Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Body-Mind: Exploring the Breath


My previous blog post took you through a brief body-mind awareness exercise.  It was an introduction to a deeper level of perception.    You may have noticed sensation, pain, shifts in breath, blocks, or any number of thoughts or feelings as you participated in the exercise.  Try the same exercise with another area of your body and notice what is similar, what is different.  Perhaps during the time since you first did the awareness exercise, your awareness of your feet spontaneously came to mind.  This is what happens when we start to look, listen, and observe.  We notice all kinds of things that previously went unnoticed.

 

Practicing body-mind awareness helps us “tune in” to our own experience, to our body, to our thoughts and feelings, and to our relationship to our surroundings.  It gives internal knowledge of our own experience.   This is wisdom in its purest sense – knowledge gained through experience.    And who better to be the expert of you, than you?

 

Let’s take a moment to tune in.  This time, as you breathe in, follow your breath into your body, into your lungs.  Does the breath enter through your nose?  Through your mouth?  Both? Is the exhalation the same?

 

Breathe in again and notice where your breath goes.  How far does the breath go in?  Is the pathway open and clear?  Or is the air restricted anywhere?  As you exhale, what do you notice? 

 

Allow yourself to just observe your breath in, and out for several cycles. 

Jot down your observations.  Remember to include sensations, thoughts, feelings, memories.

 

Next week, we’ll explore the use of intention with the body-mind.

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