A shared practice
One Complete Cycle of Breath
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Created bySean Fargo
Day 1 of Sean's original 28-day mindfulness series — recorded in his own voice.
In Sean Fargo’s own voice7 min
Read along — the full script
Mindfulnessexercises.com. Your 28-day mindfulness challenge. Day one, one complete cycle of breath. With the vast majority of mindfulness practices, it's really useful to start by finding a posture that feels relaxed and alert at the same time, by taking a few moments just to settle the body, to connect with the sense of breathing.
Just notice what it feels like to be where you are in this moment. You can either be standing, sitting, or lying down. But the point is really just to bring non-judgmental awareness to your experience, so sensing into what it feels like to be in your body, sensing into the heart and the emotions of the body, as well as the sensations in your head.
So let's take a moment now to relax, connect with the breath. Just notice what it feels like to be touching the ground or your chair. And you can either close your eyes or look downward just to limit visual distractions. And sensing into the belly as you breathe, you might notice the rise and fall of your belly with each inhale and exhale.
Some people like putting a hand on the belly just to get attuned to the natural rhythm of the breath. Allowing your shoulders to drop and the muscles of the face and jaw to relax and loosen. And some people like taking a big, deep breath in the beginning, in through the nose and out through the mouth.
Just feeling more ease as you breathe in and out. Just connecting with the sensations of the body. Allowing any tightness to relax as you breathe natural breaths in and out. Just connecting with where you are, however you're feeling, without a sense of right or wrong, good or bad.
We're simply noticing. Noticing the sensations of the body and the mind for what they are, nothing more, nothing less. Just acknowledging our experience. No right or wrong. Just simply opening to your experience and just noticing.
One of the foundational practices of mindfulness is mindfulness of breathing, just noticing what it feels like to be breathing with each inhale, each exhale, and the pause in between the exhale and the inhale. So I invite you in this practice to bring awareness to the inhale. Many people like to breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth, but it's up to you on how you'd like to do it.
But bring awareness to the sensations of the inhale as you breathe in, and bring awareness to the exhale as you breathe out. Just feeling it, not thinking about it, just feeling it with the body, the visceral sensations of breathing. So bringing awareness to the senses as you breathe.
What does it feel like to breathe? So we're not forcing a breath to be a certain way. We're not trying to get it to be one way or the other. We're just simply noticing. And can you stay aware of one full cycle of breath? Breathing in and out, what does it feel like?
Excellent. So this practice of mindful breathing is something very simple and something that we can do anytime, anywhere. We can bring mindfulness to our breath as we're traveling to work, as we're going to sleep, as we're taking a shower, as we cook our dinner.
We can bring it anywhere. So it's a very useful mindfulness practice to connect with the body and the sensations of breathing, feeling grounded, and feeling a sense of alertness for what's actually happening in each moment without judgment. So we'll be building on this practice with a variety of useful mindfulness tools over the coming weeks.
Thank you.
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