Video Discription |
The UK Integrative Medicine & Health program uses traditional medical therapies and practices, while also recognizing the interaction between the patient’s mind, body and spirit. For more information about all our services, visit http://http://ukhealthcare.uky.edu/markey-cancer-center/cancer-support-services/integrative-medicine.
Transcript:
Welcome to Breath Awareness Meditation.
The natural breath is slow, steady, and deep. It is essential for vibrant health. It supports and sustains us our entire life. Stress and tension can lodge in the body and diminish the capacity of the natural breath cycle.
In Breath Awareness Meditation, we connect awareness to breath and observe, noticing what we feel as the breath moves through us.
Valuable benefits from regular practice are a decrease in stress, anxiety, and tension, a calm and clear mind, an increase in mindfulness, an increase in oxygen levels, and support for the respiratory system.
Breath Awareness Meditation.
Find a comfortable seated position. If needed, place a small pillow behind the lower back for support. Root the feet into the floor, and then lengthen through the spine.
Now, close the eyes, relax shoulders down away from the ears, soften the face. Disconnect from the external and allow awareness to turn inward.
Feel the breath moving inside of you. Notice where you feel it. Notice its quality.
Imagine waves at the beach, rolling in, rolling out. The natural breath is very much like this, slow and steady, rhythmic in nature.
Maintain awareness to breath. Allow it to grow fluid in quality, whatever is possible for you today.
Listen to the sound of the breath inside of you. Feel the motion at the rib cage slowly expanding from bottom to top, rolling in, slowly contracting from top to bottom, rolling out.
Continue to ride the wave of the breath, slow, steady, deep, and complete.
We can also imagine the breath cycle as cleaning house. The inhale opens, clears, and cleans the interior. Allow it to fill you to the skin, if possible. Enjoy the sense of buoyancy and lightness as the breath rolls in.
Appreciate the felt sense that the exhale sweeps away anything that is not life enhancing. Out goes the stress, tension, anxiety with the exhalation. Let it go.
Feel gratitude rising for this life-sustaining process. Feel free to pause the video and continue for as long as you like, then rejoin when you are ready.
Open the eyes when you are ready. Notice how you feel.
Remember, practicing breath awareness meditation daily decreases stress, anxiety, and tension, calms and clears the mind, increases mindfulness, increases oxygen levels, and supports the respiratory system, promoting health and well-being. Thank you for joining me in this practice. Namaste. |