Coming To Your Breath

And taking a moment to find a comfortable seat.

Sitting either with your legs crossed or sitting on your shins,

Lying down even if you prefer.

Take a moment to sit up as tall as you can and just let the shoulders draw down away from the ears.

Notice the palms facing down onto your knees or your lap.

Let the fingers be relaxed.

Gently start to close the eyes.

Relaxing the space in between the eyebrows.

Relaxing around the outside edges of the eyes.

Taking a moment to notice where the tongue is and if you find it resting in the roof of the mouth.

Noticing if you can just gently let it relax away.

Notice how that gives you even more freedom and ease around the neck and the jaw.

And as you close your eyes,

As you take yourself into this quiet place within,

Just start to notice how you're feeling.

Starting with the physical shape that you're in,

Just notice if there's anything that you can do to relax a little bit more.

And then start to notice how easy or challenging it is for you right now to just be here and to really,

Really be here.

Noticing all of the noises or sounds or sensations,

Maybe even smells in the distance around you.

And see if you can let all of those things that are happening outside of you continue to be there but not to be a distraction for your mind.

Can you clear your mind of everything that you've already done today?

Letting go of the conversations that you might have had,

Things that you've done,

Things that you've seen,

Things that you've read or thought about.

Can you let go of any expectation or any thinking or anticipation about what comes later in your day,

Later in your week or later in the year?

We always have this tendency to look back in time or to race forward into the future.

Just notice for me while you're here if you can really,

Really be here without letting the mind wander away too far.

Giving yourself this gift of really sitting still and tuning in to every little detail about this moment.

Giving yourself permission perhaps for the first time today to really slow down and to let go of everything else.

And then notice how it feels to draw all of that awareness,

All of that attention inside of you.

Notice how it feels to breathe and whether that breath comes more easily to you through the nose or through the mouth.

Letting either one be okay.

And then just start to follow the breath deep down inside of you.

Notice how it feels to breathe as the breath travels in through the nose or the mouth.

Follow it passing down through the back of the throat,

Reaching down into the lungs.

Noticing how far down inside of you that breath travels,

Whether it's just reaching to the chest or if it's drawing down deeper towards the belly.

And then notice the breath out.

Notice how it feels when that energy leaves the body.

Travels back up through the back of the throat,

Leaving through the nose or the mouth also.

Just keep following your own breath in this simple awareness technique.

Something that happens fortunately for us every single moment of every day without us having to do anything to control that.

So just take time to really observe,

To notice how it feels,

To pay attention to that one aspect of life right now.

The pulsing beat of your aliveness,

Of your health.

You might start to notice that the inhale is longer or shorter than the exhale.

You might notice that they're quite similar in their length.

We're not trying to control the breath in any way here,

Just still working with awareness.

What naturally comes and goes without any effort from our side.

Now take a moment to count how long your inhale lasts for.

And then when it comes to be time for your exhale to begin,

Do the same thing.

Count and see how long the exhale lasts for.

Just continue to do this for another two or three rounds,

Just slowly building on the layers of awareness,

Still with the natural breath.

And then how does it feel to take the number that was perhaps the longest or the second longest number that you discovered and now introduce the pranayama,

Equal breathing.

So we're letting the inhale and the exhale come to be the same length,

The same count.

Can you let everything else in the body stay nice and relaxed just as you follow this steady flow of energy coming in and then moving out.

Notice how it feels to have that single focus once again.

Everything else around you distracting you,

Just you and your breath this moment in time.

Notice how everything slowed down as you sink a little deeper into yourself.

This place of awareness,

This place of being.

Let's take three more rounds of breath just like this.

Three more inhales,

Three more exhales.

When third breath finishes for you,

Just coming back to your natural rhythm of breathing.

No counting,

No control,

Just the breath as it happens to be.

And notice how you feel once you arrive there.

Notice how you feel in that moment and then think back to how you felt when you first closed your eyes.

Hopefully things feel a little calmer,

More grounded.

