Hello it's Dr Bethany Brown and welcome to this short breathing anchor exercise.
We're going to jump straight in so just quickly get yourself into a position that feels comfortable yet alert.
If you would like to close your eyes I invite you to do so but if not a soft gaze at a neutral point is equally okay.
What we're going to do in this exercise is use our breath as an anchor.
An anchor to this present moment,
An opportunity to purposefully choose where we are placing our attention.
Notice when it's wandered and bringing it back to the anchor.
Starting by taking the spotlight of our attention and placing it on our breath.
Noticing the in breath and the out breath.
Following it moment by moment.
I'm just simply doing this from a place of curiosity and non-judgment.
Curiously observing each breath,
Learning about it,
Studying it,
Gathering information about it,
Noticing its pace,
Its tempo,
The parts of the body that we're observing it in,
The movement and flow that occurs due to it and at any time our mind wanders which it is designed to do.
Noticing and gently and kindly bringing ourselves back to focusing on our breath.
Our breath which we always have meaning it's an anchor we can always use to the present.
Each breath,
A present breath,
A present breath,
Moment by moment and taking the opportunity to look at it from another perspective.
What else can we learn about the breath?
Can we be playful with it?
Shifting the part of the body that we're breathing into,
Changing its pace,
Altering its rhythm,
Seeing whether we can do this again from that place of curiosity.
Not striving for a certain type of breath,
The perfect breath,
But just curiously attending to the present breath.
Being aware of it,
Sitting alongside it,
Noticing whatever we can notice about it.
And maybe your mind is calm today and paying attention was a task that you found easy and feel that you were successful at.
Or maybe you found that today your mind was busy and you had to continually notice you had wandered and bring yourself back.
I invite you to also view that as being successful for the noticing,
The distraction and the wandering is equally as important part of the mindfulness.
The choosing to place your attention on the present.
And I invite you to take one final breath final breath before we finish the exercise there.
