Practice Mindful Breathing (Formal Seated Breath Meditation)

Practice Mindful Breathing (Formal Seated Breath Meditation)


1. Posture – Assume a comfortable upright but relaxed sitting posture. There is no requirement to sit on the floor, and sitting in a chair is perfectly acceptable. The key is to choose a posture that lets you be comfortable and alert. You can choose to keep your eyes open, but if you are a beginner, it may be easier to keep your eyes closed to avoid distractions. If you choose to keep your eyes open,
let your gaze rest softly a few feet in front of you on the floor without focusing on a particular object.

2. Getting grounded – Take a few moments to notice any tension you may be holding in your body. Relax your face and jaw, and let your shoulders relax. Feel the weight of your body resting on the ground or in your chair.

3. Notice your breath – Once you begin to feel grounded in your body, try to notice the sensation of your breath. Some sensations you could focus on include the air as it enters and leaves your nose, the expanding and contracting of your lungs, or the sound of the air in your throat. If you have difficulty feeling your breath, it may help to place one hand on your belly so that you can feel it rising
and falling as you breathe.

4. Staying with your breath – Now that you have settled your attention on your breath, try to keep your attention on it as long as you can. Remember to stay relaxed with both your posture and attention. If you feel yourself becoming rigid or dozing off, feel free to reset your posture and release any tension you feel. If you notice that your attention has drifted away from your breath, gently guide it back to feeling your breath in the present moment. If you notice thoughts arising, try not to judge them or yourself! Simply acknowledge their presence and let them pass. Always remember that the most important part of this practice is not how long you can stay focused, but gently returning your attention to your breath when you lose focus.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Paradox of Choice

The Paradox of Choice “After millions of years of survival based on simple distinctions, it may simply be that we are biologically unprepared for the number of choices we face in the modern world” Schwartz, 2004 It’s no secret that as humans we like to exercise our freedom of choice. Having choice is important as it helps us to express our identity and allows us to consume what we like according to our personal preferences. Whether it’s selecting what to wear, deciding what television show to watch, or choosing what to do over the weekend – we strive to be authors of our own destiny. On the flip side, I’m sure you can recall a time when you had too many choices, so many, in fact, that it was almost debilitating. Perhaps you were unsure of what topping to get on your pizza? Or maybe you were so overwhelmed by choice of ice cream flavours that you defaulted to simply vanilla?  Known as the “choice paradox”, this fear of making the ‘wrong choice’ or missing out on the ‘b
Read more

Psychology Symbol

Image
The symbol for psychology represents the penultimate letter of the Greek alphabet, psi, which is also the first letter of the Greek word psuche, meaning mind or soul, from which the term psyche arose; which in turn gave us the name of the discipline psychology which is most commonly defined as study of the mind. The story of the psychology symbol involves some mythology  and the strange evolution of the term “psi” (Ψ). It’s the twenty-third letter in the Greek alphabet, and at some point, the Romans transliterated it to form the word  psyche . It meant butterfly in Latin, but it went on to mean things like  breeze, breath, energy,  and finally  soul . Anyone who’s studied psychology will remember how when they got to college, this strange symbol would show up just about everywhere. Books, professor’s offices, informational notes…  Anyone curious about this branch of science will recognize it too, because it’s become part of a culture of symbols that’s common in a lot of oth
Read more

Gestalt therapy

Image
Gestalt therapy History Precursors The history of Gestalt therapy starts with the professional development of Fritz Perls and the zeitgeist in which he lived. After acquiring the M.D. degree, Perls went to Frankfurt-am-Main in 1926 as an assistant to Kurt Goldstein at the Institute for Brain Damaged Soldiers. Here he was exposed to Professors Goldstein and Adhemar Gelb and he met his future wife, Laura. At that time Frankfurt-am-Main was a center of intellectual ferment and Perls was directly and indirectly exposed to leading Gestalt psychologists, existential philosophers and psychoanalysts. Fritz Perls became a psychoanalyst. He was influenced directly by Karen Horney and Wilhelm Reich, and indirectly by Otto Rank and others. Perls was especially influenced by Wilhelm Reich, who was Perls' analyst in the early 1930s, and "who first directed my attention to a most important aspect of psychosomatic medicine -- to the function of the motoric system as an armor&q
Read more