Transcription
Let's begin by taking a moment to allow your body to settle in a comfortable position. You can close your eyes or look downward just to limit visual distractions. See if you can soften around any areas of physical tightness or tension. Maybe that means dropping your shoulders, wiggling your fingers, loosening your jaw, softening the muscles around the eyes, and relaxing the belly.
Noticing where your body touches the ground or the chair. What does it feel like to have your body on the ground, the weight of gravity pulling you down to whatever you're touching? We're simply grounding our energy throughout our body, bringing awareness to simply what it feels like to be living in this body right now ... feeling the points of contact, just noticing any energies within the body and inviting a sense of ease and relaxation.
And so today's primary practice will be mindfulness of breathing, simply bringing awareness to what it feels like physically to be breathing, without judging anything to be good or bad, right or wrong, simply being curious about what it feels like to be inhaling, exhaling, and to have that pause in between the exhale and the inhale.
So with a soft belly and an open mind I invite you to inhale through the nose, and exhale through the mouth, noticing the pause in between the exhale, and then noticing the beginning of next inhale, and exhale, just relaxing the body.
Inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth. Inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth.
Breathing with a sense of ease, following its natural rhythm, noticing the air as it moves through the nostrils ... feeling the air as it goes out through the mouth ... noticing what it feels like to have the air moved through the nostrils ... and the mouth.
You might notice the belly rising and falling with each inhale and each exhale, breathing with a sense of ease and curiosity ... sensing into each breath ... feeling the movements, the temperatures ... staying with the sensations in each moment, the sense of kindness and ease ... breathing in and out, feeling it without judging anything to be good or bad, right or wrong.
Staying with this for as long as you'd like.
Integrated Practice:
Write for 2 full minutes on each prompt below. Once you’ve finished, take a minute to reread what you wrote and reflect.
Journaling Prompts:
1. What I want from this 28-day challenge is…
2. Some obstacles to me practicing every day could be…
This might be a crazy question but I have always breathed just through my nose when I meditate and I notice you talk about in through the nose and out through the mouth. Is that supposed to be better in any way?
Hi Mark! I think both have benefits. For myself, I find that breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth helps to ease my mind and create a sense of grounding. On the other hand, for a longer practice I prefer breathing exclusively through the nose as it feels more natural. I’ve also heard that we can take deeper breaths when breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth, so for short practices this flow of breathing could be helpful. Also, I’m going to share this link that someone shared in another community, which might be of interest to you: https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/2020/06/the-science-behind-why-this-is-the-safest-way-to-breathe-to-avoid-coronavirus.html