or don't feel we can allow for all of it.

No need to judge it.

Maybe today we'll be just a little bit more aware of how it feels to be inside our bodies.

Offering the fruits of our practice to all beings.

Namaste.