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Guided Meditation: The Full Breath Cycle

Greetings. Here we are, a group of people to sit and meditate together. To sit and have a heightened awareness to our present moment experience as it's being experienced, as it's being known now. There's a tendency to de-emphasize retrospective thinking, meaning that we don't really need to think too much about what just happened in the past, even if it was just two seconds ago. In that sense, meditation is quite forgiving. It's also quite freeing from us needing to judge, consider, or be troubled by what has just passed, what has just happened. If you find yourself having been distracted and involved in thought, very quickly, if you come back to your breathing, that is in the past. The art of not being concerned about what just passed, except to the degree to encourage you, to inspire you to try to be more present now for what's happening.

So, to take a meditation posture and to spend a little bit of time moving and adjusting your posture so that you are more comfortable, and also so the posture expresses a little bit of alertness. Maybe you twist a little bit or sway back and forth, forward and backwards. I like forward and backwards because it helps, if I bring the attention to the sitting bones, to try to be balanced on the weight on the sitting bones.

Then, let your body be still. In the stillness, feel a stillness in your body. It might not be still everywhere, but feel what is still, quiet, here in this body. Perhaps you can relax the muscles of the body. When the butt muscles are tense, it tends to not allow us to feel the stillness that's possible. When the muscles are relaxed, there tends to be more nourishing stillness. Perhaps feel the weight of your arms, feel the weight of your legs, feel the weight of your body resting against the surface that's holding it upright, or holding it. Allow yourself to rest or to relax with the weight of the body.

Then, within the stillness of the body, whatever stillness there might be, notice what moves in your body as you breathe. Notice what moves most prominently, the prominent places of breathing moving, and also notice the subtle places of movement. As you inhale, perhaps being aware of the expansion of the torso. As you exhale, the contraction coming back together.

There's no need for retrospective thinking, just a need to feel the actual experience of breathing as it is. There are a lot of different sensations that come into play as you're breathing. In the inhale, there's movement upward, outward expansion. Beginning of the inhale, there might be even a sense of release. Something gets released as the movement begins. As the expansion continues, breathing in continues. There might be a lifting of the chest or the diaphragm, or pushing down into the belly. You might even feel a stretching or a tautness at the top of the inhale.

The exhale can begin with a release. That sense of release might continue for some people through the whole exhale. At the end of the exhale, there might be a fading away of the release. Or you might feel a little bit of the work of the diaphragm as it pushes the air out of the lungs.

The experience the body has of breathing is a physical experience of contact. In Buddhist terms, we will call it touch^[1]. The kind of physical touching of this movement, the sensations of your body against the nerves that are in those parts of the body. You might see it as a gentle experience of massage from the inside out. As you would maybe receive a massage, receive the touch, receive the sensations of the body breathing, and the rhythm: breathing in and breathing out.

If you're able to stay with a continuous inhale and exhale, to ride the wave of inhale and the wave of exhale, see if you can notice where in that cycle of breathing in and out your mind tends to wander off in thought. For some people, the end of the exhale is quite common. For some people, it's the beginning of the inhale or the end of the inhale. For some people, it's in the gap between the end of the exhale and the beginning of the inhale, or if there's a gap at the end of the inhale and the beginning of the exhale.

If we think of breathing as a circle, where in the circle does the mind tend to wander off? If you notice there's a pattern to how you wander off in that circle of breathing, gently bring a little more alertness to that phase of the process. As you approach the place where you wander off, remember to be a little bit more attentive so you don't wander off. But don't try too hard. It's okay to wander off, in the sense that it's important to learn how to begin again, how to return to the breathing in a harmonious, peaceful way that simply begins again and again with some dedication that is maybe close to love. A loving of breathing, loving of self breathing.

If you can notice where in the cycle of breathing you tend to wander off, see if you can also notice if there's any emotion, if it's quite brief, that seems to be active in that moment of wandering off, or in that part of the cycle of breathing. If there is, breathe through it. Just simply continue in the cycle without any retrospective thinking beyond just noticing the emotions that might be there at that point in the cycle. It can be very subtle.

Reflections

Both as we are able to stay concentrated with the breathing, the continuity of awareness with the circle of in and out, and when we can't do that, when we're not concentrated, if we're able to have no retrospective thinking, just practice with how it is. We're learning how to be present for breathing, returning to the breathing in a very simple, open way that is closely related to our ability to meet people in an open and simple way, without our past judgments and biases and emotional baggage.

Just as we can begin again with breathing, learning to do so in a fresh way as if it's the first breath, without retrospective thinking, judgments about having wandered off, it's very similar to learning how to show up for another person. Fresh and open and without the weight or the bias or the filters of the past. Of course, this needs to be done wisely. But it's such a gift to give others, our capacity to be present for them clearly, simply, openly, without the retrospective involvement of the past, and ideas, and biases.

May it be that our ability to show up fresh for each breath, to return to each breath in an open, simple way, supports us to learn how to let go of our distractive thoughts, or judging thoughts, or biased thoughts. To be able to have a foundation of simple kind regard for the people who are with us, an openness, the kind of openness in which there is space for others to exist, to breathe, to be. And for us to meet them with appreciation and value, and seeing that being able to, or being open to, experiencing the depth of who they are.

Each person that we meet has a history and a depth and a fullness that's almost certainly greater than any way we think about them. May it be that this meditation practice helps us to meet people with that great respect of seeing them free of our bias, free of our desires, free of our resentments, free of our judgments. May all beings be free of us. May all beings find peace when they're with us. May all beings have the space and the safety to be happy, and may we, in our presence, contribute to that safety and space. May all beings be happy. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.