And stay with that natural breath just for a little while longer.

The next rhythm that we'll be working with is a visualization.

We're going to be drawing a square with our breath.

So as you inhale,

I invite you to pick the same number perhaps that you were working with just before.

And let each side of the square be an inhale and an exhale.

Same length as you were working with just before.

So we're going to start in the bottom left hand corner of the square.

And as you inhale,

Letting the breath travel all the way up to the top left corner of the square.

And as you exhale,

Carrying the breath across to the top right hand corner.

And as you inhale,

Drawing down to the bottom right hand corner of the square.

And as you exhale,

Just slowly coming back to where you started.

It's too complicated with the counting,

Just focus instead on the simplicity of the inhale and the exhale.

Creating the square with the breath.

Letting everything else in the body stay relaxed.

Everything around the shoulders,

Around the jaw,

Around the neck.

Notice how it feels to have the visualisation aspect of the pranayama in this moment.

Soften the muscles in between the eyes and around the edges of the eyes.

Four more rounds of breath.

Two more squares from whichever corner you happen to be in.

Turning back to your natural breath once you've completed those rounds of inhales and exhales.

Letting go of the counting,

Letting go of the shape.

Just notice how you feel to arrive back to the natural breath.

Staying there for just a short while longer.

Still relaxed in the body,

Still relaxed in the mind.

Now we're going to come back to the visualisation but with a slight change to the breath.

So you'll use the number that you were using before and you'll start in the bottom left hand corner of the square and your inhale and your number will carry you up to the top left hand corner.

This time you're going to pause for the length of your number and that pause is going to carry you with the visualisation over to the top right hand corner of your square.

And then your exhale will be the same number again,

Travelling you down to the bottom right hand corner of the square.

And then you'll pause for the same count and during the pause travel with the visualisation back to the corner where you started,

Bottom left.

So just working with the breath in a simple way but now introducing a pause.

You can start when you feel ready and if you feel as though the number that you've picked is too long for you to work with this technique,

Just take it to a lighter number.

No judgements,

No pressure,

Just the visualisation and the pranayama working together as a single focus for your mind.

Relax the shoulders and the jaw.

Check in with those areas that you can relax and soften.

Simple focus for the mind,

Stillness in the body.

Brow.

Two more rounds of inhales and exhales just like this.

Two more squares from whichever corner you happen to be with.

And the second round of inhale and exhale using this technique finish just slowly come back to a natural breath.

No counting,

No control,

No visualization just the breath as it comes and as it goes.

And tune in to how you feel.

We have just one more round of breathing to work with now.

So as you inhale you'll keep with the number that you've chosen.

And then this time there'll be no pause between the inhale and exhale.

Exhale will begin as soon as the inhale ends.

But we want the exhale to be longer than your inhale.

It can be longer by two,

Three,

Four counts.

So for example if your inhale is the count of five try to let your exhale last for the count of seven,

Eight,

Nine,

Maybe even ten.

You can begin whenever you want to.

There's no visualization just inhale to the length or count that you chose.

And the exhale becomes longer than inhale.

Notice how your mind is doing in terms of staying present.

It's easy for you to stay with this rhythm or if the mind tends to wander away.

Using the breath as an anchor for your mind so anytime it happens to move just slowly drawing it back to the steady flow of energy in and awareness of the energy leaving.

Notice how it feels to let the exhale be longer than the inhale.

If that feels even more calming for you or if that feels like it's a little more challenging.

Get a sense of stillness into the body.

Soften all of the muscles around the eyes and the mouth.

Three more rounds of breath just like this.

Three more inhales,

Three more exhales.

And when your third round of breathing finishes come back to the natural breath without any control,

Any technique.

Just awareness of the fact that you're breathing.

Notice all of that space in between everything else.

Notice how you feel compared to the first moments of arriving into this practice.

See if you can carry this feeling of peacefulness,

Of calmness with you into the rest of your day.

Coming back to it at any time that you need it.

Thank you for practicing with me.

Namaste.