Following The Breath Guide For Beginners

So for this meditation practice today we will be following the breath and we do this in two parts so we begin by following the breath and I'll guide you through what that is and what that means how we do that and then we will give you some options to make following the breath easier unless it's already easy for you so we begin by finding a comfortable position so something nice and upright nice and balanced we want comfort but we also want to be able to breathe completely and fully so think about how best is how is best going to support your ability to breathe so you don't want to be hunched over so neck and spine nice and long we'll just begin now by closing your eyes when you're ready just noticing what is here in this moment so just allowing everything in as we get used to bringing some stillness to the body just taking a little note of how you're feeling right now maybe noticing what your mind is doing without trying to restrict it or contain it in any way just allowing it to be and noticing with as little judgments or expectations as possible and then we're going to give our meditation practice a focus so the focus of the practice today is going to be following the breath so the focus is the breath and the first step to that is to discover what it is to breathe so how do you know that you are breathing so breathing is something that we do all day every day conscious and unconscious so just moving into a more conscious state with the breath maybe noticing your stomach as it rises and falls on the inhale and exhale maybe notice it noticing the temperature of your breath maybe in the passages of your nostrils or your mouth if you're breathing through your mouth just seeing what you need with your breath right now so maybe you need to take a few deep sighs so bigger in-breath and an audible out-breath so what do we mean when we talk about following the breath following the breath is just this what we're doing right now noticing the sensation of breathing allowing ourselves to follow that seeing how it changes in each moment what stage the breath is at in each moment being present with it and using the breath as a portal to the present moment allowing everything else to be background noise in the hope that it will become quieter and quieter and knowing that if anything does get loud so maybe the thoughts get loud and sticky that's okay everything can still be there we just bring ourselves back to the breath whenever we notice we've been distracted if anything draws our focus away from the meditation as soon as we notice that's happened we bring ourselves back this is the practice you might notice that as we sit naturally the breath will become lower and slower you can place your hands on your stomach or maybe one hand on your stomach and one on the chest just to connect even further so the breath is always with us no matter what we do no matter what's happening when it's the biggest tool we have to alter our experience so if we can learn to use the breath as our portal to presence it doesn't matter whether we have internet connection it doesn't matter whether we're in a stressful environment it doesn't matter what's happening who's with us we have something that we can tap into to support us to be mindful be present and experience the moment exactly as it is so we're not trying to improve our experience or get anything from following the breath not trying to change it even if we're in a difficult situation or we're in a stressful mindset following the breath allows us to be with it to not resist it and by giving us the focus of the breath we draw ourselves away from the ruminations and worries about the past and the future and if we can kind of get away get some respite from those worries then everything seems just that little bit lighter in the present moment so even if the present moment is difficult it will be more difficult with worries on top of that so worries about the past worries about the future as well as what's happening so we can get some distance from that and just lighten the load a little and by experiencing what is we are fostering mindfulness cultivating a practice that helps us become more mindful in every moment more the more we do this the more comfortable we become with the uncomfortable the lighter life feels and if you have a particularly busy mind we can keep focus by adding in counting so we can begin to count the breaths so what this means is to use your internal voice and using the numbers one to ten so it'd be one on the in-breath two on the out-breath and so on until the we reach the count of ten and if we lose track we simply start back at ten doesn't matter and if we go on to our kind of autopilot mode and go past the count of ten we just note that whenever it we realize and bring ourselves back to number one so the key to this practice is not trying to let our force our breath to fit our count we're allowing the breath to arise first and then we are using our numbers to count those breaths as they come in the pattern whichever pattern comes up so this gives our mind a job helps it to stay focused on following the breath and if you rarely experience anything else being in the spotlight other than your faults this can be a really nice way to get a little bit of a break the more you practice this the easier it becomes and if you'd like to stay with this practice but try something just very slightly different we can use the rising and falling so these two words using our internal voice once again so it would be saying the word rising on the in-breath and falling on the out-breath but if the counting was working for you you can stick with that so rising on the in-breath falling on the out-breath we can use the out-breath as a aid to relaxation so on each out-breath just releasing whatever you can allowing parts of your body to go floppy allowing your hands to just let go of any contraction there might be any tension allowing the shoulders to drop allowing your face muscles to melt and soften so knowing that as we practice the following the breath the counting the breaths the rising and falling whichever one most resonates with you and you can try different ones at different times that everything else can still be there so we can have sounds as part of our experience and we can use those sounds as reminders to focus so each time we become engaged with a sound or we notice a sound we can use that as a reminder to follow the breath so it doesn't need to be a distraction we can reframe that we can see our thoughts as sounds in exactly the same way so that our relationship with thoughts doesn't become tricky it doesn't become a fight we're okay with it it doesn't interfere with our practice it becomes part of it we can also allow the different senses to be part of our practice too in any practice that we do so allowing ourselves to taste and smell allowing the sensation of touch to be felt so maybe you have the sensation of your hands maybe your fingertips touching maybe the feeling of the clothes against your body or the furniture against your bum whatever it is that you can feel that can be part of this too so that's all there but the focus is on the breath so we'll practice this for a few more moments rising on the in breath and falling on the out breath at your own pace so as we begin to get ready for whatever is next in line for us today we can choose to stay here with this or we can begin to bring some movement to our body now so maybe wiggling your fingers your toes swaying your hips moving your neck whatever feels good beginning to notice the space that you're in even with your eyes closed so where are the windows where are the doors if there are any sensation of the floor the gravity pulling you down the gravity pulling you down when you're ready just begin now to gently open your eyes