WEEK ONE: ONE BREATH AT TIME

Understanding the process of breathing as the most essential function for our entire life.
Breath and the process of breathing is the first step to understand mentally, realise dipper and live what is to be in a state of mindfulness. During this week our goal is to start step by step with the most essential functions of our body that can influence and be influenced by our mind, emotions, feeling, thoughts, activities, behaviour and so on. Mindfulness meditations offered this week are a way to ‘stop’ our mind and live the moment of here and now. A way to realise for a moment our existence.

Throughout much of our modern way of living, we tend to forget that we’re breathing.
While the breath continues on without our conscious effort or awareness of it, drawing our attention to it can deepen our sense of peace and ease by easing the body’s stress response.
Mindful breath awareness and deep breathing practices can help to reduce cortisol levels, one of the body’s primary stress hormones. So it goes without saying that the breath is a powerful tool that is worthy of our fullest attention.

PRACTICE: ONE BREATH AT A TIME

There’s a popular saying in addiction recovery circles: “One day at a time”.

This refers to our very human tendency to feel we have to solve all our problems RIGHT NOW.

That we think we have to figure out or achieve EVERYTHING. In a nutshell: to be in control of life.

“One day at a time” reminds us that it is impossible to climb a mountain all at once, or even to know what’s going to happen 100 feet up.

But taking it step by step makes it a lot more manageable.

It brings us back into the present moment, which, if we’re honest with ourselves, is the only place where we have any “control”. And that control is not usually about our external situation, but about how we’re reacting – or not reacting – to it.

The beauty of meditation is that it allows us to break life down into even tinier pieces. When we use our breath as an anchor, bringing us back to the present moment again and again as our minds wander off into problem-solving or fantasizing or worrying, we find a natural, built-in way to be present. In this presence, it’s easier to be compassionate to ourselves.

We do this by meditating one breath at a time.

Within this one breath, there is only the here and now.

This breath is a gentle, life-giving reminder that that conversation or presentation we are dreading or rehearsing isn’t actually happening right now.

That all we can really do and know is that we are alive, here, now.

This is the place where are.

These are sounds we hear.

This is the sensation of breathing.

Life is much simpler than we believe, but that’s so easy to forget when we get overwhelmed.

PRACTICE TIPS:

If you’re focusing on one breath at a time in your meditation, it might help for you to set your timer at intervals – you could 2 minutes, 3 minutes or 5 minutes. Whenever your timer dings or chimes, you can use this as a reminder to come back to this one breath. Then this one. Now this one. You can remember, again and again, how each breath contains multitudes. Each breath reminds us of the richness of the life we’ve been given – the richness of sorrow, of gratitude, even of anger. The richness of being a living, breathing being.

Remember: there is a reason meditation is called “practice”. We are not accustomed to moving slowly, or to being in the present. Everything in our culture conditions us not to. So it’s important to have a great deal of patience and kindness for yourself when you are trying to focus on the breath.

It can help to say, silently, “One breath at a time.”
Or, “This breath. Now this one. Now this one.”

Or you can use Thich Nhat Hanh’s reminder:
“Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in… breathing out, I know that I am breathing out.”

Anxiety may come up when we are trying to take things one breath at a time. Anxiety is not a bad thing! We can use it as a doorway into the present moment.
– What is it like to breathe with anxiety?
– One breath?
– Then another?

Taking things one breath at a time, we might also experience relief. To let go of what we’re holding of the future, and the past.
What does this relief feel like? This breath asks nothing of us. In this moment, there is nothing to “do”. This meditation reminds us that life is, simply, a series of moments. One after another. One breath at a time can bring us into our body. It can attune us to feelings we hadn’t noticed we were feeling, whether on a mental or physical level. And like climbing the mountain one step at a time, it can help us take the experience of that feeling… bit by bit, manageably, one breath at a time.