You Are Breath Meditation

Welcome!

This guided meditation and briefing practice was offered by René Sioux on August 5th for Somatic Space.

Somatic Space is a weekly embodied astrology class where we practice attuning through our bodies with current astrological influences.

René offered this practice as a way to return to presence anytime and especially over the Mercury retrograde cycle that extends between August 4 to 28.

For more information on René's teaching or Somatic Space please visit embodiedastrology.

Com slash somatic dash space.

For this meditation please find yourself in a comfortable position where you can breathe easily.

So settling into your space let's all just take a moment and notice where we are arriving in our spaces and if this is a very familiar space that you find yourself in today,

Noticing what's familiar almost like you're greeting an old friend,

Hello space.

If this is a new space for you or you're noticing new qualities of the space allowing yourself to take in that information and as you orient and arrive allowing your eyes to turn in many different directions taking your gaze and your face back over each shoulder and allowing your shoulders and your hips and your spine to move a little bit as well as you orient and eventually when you've looked around a couple of times turn your gaze to your own body and in any way that resonates for you or makes sense in this moment you might greet your body like oh wow there you are.

This has been your home your whole life and so of course a lot is very familiar you might notice what feels familiar but we're also changing every moment and every day and so maybe there's some new information to notice and once you've greeted your body if it feels comfortable to close your eyes let your eyes close if you prefer to keep your eyes open then turn your gaze away from the computer and let your eyes rest somewhere a little bit lower than kind of the height of your head maybe towards the floor a couple feet in front of you and whether our eyes are open or closed let's take a moment just to relax the eyeballs inviting any forward moving energy in our faces to rest back into our skulls and heads and take a moment now to greet your breath just by tuning your attention towards your breath and notice if there's a readiness to change your breath as you pay attention to it I want to invite you just to let your breath be every breath is its own life its own expression and just like you might let your eyes travel around a space noticing what's in the space taking information and openly you can also greet your breath noticing how each breath arrives where does the inhale begin noticing the shape and the texture of your breath and as you notice your breath let's just play a little bit with greeting the breath and in the playfulness and in the greeting letting your imagination bring life force to this breath that you're inhaling as the inhale arrives in your body as it moves through as the exhale releases let me just play with the idea that life energy is dancing with you playing with the idea of relationship the substance material of your body in relationship with the substance and the movement of life and as breath flows through and with your body remembering that your whole body is breathing so as your lungs take in this air and your heart collaborates with your lungs to move oxygen into your blood delivering it to every tissue and every cell your whole body is breathing let your consciousness travel and drift through your whole body noticing what and where you notice the back of a shoulder,

The curve of a toe,

This part or that part and wherever your consciousness rests playing with remembering that your whole body is breathing and this part is breathing too noticing what happens as you play and remember that your parts are breathing does anything happen?

Does sensation shift?

Do you experience a corresponding quality like color or sound or feeling?

