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3 Minute Breathing Space Practice:
Acknowledging
Sit or stand with a tall spine. Close your eyes or keep a soft half gaze. Feel the body grounded.
Begin to notice the nature of your current experience: begin to tune in with your bodily sensations, your thoughts and feelings.
Notice the texture of your experience without becoming drawn into it, or pushing it away. Become a quiet observer, just noticing.
Come gently back to this broad, soft awareness, whenever you notice you are becoming entangled with thoughts or worries.
Gathering
After a minute or so, gently redirect your attention to your breath – to each inbreath, and to each outbreath.
Again, just notice your breathing: its speed, texture, quality; and where you can feel the breath most alive in the body. Your breath is an anchor to bring you back to the present.
Keep coming back to the sensation of the breath, whenever you become aware of being distracted. Do this with kindness, without judgement.
Expanding
Expand the field of your awareness around your breathing, so that you become aware of your whole body: your posture, breath, facial expression.
Gently broaden out this awareness to notice the nature of your whole experience. Hold everything in your awareness with equanimity.
Do this practice at any time in the day, or night, when you feel you could benefit from feeling more grounded and relaxed.
Think of the Three Minute Breathing Space as a habit; to form a tool to help your find more space in your thoughts and emotions, and perhaps a greater lightness of being.
Video
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3 Minute Breathing Space (right click with your mouse, “save target as” and save file to your computer. Download will take a couple of minutes because of file size.)