Breath Awareness Meditation

Hello,

My name's Sophie and welcome to this breath awareness meditation.

When you've found your comfortable seat,

You could take a moment here to settle the body and then if you feel comfortable,

You could gently start to close your eyes.

And if closing your eyes doesn't feel good,

You can just lower your gaze and you could just allow the muscles of the eyes to become soft.

Notice the connection of your hip bones to whatever it is that you're sat on.

Feeling tall in the spine,

From the sit bones to the crown of the head,

Imagining a piece of string from the crown of your head reaching all the way to the sky,

Allowing you to grow that little bit taller.

Strong in the spine and feeling nice and steady,

But not rigid at all,

Not stiff.

We can soften through the shoulders,

Relax the jaw,

Peel the tongue away from the roof of the mouth,

Soften your cheeks of your face,

Muscles around your eyes and your forehead.

And take a moment to bring a mental scan to your physical body and just notice if you feel you're holding onto tension anywhere or any sort of tightness and just gently start to release these areas and soften.

Connect the palms of the hands together and then start to rub the hands and when you feel this warmth here in the palms of the hands,

Allow the hands to gently place at the heart centre,

Either one hand on top of the other or maybe one hand slightly below the other.

And just notice here this warmth,

This energy.

Maybe notice a feeling of physical awareness for your body,

Maybe notice a feeling of presence.

And with your hands here placed at your heart centre,

We're going to take three deep breaths together.

So let's take a deep inhale through the nose,

Open the mouth and exhale softly with the sigh.

Twice more just like that.

Inhale through the nose,

Feel the front of the body,

Open the mouth and exhale.

And again,

Deep inhale through the nose,

Exhale out the mouth,

Release,

Let go.

Breathing naturally now in and out through the nose and we'll gently place our hands either onto our knees or onto our thighs.

Notice a slight pressure here from the hands.

Notice the warmth,

Maybe notice any tingling,

Pulsing,

Vibrating from the hands.

Just notice,

Just become aware.

Start to bring your awareness now to the natural rhythm of your breath.

So breathing in and out through the nose if that feels okay for you.

And take a moment to check in with the quality of your breath.

Whereabout in your body you feel the breath coming from.

Parts of your body you feel move when you breathe.

And without changing the breath at all,

Without manipulating the breath,

Just really start to become the observer here.

And just notice each and every breath.

Maybe noticing for any sticky parts of the breath,

Any parts of the breath that feel a little stagnant.

And you may notice just by bringing your conscious awareness to your breathing,

Maybe you start to notice the breath slow down a little.

There's no forcing,

There's no straining.

Just maybe you notice this.

Maybe you notice the breath start to flow a little easier.

Start to become a little more fluid.

Take a moment to bring your awareness to the tip of your nose.

Maybe you start to notice a slight coolness around the tip of the nose as you inhale.

Maybe a slight warmth around the tip of the nose as you exhale.

Maybe noticing on the inhale the area around the back of the throat,

This spaciousness here.

Maybe again a slight coolness.

Allow the breath now to flow down the back of the throat and eventually end up at the abdominals,

The belly.

Maybe you notice a slight rise or expansion of the belly as you inhale and a slight contraction or pulling back of the lower abdomen as you exhale.

You can just keep your awareness here for a moment.

Now see if you can start to follow with your focus,

With your awareness,

The entire journey of the breath.

From the tip of the nose,

The back of the throat,

Eventually ending at the lower abdomen as the belly rises and expands.

And then follow that journey all the way back again on the exhale,

Ending at the tip of the nose.

And in your own way,

Just explore every breath.

And when your mind starts to wonder,

Which of course it will,

That's what the mind is designed to do,

Then just start to bring your awareness back to your breath.

The breath becomes this one pointed focus,

This tool for our awareness to latch onto.

With your full awareness on your breath,

Maybe you could start to allow the breath to become even more fluid now.

And with your conscious awareness anchored on your breath,

Take a moment to notice the slight pause at the end of each inhale and the slight pause at the end of each exhale.

And this may just be a fraction of a second,

But just see if you can bring your mind to those slight pauses.

And then seeing if you can allow the breath to flow from the inhale into the pause at the end of the inhale,

Continuously flowing out through to the exhale,

Then noticing the slight pause at the end of the exhale.

And again,

Breathing in,

So noticing this lovely,

Fluid,

Flowing breath.

The inhale rolling into that slight pause and then rolling back into the exhale.

Full awareness anchored to the breath.

And again,

When the mind wanders,

Keep on bringing it back to the breath.

And take a moment now to bring your awareness to your heart centre,

Where you placed your hands at the beginning of the practice.

Just mentally start to bring your awareness here and then let go of any efforts of the breath.

Any effort to the breathing,

Just allow that to disappear now,

But keep your awareness here at your heart centre.

And just start to bathe into this spacious awareness here.

This effortless sense of freedom,

Openness.

Keeping your awareness here at the heart centre,

Just allow yourself to fully absorb into this moment.

And then you can start to bring your awareness back to your breathing.

The inhale and the exhale.

Maybe start to deepen your breath a little more now.

Starting to become aware of your physical body sat here.

Notice the hands placed on the legs.

Notice your sit bones connected to the earth and feeling this sense of groundedness.

Bring your palms together at your heart,

Anjali Mudra.

And let's end our practice with three deep breaths.

So full circle from where we began.

Let's deeply inhale through the nose.

Open the mouth and exhale.

Again,

Deep inhale.

Exhale.

Once more,

Deeply inhale.

Feel the front of the body.

Open mouth and exhale.

Bow your head to your heart.

And take a moment here to send gratitude,

Some love and appreciation to yourself.

You can slowly start to blink the eyes open and bring the head all the way back to centre.

Namaste.

Namaste.

Namaste.

Namaste.