Breathe Deep, Live Fully

Discover how to harness the power of your breath to combat the stresses of daily life in our latest podcast, where I, Don Thompson, walk you through the profound practice of breath awareness meditation. This isn't just about taking a moment to breathe; it's about embracing a centuries-old technique that can lower cortisol levels and improve your overall well-being. We'll explore how simple it is to get started and the myriad of benefits that come from making this practice a part of your routine. Whether you're at the beginning of your mindfulness journey or are looking for a way to deepen your existing practice, this episode is your invitation to connect with the wisdom of your own breath.

Throughout our discussion, we emphasize the importance of proper guidance, particularly for those who may find the breathing process challenging. It's critical to address any difficulties with breathing under the tutelage of a qualified instructor. By revisiting the basics, even the most experienced meditators can discover a refreshing simplicity akin to the comfort of a well-worn pair of shoes. Join us for an enriching conversation that promises to elevate your meditative experience and bolster your resilience against life's distractions.

Music: Greg McKay - 'Breathe'.

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Note that Don Thompson is now available as a coach or mentor on an individual basis. To find out more, please go to his website www.nextpixprods.com, and use the 'contact' form to request additional information.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:27

Hi, Don Thompson here with another podcast for you today. What I'd like to do today is step us through a basic meditation on the breath. We'll call it a breath awareness meditation. It's going to be similar to the initial exercises that we did in this podcast related to mindfulness of the breath. I think it's a good thing to go back to a very simple, basic, foundational exercise such as the breath awareness meditation. Whether or not you're new to meditation, of course, it's good for that you, but also if you're more experienced, it's good to go back and just revisit these techniques, I believe, in order to revisit them and see if there's something that you can learn from them by just practicing them from a new perspective. The new perspective being is that perhaps you've been practicing for a while and if you go back to a meditation on the breath, you might notice something different. You might notice that your awareness has changed. So what I'll do is I'll step through a little bit of a rationale behind why we do this kind of meditation and then I'll step us through a method or a technique that we can use for this breath awareness meditation, and then I'll wind up with talking a little bit about the history of this type of meditation.

Speaker 1: 2:01

So the breath awareness meditation is really good for stress reduction and it's good to settle into a very relaxed state, and so a primary purpose for this kind of meditation is to reduce a sense of stress. And stress is really damaging to the body. I mean it really causes the body to release the chemical called cortisol, which has been shown to reduce brain and organ function, among many other dangerous effects. So cortisol is not always the best thing for the body, even though it might be good in some cases. For an emergency you might need that shot of cortisol. But to always live in this stressed out mentality is not a good thing, and modern society oftentimes has this living, you might say, in a sense of chronic stress. So this kind of meditation is particularly beneficial for anyone who's experiencing stress and if you're new to meditation, this is a great introductory meditation. And again, if you're an advanced practitioner and been practicing for a while, it's still good to go back and see well, how am I doing with this meditation relative to, perhaps, when I started it a few years ago? What's it like now? So let's go ahead and step through this method about how to go through this meditation. So what I like to do is invite you to take a comfortable seated position, if you can, and if you're standing, that's okay too, but probably preferably you'd want to be sitting and you don't have to be laying down. But you could be. But I would say sitting is probably best and you can close your eyes or gaze downward slightly and you want to bring your attention to your breathing process.

Speaker 1: 4:18

You want to simply notice that you are breathing. You don't want to attempt to change the way you're breathing in any way, you just want to breathe simply and normally. So let's just take a few moments and just notice the breath, how we're breathing in and out. So now we've spent a few moments watching the breath, noticing the breath. Let's think a little bit about, well, what does that mean? To notice the breath? So what I'd like you to consider is that you're feeling the breath in your body, with your body. You're not intellectualizing anything, you're not visualizing anything. You're simply noticing the actual visceral feeling of the breath in your body as you're breathing. And you might want to think of it as sort of a somatic awareness or a body awareness. And each time your attention wanders away from this act of breathing, from this somatic awareness, from this bodily awareness. Just gently bring yourself back to the breath. And the important thing here is, you know, don't judge yourself, don't be hard on yourself If you wander away from noticing the breath and start thinking about something else. Just gently bring yourself back to the breath and remember, you know, to really feel it in your body, to notice it the way it feels physically in your body the breath. So let's go ahead and do that for a few more moments. So now I invite you to go ahead and keep noticing the breath. I invite you to go ahead and keep noticing the breath, but as you're noticing the breath, just give part of your attention to my voice. I'm going to make a few points here.

Speaker 1: 7:25

If you want to go more deeply into this meditation of noticing the breath, you might consider the following you might notice how the air feels moving through your nostrils, on both the in-breath and the out-breath. You might notice how the air feels moving through your mouth and your throat. You may feel a sort of slightly raspy or ragged feeling as the air passes through your throat. This is normal and something you can just feel into. Allow it to happen. You might notice how the air feels as it fills up and empties your chest cavity. To feel how your rib cage rises slowly with each breath and gently deflates with each out-breath. You might notice how your back expands and it contracts with each breath and you can actually feel it shifting and changing as you breathe. You might notice how the belly expands outward with each in-breath and pulls inward with each in-breath. Allow your attention to fully enter the body sensation of the belly moving with each breath. Now you can allow your attention to cover your entire body at once as you breathe in and out. Closely notice all the sensations of the body as it breathes. Now you can repeat this sequence over again. Of course you might try five or ten minutes of this kind of meditation breath awareness meditation to start. You can work up to perhaps fifteen or twenty. Thirty minutes probably might be a nice goal to have Work up, you know, obviously working up to it.

Speaker 1: 9:56

Just a brief history about this breath awareness meditation. It's probably the oldest meditation technique and it's probably the most universally recognized and known. It can be found in Buddhism in what's called the Anapanasattisutta, which is a scripture which summarizes the Buddhist teaching on breath awareness meditation. So what Anapanasattisutta really means is breath awareness meditation. In Pali, the language Pali, and the Buddha had learned the basic technique from his own teachers. So that means that it existed prior to the Buddha and probably goes back, you know, far back into ancient history, into the Vedic schools, hindu schools.

Speaker 1: 10:54

Just a cautionary note if you have any trouble breathing, a course you want to work with a qualified instructor related to the physical aspect of your breathing, and you know, just be mindful of that and reach out to somebody if you need to, if you have any difficulty breathing. It's something to be aware of. You don't want to gloss it over, you don't want to ignore it, so I'll leave it at that. This is a wonderful technique. It's a wonderful meditation, this breath awareness meditation. I highly recommend it for anyone who's beginning their mindfulness meditation practice and again, as I mentioned, an advanced practitioner, someone who's been meditating for a while, might return to this and just see how it feels. It's like, you know, putting on an old pair of shoes. See how it feels. Maybe it's a good thing, maybe you want to stick with it for a while, perhaps give yourself a break from your other practices and move into this breath meditation. So, thanks again, I'll leave it at that and I look forward to the next podcast. Until then, I'll talk to you soon, bye, bye.