Belly Breath For Relieving Stress & Anxiety

Welcome to today's meditation.

We're going to be learning how to use a belly or diaphragmatic breath to breathe down into the base of the belly.

This is a really powerful way of minimizing the effects of stress and anxiety on the mind and the body.

And unfortunately,

We live in a moment in time where more and more of us are experiencing everyday and chronic levels of these emotions.

I'm passionate about teaching tools that reduce stress and anxiety because these have such a major impact on our health and our well-being.

We end up missing work,

We damage relationships,

Our immune system fails,

We find life that much harder when stress and anxiety levels go unchecked.

And the really good news is that when we take control of our breathing,

We influence our nervous system,

We change the way our body responds to stress.

And we get to rest in a place of ease and peacefulness,

We get to rewire the neural pathways in the brain,

We feel ourselves thinking and acting differently.

So today's tool is the belly breath.

And we're going to begin either lying down on the floor with the feet planted and the knees bent.

Or feel free to sit comfortably in a chair,

Sitting upright with your feet flat on the floor.

So once you've found your comfortable position,

Whichever one makes best sense for you,

Bring your hands down to the belly.

And just begin by feeling the warmth of your hands on your body.

You can relax,

There's no need to sit too tall or too upright.

If you're lying down,

Just let the back of the body sink into the mat or the floor beneath you.

And begin by noticing your breath.

You might notice that the breath is just principally in the chest at the moment.

You might notice as you bring your awareness to your nostrils how the breath is cool as you breathe in and warm as you breathe out.

You might notice too that the mind is busy in finding all of this focus impossible.

And that's fine,

That's okay.

It's normal,

Especially these days,

For the mind to be overactive and distracted.

If we're feeding the mind constant distractions through media,

TV,

Phones,

101 things to do during the day,

Then the mind will respond.

It becomes fractured.

So we use compassion,

We use a gentle approach,

Just observing,

Okay,

This is how I am,

This is how it is in this moment.

I feel busy,

I feel overwhelmed,

I feel not present.

We might even just say to ourselves,

This is a moment of stress,

This is a moment of suffering.

All humans experience this.

I am not alone.

And then let's gently guide awareness back into the breath.

Let's be clear,

Any kind of meditation is best enjoyed when we take the effort out of it.

So if you find yourself kind of urging forward either mentally or physically,

Trying to get somewhere or trying to slow the breath or trying to be calm,

Trying to be relaxed,

You're not going to get there.

It's when we take away that grasping,

Yearning kind of energy and actually just drop everything,

Let it go,

Surrender.

That's when that feeling of ease and presence and comfort with whatever it is gradually,

Gradually begins to infuse our whole being.

So as we've invited the body to soften and invited the mind to follow suit,

To step into that softening as well,

We've landed in this space,

We've prepared ourselves for this belly breath.

And together we're going to explore a deepening of the breath down into that space underneath the warmth of the hands.

And so as we next breathe in,

Let's slowly draw that breath down into the belly,

Feeling it rise and inflate like a balloon.

And as we breathe out,

We'll gently breathe out from the belly first,

Letting it soften down towards the spine and then out through the nose.

So it takes a little time to encourage this breath a bit deeper down into the body.

And if we're used to breathing into the chest,

Which is the habit and a feature of anyone who's experiencing stress and anxiety,

It just takes a bit of gentle encouragement to lengthen this breath and to slow it down.

Take care,

Imagine that you are blowing up a balloon,

You don't want to exhaust yourself.

It's more of an invitation and encouragement.

I mean,

You're letting the breath be quite long and slow again,

We're not forcing.

The breath is finding its own rhythm and gradually becoming smoother and more even.

There's no rush.

So you're finding your own rhythm,

You're trusting the body,

Trusting the breath itself and beginning to sink into observation mode,

Just watching the body being breathed.

And of course the mind,

Being the mind,

Will probably wander off thinking about past events and future fantasies.

And that's okay,

That's normal.

And just notice,

When you notice that you're lost in thought,

We use that moment of wakefulness,

Of awareness,

That drops us back into the present moment and allows us to guide the attention gently back into the breath.

Remembering that all of these practices become easier and easier every time we come back to them.

And if you're finding that the mind is particularly distracted,

It can help to count as you breathe,

Just in your head.

Maybe breathing in to a count of four or five.

And then breathing out to a count of four or five,

Maybe even lengthening that breath out,

Making it slightly longer,

Gentle without forcing.

Tune into the warmth of your hands against your belly.

If you're seated,

Feel the warmth of your feet against the floor.

And if you're lying on your back,

You're continuing to soften into the back of the body,

Relaxing the face.

And just allowing your awareness,

Your consciousness to ride this natural wave-like rhythm of the breath.

Observing the inhale and observing the exhale.

So just continuing in this way for a few more rounds,

No rush.

Take the time that it needs.

So the beautiful thing about this practice is that it can be done anywhere.

You can do it in bed,

On your commute,

At your desk,

Even in line at the supermarket.

It just requires a conscious connection,

First off between the hands and the belly.

And then between you and the breath,

Awareness,

Suffusing the breath,

Softening the breath,

Lengthening the breath.

And what it does,

It brings us out of that over activity,

That maelstrom that lives in the head.

And it brings us down into the body where we have another kind of experience,

Another kind of truth to live.

We engage the parasympathetic nervous system,

Which is responsible for rest and digest.

And so all the functions of the body begin to go into rest and digest.

That's where repair work happens in the body.

That's where the immune system flourishes,

Cells reproduce healthily.

We get to sleep better,

Digest better,

Think better and feel better.

This is a vital,

Life-giving,

Life-supporting kind of a breath.

And just 10 or 20 minutes of it every day can really,

Really support us in finding that natural and so needed sense of balance in our lives.

Knowing that when we find balance on the inside,

We create the conditions for balance on the outside.

So just whenever you're ready,

You can begin to let that conscious belly breath go.

And let the breath return to regular.

Noticing how the breath feels,

Its texture,

Where in the body it's moving,

Where it is and also how you feel.

And if you'd like to give thanks to your body and your breath and the practice itself,

Join me in bringing your hands together in a preposition at the heart and bowing the head towards the hands.

Namaste.