Resources & Inspiration
Try this meditation:
GETTING TO KNOW THE BREATH
Begin this meditation by checking your posture. Whether sitting in a chair or on a meditation cushion, you are sitting upright, allowing the normal curve of your spine to remain… relaxing your shoulders… your abdomen… hands on your knees or held lightly in your lap… your eyes may be closed… or open with a soft, unfocused gaze.
Beginning to bring your attention to your breath…just begin by breathing in, and as you exhale count “1”,… breathing in again, and with the exhale counting “ 2”… and continuing with this counting of the breath until you reach 10… then starting over at “1” and repeating again 1-10 for several cycles… This practice of counting the breath gives you a tool for settling your mind and body at the beginning of the meditation period…when your mind wanders, as it will, simply bringing your attention back to your practice of counting the breath…
After a few moments, when you begin to feel a bit settled… allowing your attention to move to the place where the air enters your nose… allowing yourself to focus on that small point of contact where the air passes into the body… feeling the air move past the tip of the nose on the inbreath… and the outbreath…
… the effort is in holding the attention at the tip of the nose throughout the full cycle of the breath… noticing the entire inbreath passing the tip of the nose… noticing the entire outbreath passing the tip of the nose… continuing in this way over and over again, and when your mind wanders, simply acknowledging that it has wandered, and gently bringing your attention back to the breath at the tip of the nose
….allowing yourself to observe the quality of the breath… noticing a long breath, noticing a short breath… not doing anything to control the breath….just allowing your breath to breathe itself… just observing, not thinking about your breath, or wondering why you are breathing a deep breath or a shallow breath… simply observing the quality of your breath as it passes the tip of your nose…
… noticing the top of the breath at the end of the inhale…the slight gap between taking in this breath and letting go of the breath…now noticing the turning of the breath from inhale to exhale… (allow several breaths to observe)… noticing the bottom of the breath… the slight gap between the end of this breath and the beginning of the next breath…
Noticing the turning of the breath, from exhale to inhale… continuing to notice the turning of the breath…