This entry was posted on Apr 30, 2025 by Charlotte Bell.
We’ve all seen idealized photos of meditation. Maybe it’s a younger lady on a abandoned seashore, palms in a meditation-friendly mudra, having fun with a sundown. Or perhaps it’s a picture just like the one on the high of this submit—an individual with serene countenance, fingering mala beads in deep contemplation. It’s true that meditation may be peaceable. However typically, it’s marked by cascading ideas and recollections, uncooked feelings and/or bodily discomfort. It’s essential to do not forget that in mindfulness follow, the latter expertise doesn’t imply you’re doing one thing incorrect. These ideas, recollections, feelings and discomforts are merely what’s current. They’re, in a really actual sense, what there’s to be conscious of. However when these experiences turn into overwhelming, mindfulness has an answer: a breath consciousness follow designed to calm the physique and thoughts.
After I train mindfulness programs, many new meditators doubt their means to follow. They’ll say, “Each time I sit all the way down to meditate, my thoughts goes loopy. My pondering amps up greater than ever.” To that, I inform them that they’re not pondering extra after they meditate; they’re as a substitute observing for the primary time what’s been taking place of their minds all alongside. I clarify that mindfulness just isn’t about stopping your ideas. It’s about coping with your ideas in a skillful approach.
We may be conscious of the course of of pondering, as a substitute of getting caught up within the content material of our tales, recollections, worries and dramas. Mindfulness of pondering is definitely one of many 4 foundations of mindfulness. However typically, we have to sluggish the method down in order that we may be with the pondering course of with extra equanimity. That’s the place the breath consciousness follow I’m about to explain may be invaluable.
Breath Consciousness to the Rescue
On an 18-day retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Heart just a few years in the past, this breath consciousness approach helped me navigate what I can solely describe as a “huge reminiscence dump.” Beginning within the wee hours of the morning one evening, recollections started flowing, utterly uncontrolled, at a tempo I didn’t assume potential. Life occasions I hadn’t considered in a long time had been flashing by my consciousness nonstop, and at warp pace. None of it was traumatic, but it surely grew to become exhausting after some time.
After a number of hours of experiencing this reminiscence dump, I remembered a breath consciousness follow that I believed would possibly have the ability to sluggish issues down a bit. It’s a quite simple follow that I’d heard on an instruction CD by creator/Perception Meditation trainer Joseph Goldstein. After only a few minutes of follow, the entire rapid-fire film slowed down, and I felt a deep sense of calm.
Tips on how to Apply Calming Breath Consciousness
- Collect your props: a Meditation Cushion and Zabuton. In case you don’t have a Zabuton, you may place your Meditation Cushion on high of a pair folded Yoga Blankets for additional padding below your knees or ankles.
- Chill out into your sitting place and tune into your respiratory. Discover the place you are feeling your breath most clearly—nostrils, chest or stomach—and let your consideration relaxation there. Really feel the method of respiratory, noting every inhalation and exhalation.
- Now, as you inhale, make a delicate suggestion to calm the physique and calm the thoughts. Do the identical in your subsequent exhalation. After I follow this, I merely say to myself “calm” every time I inhale and “calm” every time I exhale.
- Really feel your physique/thoughts receiving this suggestion with every inhalation and exhalation.
- Apply this so long as you want. You possibly can follow for just a few rounds originally of your meditation, or you may follow it for your complete length.
This breath consciousness follow could appear too easy to be efficient, however I’ve discovered it to be a necessary software in my meditation toolbox. You possibly can follow it any time—whenever you’re feeling impatient whereas sitting at a stoplight, whenever you’re within the midst of a difficult scenario, whenever you’re feeling stress or anxiousness, whenever you’re mendacity awake at evening, and naturally, when your thoughts is wandering throughout meditation. You possibly can follow it originally or finish of your yoga follow. It’s an particularly good solution to start your Savasana (Ultimate Leisure).
About Charlotte Bell
Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and commenced educating in 1986. Charlotte is the creator of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Life: A Information for On a regular basis Apply and Yoga for Meditators, each revealed by Rodmell Press. Her third guide is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Defending the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a month-to-month column for CATALYST Journal and serves as editor for Yoga U On-line. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte performs oboe and English horn within the Salt Lake Symphony and folks sextet Pink Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards.
