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Susan Piver leads a short breath awareness meditation in this week’s podcast episode. If you were to go down the Buddhist path, you would start with this practice before starting with visualizations, guru yogas, mantras, mandala practices. It’s a simple practice that is suitable for all.

Introduction

We’ll just do a short breath awareness meditation, which is often sounds like—because it’s true—a beginner’s practice. But if you were to go down the Buddhist path, you would start with this practice. Then if you went and did all the visualizations and the guru yogas and the mantras and the mandala practices and so on. At the end, you would pretty much come back to this.

It’s almost formless. But it’s not completely formless. Anyway, it’s very simple. We’ll just practice for a short period. In my tradition, it’s called Shamatha Mindfulness Awareness Meditation.

The practice begins with your body, which is often handy to remember that you have one. I forget sometimes. I’m not, like, there’s not a little someone behind my eyeballs looking out and going, Hey, look out for that. What do you think about this? I’m not located there. I’m located somewhere else throughout, at the very least.

Relax the body

You want to sit up straight, but not rigid. Legs can be crossed loosely in front, or you can sit in a chair. They’re both equally spiritual. Hands rest on the legs, palms down. There’s just resting, No mudras. You guys take a break, rest.

It helps to feel heavy from the waist down, rooted, like you’re buried in earth up to your waist and everything below is a root system. Unless that feels weird, then don’t do it. But otherwise, feel rooted and anchored from the waist up, you can feel light and open. Like at a trunk and limbs of a tree, to extend the analogy. But you’re rooting down and reaching up in some way at the same time.

And those two gestures are inseparable, just like your top half and your bottom half. Relax the belly a lot and relax the shoulders. There’s nothing to carry or tote right now, so you can just let the shoulders soften. The mouth is closed, lips and teeth can be slightly parted, and you can relax everything to do with speech, the tongue, the jaw, the throat, the inclination to speak.

Also relax because you don’t need any of those things right now, which is a luxury. You see, there is no one in there talking, actually. It is quiet.

Breath awareness

Breath is natural, in and out through the nose, unless you have a cold. Natural means no breathing technique, just breathing. In the practice I do and teach, the eyes are open. The gaze is cast down to a comfortable spot in front. It’s comfortable given the distance of your screen or whatever you’re doing. The eyes just rest.

But vision mixes with space rather than focusing on anything in space. If that makes sense. At the same time, you’re just sitting there with your eyes open, so not a big deal. Let the brow relax. Let your attention come to rest on the breath. Which does not mean observe the breath or notice the breath. It means feel the breath, feel the body breathing in and out.

There’s a little expansion on the inhale and a kind of dissolve on the exhale. Stay with that. Your mind will continue to think thoughts because that’s what it does, no big deal. Like your eyes continue to see, your ears continue to hear, there’s no off switch, and there does not need to be an off switch. Just let your mind be as it is.

A lot of thoughts, no thoughts, doesn’t matter right now. You can imagine your thoughts are like people talking on the street. You can kind of hear them, but you’re not really listening to them. Primary attention is on the breath. If you notice that you have become absorbed in thought, not a thought, not a thought, a line of thought, to the point where you spaced out. That’s excellent.

You just woke up in the middle of your own mind, so now you have options. Label that thinking. Let go. That’s the fun part. Don’t skip that part.

Simply come back to this breath.

And begin again, feeling the body breathe. Souls just sit together in silence for a few minutes. I’ll mention when those few minutes are up. Bring your practice to a close. Just let the technique go.

Thank you.

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