Mindfulness of Breath

Read slowly and spaciously. 1-2 breaths after each line or comma, 2-3 breaths of pause between each paragraph.

Welcome. Take a comfortable seat, upright. Eyes open, or a soft gaze, low towards the earth...

Seal your lips and breathe in and out through your nose.

Choose a gentle, easy, and steady breath.

Take your time with each breath in, and spend at least as much time with each breath out.

Find a breath that reflects all the qualities of calm, patience, spaciousness and ease that we’d like to see in the mind.

Intention for this meditation, is the noticing of breath.
So we commit, right here right now, to holding the mind’s attention on breath.
And we hold not with a tightness or a grasping, but with spaciousness.

As if 25% of awareness is on breath.
25% of awareness on whether or not we’re still watching breath.
And the remaining 50% of our efforts, relaxed. Open.

We stay with this gentle, easy breath
noticing the breath in whatever way it chooses to speak to us.

The sound of our breath moving in and out through the nose.

Perhaps there’s a temperature to the breath.

A cool breath in, a warm breath out.

Open to noticing a smell or a taste to the breath.

And or noticing the felt sensation of breath.

How does breath feel as it moves in and out through the nose?

How does breath move and feel in our body?

Notice the movement of inhale expansion, exhale letting go.

Notice the lift of the chest with breath in,
the release of the shoulders, belly, thighs with breath out.

A sense of upward lifting, lightness with breath in.

A sense of grounding, rooting to earth with breath out.

Continue to allow the breath to draw your attention inward in whatever way it does.

Breath as the most intriguing thing you’ve ever seen.

Curious about breath, its movement, its energy.

Whatever arises, keep returning to intention, to the noticing of breath.

Again and again, allow breath to draw you in.

And all the while you remain, still open, still spacious, still free.