Good morning.
Now,
We all need breaks from time to time,
And particularly throughout the day.
The question is,
Are we doing them correctly?
Are we using our downtime to doomscroll or to rest and recuperate?
In this short session,
You'll feel the power of using your breath to bring you the break you deserve.
Get yourself into a nice comfortable seat,
Sit up nice and tall,
Bring the eyes to close,
Begin to relax the shoulders,
The jaw,
The tongue,
The teeth.
As your body gets nice and still,
As you get settled,
I want you to focus in on your breath and how it feels right now.
Maybe noticing how it could be deeper,
It could be smoother,
And doing your best to breathe in and out through the nostrils to try and make both those things happen.
Keep an eye on that breath,
And while you do,
I'll just explain the session a bit more.
Today,
We're going to be doing a breathing practice aimed at getting you out of your head and into your body.
A nice break for the mind.
I'll be asking you to breathe in a very particular fashion.
I want you to imagine a power bar in your body.
As you inhale,
The power bar goes up,
And as you exhale,
The power bar goes down.
You can even use your hand with me if you like.
You can bring that hand up from your legs towards your head on the inhale,
And on the exhale,
You can turn your hand around as if you're pressing down on something as you go from your head all the way to your waist.
Sort of Tai Chi like.
Inhale,
Come up.
Exhale,
Press down.
Inhale,
Come up.
Exhale,
Go down.
As you're doing that,
Whether you do it with your hand or not,
I want you to imagine that you are filling your body up on that inhale from your toes all the way to the top of your head,
And then as you exhale,
You're emptying out from the top of your head all the way down to your toes.
It's like this bellow going up and going down.
Do that for me now.
Deep,
Slow,
Smooth inhales.
Toes all the way to head,
And as you exhale,
Head all the way to toes.
Okay,
You got the idea.
Slow,
Smooth,
Big breaths.
Now,
A slight change on your inhale.
Do exactly what you've done.
Breathing in,
And then as you exhale,
Breathe out through the mouth this time.
If you want,
You can do a controlled breath out like you're blowing out a candle.
Make sure you keep that long breath out,
The long breath in.
All right,
Another change.
Now you're going to take out that gap between the inhale and the exhale,
And the exhale and the inhale,
And speed it up just a bit.
So the pace may sound a little something like this.
Now it doesn't have to be that exact pace,
But you get the idea.
No break between the inhale and the exhale.
The breath moving as a lovely cycle.
In,
Out,
Out.
All right,
And getting used to that pace,
I'll just explain what's next.
We're going to initiate some movement along with this.
Find a pace that works for you.
It shouldn't be too strenuous.
We have big breaths.
We have no break between inhale and exhale.
We're inhaling through the nose,
Exhaling through the mouth.
Now what you'll do is a seated cat-cow,
Which just means you're going to inhale and arch your back as you bring your face to look up to the sky,
And then as you exhale,
You'll round the back as you look towards your lap or the ground.
Inhale arch,
Exhale round.
Let's try that together now.
Again,
You don't have to speed up the breath.
Just start to bring this movement in with the breath.
In arch,
Exhale round.
Inhale arch,
Exhale round.
Big breaths.
Fully in,
Fully out.
In through the nose,
Out through the mouth.
A little bit quicker,
A little bit quicker,
And relax.
Come back to a normal seated position.
Come back to normal breathing.
Take a moment and just notice how you feel.
Notice the reset of the nervous system.
Notice the reconnection with your body,
And notice the peace that comes with all of it.
I hope you've enjoyed this.
Take as long as you need in this position,
And when you're ready for another session,
You know where to find me.
Until then,
Namaste.
