Follow The Breath Down - Regulate The Nervous System

05:20

05:20

Follow The Breath Down - Regulate The Nervous System

by Alex Cunningham

Type

guided

Activity

Meditation

Suitable for

Everyone

Plays

3

A short practice to tap into your breath in different parts of the body. We start at the nose and nostrils and work our way down until we're breathing deeply into our belly. The deeper and slower we breathe, the easier it is to reassure our brain and our nervous system that we're ok. The more often we breathe deeply and slowly, the more we can move past ok into a place of flow and thriving. Feel into the sensations created in your body as you breathe in the nose and nostrils, the upper chest, the rib cage and the belly.

Breathing Nervous System Relaxation Mindfulness Nervous System Regulation Breath Awareness Temperature Sensation Chest Breathing Rib Cage Breathing Belly Breathing Intentional Breathing

Meet your Teacher

Alex Cunningham

Surbiton, UK

Meet your Teacher

Alex Cunningham

Surbiton, UK

Transcript

Welcome to this short practice to regulate the nervous system using the breath. The more shallow, The faster our breath comes, The more our brain receives signals that something's not right, Something's out of sync, That it needs to be on alert for danger. And the deeper we breathe, The slower we breathe, The more the brain feels reassured and we can be a bit better at whatever we're doing because we're in a place of relative ease. So I'd like you to place your finger directly beneath your nose, A bit like you're pretending to have a moustache. Place your awareness at your nose and nostrils and see if you can feel the air as you breathe in and out. Because we have the finger there, You might feel the warmth of the air as you breathe out, As it floats past the finger. You might feel the coolness of the air as you breathe in and it's dragged past the finger. So now take away the finger and stay at the nose and nostrils. Do you sense that temperature shift, The fact that the outside air is usually cooler than the air that we breathe out? It might mean that you feel cooler air on the in-breath and warmer air on the out-breath. Next I'd like you to take a hand and rest it lightly on your upper chest. If you want to find your collarbones with your index finger and your thumb. Then let the hand rest beneath them. And just notice how the body beneath the hand is moving as you breathe. Sometimes there's an urge to breathe into the hand and you can do that for a couple of breaths, That's totally fine. But we're trying to tap into how we're breathing without changing it. So whatever your breath is doing at this moment, You'll feel how the hand receives the information. Because the upper body is moving, There's an expansion and a contraction, A rise and a fall. Next if you're able to, Placing both hands on your midsection, On the sides of your ribcage. You might be able to curl some of your fingers around to be on the front of your ribcage as well. And again, We're feeling how the body beneath the hands is moving as we breathe. Our ribcage, When we breathe in, It pushes up and out. When we breathe out, It drops back to its original position, Ready to start again. So what do you feel against your hands? How do you experience this rise and fall in the ribcage? There's no right or wrong, You are experiencing it just as it is for you. And we'll all be different. Then we drop our hand down, One or both, To our belly button or our navel. We might do a couple of intentional breaths into the hands here. Particularly if breathing this deeply has not been available for you recently. And after those intentional breaths, Just allowing the breath to settle back. Keeping your awareness deep in the belly. Feeling the gentle pressure changes against the hand. A little more pressure on the in-breath, A little less pressure on the out-breath. And by working our way down from the nose and nostrils into this few moments of belly breathing, We've done the work of reassuring our brain that in the most part, In this moment, As we breathe deeply, We're reasonably okay. That it can stand down from any alert systems that it might have been involved in. And allow you to operate a little bit more freely.