In my last post I invited you to watch your breathing and see if you learned anything, especially about how you were feeling.
Today I’d like to follow this theme a little further.
I’d like to talk about setting time aside to watch your breathing.
This is one kind of meditation – but it doesn’t have anything religious about it. It is meditation as a way of learning about ourselves and being healthier (by reducing the stress in our lives).
The purpose of this time is to watch the breath. Not to change it in any way at all.
To do this it is easiest if we have a straight spine – in this way gravity goes through us and into the ground so that we don’t get tired so quickly. (It would be possible to do this lying down as long as you don’t have any back problems, but this can lead to falling asleep). So the most usual position is sitting. If you are like me you will do this in a chair. If you are more flexible you can sit on the floor with your legs crossed.
How long to do this for? A good amount of time to aim for is twenty minutes. This seems to be the time it takes for our bodies to get into a more relaxed state. It is also short enough that we should be able to fit it in somewhere during the course of our day. However, as Dan Millman has said:
a little of something is better than a whole lot of nothing.
Try it for a couple of minutes and see if you like it. If so do it for a bit longer. Once this becomes a habit that is structured into our lives we will find that we are often calmer and less stressed throughout the day.
If your like me, your mind will wander. You may well spend more time thinking about other things than watching your breath. When you realise you are thinking about something else just come back to watching your breathing (you may like to keep a pad and pencil and make a note if it was something important.)
It is surprising but something as simple as watching our breathing can have a big effect. We can end up feeling a lot calmer throughout our day. Try it and let me know how you like it. I’ve found just watching my breath to be very helpful.
If you would like to read more about this a very readable book is Herbert Benson’s The Relaxation Response.
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