Breathing Meditation Instructions
Find a comfortable place to sit. Adjust your posture so that your spine is erect without being stiff. Allow the rest of your body to relax around your spine. Rest your hands in your lap or on your legs. Allow your eyes to gently close. Bring your full attention to the feeling of sitting still. Allow your breathing to be natural. Bringing attention to your head, release any tension in your face.
Scanning the body slowly downward, relax your neck and shoulders. Feel the rising and falling of your chest with each breath. Bring your attention all the way down your body to the places of contact with the floor. Feel the pressure and density of the relaxed upright body.
Bringing your full attention to the present moment, acknowledge all of the phenomena in the moment. Thinking is happening, hearing is happening, as well as physical and emotional sensations. Allow all these experiences to be as they are, but redirect your attention to that sensation of breathing. Bring this awareness to the foreground. Take a few moments and investigate where you can feel air coming into your body and carbon dioxide coming out.
Breathing in, know that you are breathing in. Breathing out, know that you are breathing out. We can focus on this by counting 1 with each inhalation and 2 with each exhalation. Every time a thought arises to distract us, we can notice it but bring our focus back to 1.