Feeling tone and as you play and remember and let your consciousness trace through your body noticing how every part of your body is breathing I'm going to offer a prompt for you to continue playing with and when I say these words you don't need to believe them right away you don't need to accept them as true I want to invite you just to hold them as a possibility and let your consciousness work with them and be a question it could even be a debate hold them as a possibility you are breath your beingness your essence your body yourself you are breath experiment with saying those words to yourself or feeling them using the first person I am breath and let's try not to be in our heads about it but stay in our bodies continuing to breathe and notice how your breath moves your lungs expand and the movement of your lungs ripples through into your tissues your muscles your organs your skin you can feel your pulse tips of your fingers and toes you might be able to feel your breath in the curve of your elbow the curve of your elbow or the back of your knee the top of your head and wherever you can feel breath wherever you can feel pulse just experiment just play with identifying with that breath letting your elbow and your knee and your head and your organs and your back and your skin all say together I am breath and as you play with you just trying it on you don't have to fully believe just playing with the idea that you are breath letting your imagination remember that just like breath your life in its totality and all of its parts and movements is like breath just like breath our bodies begin somewhere they grow they take up space they reach fullness they offer they give back they offer they give back and eventually they dissolve they depart as you breathe into your tissues as you notice breath moving through different parts of your body just playing with the idea that you are breath and that all these parts of your body just like a breath they're arriving they're growing they're expressing they're expanding they're giving back they're becoming part of the world and the environment and at some point they'll cease to be as you breathe and play with the idea that you are breath maybe even tuning in with the sensation of your breath as if it was the first breath you've ever breathed and your cells remember what it was like the first time you took a breath as an individuated body here on planet earth what happens to the quality and the awareness of your breath when you imagine that this breath is the first breath this breath is new you've never experienced this breath before allowing our breaths to know themselves as waves in a large sea of breath every breath is a new breath this breath has not been breathed before in exactly this shape in exactly this place or time or body you're noticing where your breath begins allowing yourself to explore be present with the life of this breath observing how this breath arrives in your body this wave on the sea of breath and as you exhale the exhaling breath moves back into the sea noticing how each breath takes its own shape and its own form each breath is a life of its own every breath arising and returning from and back to the sea of breath the breath that's all around you what would it be like to bring so much presence into a breath that it might be your last breath if you knew that this was the last breath that this body would breathe how much presence would you bring to it where's the spot where this breath becomes the collective breath can you feel the point where the exhale is no longer a part of your body can you feel the spot where the inhalation begins again playing with the idea that you are breath as you breathe and as you notice the place where the inhale begins the unique shape of this breath how it moves how it feels the point where the exhaling breath is no longer contained inside your body and returns to the breath that's all around you as you feel your breath playing with the idea that you are breath playing with the idea that your life your body is your breath your beingness is a breath of creation just like an inhale your body and your beingness started somewhere like a wave in the ocean your life your body your beingness took form from so much so many things had to come together for you to exist just like this breath that you're breathing right now totally unique another breath will never be exactly the same your life your body your beingness is taking shape spreading out breathing with all that it's part of and just like this breath that you're breathing right now your life your body your beingness will one day become part of the collective the everything the big ocean of life again and in these next couple of breaths let's imagine use our imaginations to breathe with it all breathe with it all and as you breathe you're breathing with the evolution of microbial beings who became single-celled organisms multi-celled organisms beings that breathed underwater grew limbs found their way onto the shore learned to crawl and creep and then walk you're breathing with millions of years of evolution you're breathing the residue of life which is also its ongoing creative stuff we're breathing together in this moment in time noticing how those words that I just spoke are already in the past the breath that you just exhaled has already come and gone the future is unfolding right now greeting us right at the tips of our noses the touch of our lips as you breathe just playing with the idea that you are breath and that breath is all around you as you're ready bring your hands together and rub your palms and then turn your hands to your face and let's massage our faces a little bit rubbing your hands gently around your forehead and your eyes up and down over the bridge of your nose smoothing out your forehead from the inner eyebrows to the outer brow brushing across your cheekbones rubbing your temples a little bit and rubbing the space around your ears letting your hands find your scalp giving yourself a little bit of a scalp massage letting your hands find the back of your neck where it meets the bottom of your head right up underneath the curve of your skull making little circles rubbing the muscles there as you do relax your jaw let your tongue and your lower teeth release release and let's squeeze down the back of the neck with our hands finding the tops of our shoulders and giving them some good squeezing and letting the hands come to the front and let's rub a little bit underneath the collarbones using your fingers to make little circles right underneath your collarbones from the inner collarbones to the outer collarbones and then we'll tap down the front of the breastbone take a breath in as you do and let some sound out on your side and then gently just stroke down the front of your neck and let's place one hand over the other in front of the heart and make some circles over the sternum as you make these circles and rub your chest breathe into your heart you might smile down into the organ of your heart just acknowledging it's a very important role in your breath and in your life giving thanks to this incredible organ and then with one hand rub across that side of your chest all the way over your chest and breast tissue over the side of your ribs see if you can send some breaths down into this side lung and then we'll find the shoulder on that side and squeeze the shoulder squeeze down the upper arm like you're squeezing out a sponge squeeze all the way down to your lower arm pull out from your fingertips and then let's stroke down the length of the arm just brushing off the skin and rub up the inseam of the arm back to the armpit back to the chest back of the lungs two hands together rubbing back to the heart rubbing back to the heart and then we'll take the other side rubbing across the chest and breast tissue breathing into this side of the lung rubbing down as far as your ribs go and then up over your shoulder and we'll squeeze the muscle tissues up around the shoulder down the arm all the way down through the lower arm and pulling out the fingertips and then brushing off the arm oh rubbing up the inseam of the arm back to the armpit back to the armpit getting both hands rubbing the back of the ribs back to the chest back to the heart okay and then pausing letting the hands face the heart again sending an inner smile down into the heart space and as you're ready allowing the eyes to open if they haven't been open so far and as your eyes open and maybe as they return to the screen continuing to breathe continuing to notice the sensation the subtle qualities of your breath and as your eyes take in the light and the shapes that are here play with the idea that you are surrounded by breath in many forms even your computer or your device might just be a breath anything that your eyes land on letting your imagination remember that it hasn't always looked like this whatever it is that you're doing it's not always going to look like this letting your imagination remember that it hasn't always looked like this whatever it is that you're looking at this form like your body like any breath was pulled out of everything created from substances that somehow came from everywhere every form like every breath is a unique composition some substances found in higher quality or quantity than others and no form is final any shape that you see is a shape in transition in transition with your hands over your heart and just directing a little bit of gratitude and appreciation to your heart you might try and sense imagine or feel into the unique essence that you are and from that essence greet whatever whoever it is that you might be seeing notice if the forms that you see can also be essence unique composition materials coming together for actually a relatively short amount of time play with reading from your heart extending some amount of curiosity or appreciation for the essence that you are witnessing play with the idea that you're breathing together whoever whatever it is that you're looking at that just like you just like your body is slowly becoming part of the everything again its molecules and atoms are slowly letting go becoming part of the collective breath that you are breathing that is breathing you