Please make yourself comfortable.
Welcome to this practice where we will focus on the breath.
So let's plant our feet on the floor and put our legs somewhere comfortable.
Let's put our arms somewhere comfortable and take a few deeper breaths.
We become a little more settled.
When you're ready to inhale next,
Allowing your spine to become a little bit straighter,
Tiny bit taller.
And when you're ready to exhale,
Allowing your forehead to soften,
Your jaw to soften,
Your shoulders to soften.
Then allowing the breath to be long and smooth and comfortable.
As we settle a little further.
Let's allow the breath to be natural now.
The conscious mind wants to interfere.
Can we allow it to breathe itself?
Let's notice where we can feel the breath the most.
Where in our body do we get the strongest sensations of the breath?
Let's take our attention to our nostrils.
See if we can feel the breath moving in the nostrils.
The subtle movements,
Feelings,
Sounds,
Sensations.
And we're also noticing any mental commentary that goes along with it.
See if we can observe all those things.
And if our focus becomes lost and wanders off,
We don't worry,
We just return to the breath in the nostrils.
Let's take our attention to our throat and feeling the breath move in the throat.
In our trachea,
Our windpipe,
Can we feel that?
Maybe we like it,
Maybe we don't like it,
Can we notice?
The breath is still comfortable and relaxed,
The body is still comfortable.
We're observing the breath moving through the windpipe,
The throat.
Let's notice now the breath moving into the chest.
Where do we notice the ribs moving?
Can we sense the ribs expanding widthways as we inhale and gently dropping back again?
As we exhale.
Subtle,
We don't want to force anything.
If we've just taken a huge in breath and pushed our ribs out to the side,
Can we just notice it?
Can we notice the movement of the ribs at the back of the body?
Their subtle movement with the in breath and the out breath.
Can we sense our shoulders gently moving?
Their collar bones.
And the ribs at the front of the body by the sternum,
The breastbone.
Let's put our focus here and feel the movement,
Feel whatever there is to feel.
If the mind wanders,
We might notice where it's been,
That might be a thought we have often and we just return.
Just come back to the focus,
The ribs in the front of the body.
Allowing our attention now into the belly,
The abdomen.
Observing how that moves with the breath.
Might be quite a small movement if you're sitting up,
Might be more noticeable if you're lying down.
Let's notice whatever there is.
Notice our experience right now.
And then let's see if we can get a sense of the breathing body as a whole.
Allowing our breath to move our body.
Massaging us gently.
Rocking us gently.
Almost as if we were held on a raft gently.
Gently moving the waves of the breath.
Let's allow a slightly deeper breath to energise us now.
And we can imagine the energy moving into our body with our breath.
Moving into our arms and legs and energising our arms and legs.
Let's bring movement slowly back into our fingers and toes,
Our wrists and our ankles,
Our arms and legs.
And let's have a little stretch if that's for us.
And slowly when you're ready we can return to our waking consciousness.
Thank you for practicing with me.
