Welcome to your complete breathing practice.
This practice introduces you to four breathing spaces in the body.
Your abdomen,
Chest,
Ribcage,
And back body.
Improving breath coordination and awareness.
This practice helps you tune into the connection between your musculature and your breath.
To begin,
Make yourself comfortable.
Taking into consideration that this practice is best done while lying down.
Once you're comfortable,
Place one hand over your heart and one hand over your abdomen.
You can leave your eyes softly open or let your eyelids get heavy and close.
Take the first few moments here to just be and begin to notice the way your breath moves beneath your palms.
Explore a couple of breaths,
Just getting used to the natural flow of your inhales and exhales,
And how you can feel the movement of your breath beneath your hands.
Now,
Bring both hands to your chest with your fingertips resting near your collarbones.
Try to keep your abdomen relatively still and exaggerate the movement of your breath into your chest and collarbone area.
So as you inhale,
Your collarbones lift,
And as you exhale,
Your chest relaxes down.
Continue to breathe like this and try to bring all of your awareness and the volume of your breath to the area beneath your chest and collarbones.
That area expands and contracts with each breath cycle.
Explore a few more deep breaths,
Breathing into your chest and collarbones.
Now,
Move your hands to your lower abdomen,
Thumbs resting near your belly button and fingers angled down towards your pelvis.
Switch the movement of your breath so that the volume of your breath now expands and contracts in the lower abdomen while the chest remains relatively still.
As you inhale,
Let your diaphragm and lower belly expand outwards,
Abdomen filling like a balloon.
And as you exhale,
The muscles of your core engage gently to help press the air out,
Drawing your navel towards your spine.
Take a few breaths like that.
Inhale to expand your lower abdomen.
And exhale to draw your navel in.
Use the next few moments to notice the way your breath moves through the space of your lower torso.
Take full,
Deep inhales and slow,
Smooth exhales.
Another round or two like that,
Breathing into your belly.
Now,
Move your hands to your lower ribcage and the sides of your body so that your palms can feel the intercostal muscles and your fingertips rest near where the sides of the ribcage meet.
Start to realize the way your breath expands to the sides of your body,
Out to the right and left.
Your abdomen and chest remain relatively still now as you invite your breath to expand into your sides.
With your hands on your lower ribcage,
See if you can tune into the way your intercostal muscles,
The muscles between your ribs,
Expand and allow more space for air to fill.
As you exhale,
There's a gentle hugging in of those muscles toward your midline.
Notice your breath move through your sides and ribs for a few more cycles.
Now,
Release your arms and turn your palms face up to your sides.
From this space,
Bring awareness to the back of your body.
Notice your shoulder blades,
Upper back,
The back of your lungs,
Where your upper body connects with the floor,
Or whatever surface you're resting on.
As you inhale,
The space between your shoulder blades expands.
And as you exhale,
The shoulder blades draw in towards your heart.
Inhale and fill up the space across your back.
Exhale,
Soften and relax your back supported by the surface beneath it.
Take a few deep breaths like this with all of your focus and awareness on how the breath moves into your back body,
Letting the other breathing spaces remain relatively still.
Now you can choose if you'd like to keep your hands where they are or place them back on your torso.
For the next few rounds,
I invite you to experience your full,
Complete breath in a 360-degree expansion,
So that as you inhale,
Your entire torso expands outward,
And as you exhale,
The muscles around abdomen,
Sides,
Back,
And chest all gently engage to press the air out.
Your inhale is a full expansion,
Belly,
Ribs,
Chest,
Back.
And your exhale is a gentle engagement of those muscles pressing air out.
Notice that pattern for a few breaths here.
And as you breathe in this way,
Allow your eyes to relax and your body to soften.
Breathe and experience the full available expansion of each inhale and the gentle release of each exhale.
Taking a few moments here to continue to experience your full,
Complete breath.
Notice how this practice has affected your mind or body.
Perhaps welcoming in a new appreciation for the connection between your body,
Breath,
And the way your musculature affects your breathing.
Bring curiosity to the way your breath can create sensation and movement in the body.
And how having flexible and supple muscles around the lungs allows the breath to move more effectively.
Allow yourself to continue resting with awareness of your breath or choose to bring back little movements.
If you're ready to move into the next part of your day,
Re-emerge into the waking world by bringing a little bit of movement to your hands and toes.
Stretch and breathe until you can navigate your way back up.
Letting your eyes blink open.
Taking in what you can see and reorienting to your space.
Take a few more moments to sit restfully and check in with how you feel and any effects of this practice.
Every time you come back to this practice,
The experience of complete breathing will be slightly different.
So I invite you to revisit this practice regularly as a way to check in with your body and breath.
Thanks so much for joining me.
Take care.
