Hello and welcome to The Daily Insight.
My name is Vidya Mala and today we're going to be focusing on how being aware of breathing in the body is a brilliant way to calm a busy mind.
Put very simply,
The way we're wired up as human beings,
We can't be in the body,
Aware of sensations of breathing or any other sensations in the body,
At exactly the same time as we're lost in an overactive mind.
So coming back to breathing in the body is a very,
Very effective way of stilling the mind,
Of calming the mind.
It's a little bit like an anchor.
Can you imagine that your mind is like a boat bobbing about on the surface of an ocean?
And breathing in the body is like an anchor deep in the ocean that's holding the boat still.
So to begin with,
Choosing a posture.
You can do this meditation sitting,
Lying,
Standing,
It's up to you.
The main thing is to be as comfortable as possible and yet alert.
So choosing your position quickly and beginning to settle.
Seeing if you can allow your whole body to rest down onto the surface it's lying on or sitting on or standing on.
Giving the whole weight of your body up to this mysterious force of gravity.
Gravity is always pulling us downwards and very often we fight it,
We resist it.
What's it like to settle down into it?
Feeling into all the points of contact between your body and the floor,
The chair,
The bed.
And let's take some deeper breaths.
Breathing into the whole body.
And breathing out,
Allowing the out-breath to flow all the way out and as we breathe out allowing our weight to settle down a little bit more.
Do this a few times in your own way.
Big breath in,
Big breath out.
Making sure you allow the out-breath to flow all the way out without inhibition.
If we let the out-breath go all the way out the in-breath will take care of itself.
And very often when we're stressed,
Our minds are very busy,
There's a very subtle kind of breath holding that goes on.
We don't let go of the out-breath fully.
So seeing what it's like to do that in this meditation.
Letting the face be soft,
Particularly the eyes and the jaw.
So the breath,
The wind of the breath can flow freely through the back of the throat.
Letting the jaw hang loosely,
Lightly.
And now let's guide our awareness down inside the body,
Dropping down inside the body and coming to rest in the whole chest area and the whole abdominal area.
Tuning into the movements and sensations of breathing.
An expansion phase on the in-breath and a subsiding phase on the out-breath.
Let's see if you can allow your breathing to find its own natural rhythm.
Every time your awareness bounces back into thinking,
It might even feel like your awareness is shooting up into your head.
Every time you notice this,
Then without any kind of judgment or thinking that you're doing it wrong,
Just noticing that.
And then guiding your awareness back deep in the body.
And now broadening our awareness again,
Feeling the whole body,
The whole body resting in gravity,
Resting on the chair or the bed or the floor.
Externalising our awareness,
Being aware of the world around us,
Sounds,
Smells.
Opening our eyes if we've had them closed.
Gently moving the body and seeing if we can take the softer breathing with us as we go back to the activities of the day.
