Feel the breath as it actually is. It may be long or short, deep or shallow. With our awareness, it will naturally become slower and deeper. Conscious breathing is the key to uniting body and mind and bringing the energy of mindfulness into each moment of our life.

Returning Home With Your Breath.
The breath will serve as a refuge to our internal chaos, emotions, and constant thoughts. Cultivating a friendship or a positive relationship with the breath makes us more attuned to anchoring our mind and collect ourselves when we struggle with feelings of despair or when our mind goes haywire. This meditation that I have written below can be used at any time of the day or night, even before we go to sleep. Or in the middle of a meeting, while gardening or even cooking dinner. 

Let’s Meditate Together
Find a seated position that you feel comfortable with. Lotus pose or easy pose is preferred but if you feel like sitting on a chair you are free to do so.

Close your eyes …

Feel the moment outside yourself and within your body. The sounds, the smells, and sensations of your body. Think about your skin and how many nerves that are attached to each micrometer of your skin. Feel your clothes on upper arms, on your back.

We may like to recite:
“Breathing in I know that I am breathing in.
Breathing out I know that I am breathing out.”

Notice how your breath goes in your nostrils and how warm air goes down your throat, fills your lungs and expands your stomach. Use your senses to anchor your attention and mind with the help of your breath. By now you may have thoughts that may distract you from being focused on your sensations of the body, thinking about some regret of the past or how many minutes are left of the meditation. You feel your seating position is not the best so you adjust yourself a little.

All that is okay, just let the thoughts be. You have done nothing wrong. The thoughts are normal, it’s the undisciplined mind that will try to control everything. But by reminding ourselves that we don’t have any control over the future nor the past, we can bring back our attention to the present moment. Visualize in your minds theatre that all your thoughts are passing clouds on a mountain, and your mind is the mountain. Stable and unwavering.

Meditation requires discipline of mind, discipline to come back and anchor yourself to your breath again, and again. This is the practice of mindfulness and when you practice more regularly you will begin to reap the benefits of this wondrous magic art that is within you. The mind will portray emotions, thoughts, and sensations and it will also cease to be. All thoughts have a birth and all thoughts have a death. Everything changes and nothing will last forever. If you find yourself being caught up in thought or a mental image that again effects how you feel. Start right there, start with observing either the thought, mental image or emotion that you have right at this moment. See how it changes with your attention to it. After a while, that thought will continue to exist, the same with the emotion you had. Now you have experienced the impermanence of existence, to some degree. But that will help you a great deal to continue your practice.

Once you have tried this meditation you will feel more peaceful, your mind will also be calmer. This is not a difficult meditation, just within a couple of minutes you too can bear the fruits of this mindfulness technique. Our breath is the link between our mind and our body. Sometimes our body does one thing and our mind something else, by not having the mind and the body united we cannot experience the connection which we get by mindfulness.

You have to be here and breathe in and out, only then we can bring the awareness of the body with the mind together. And then we become whole.