Can you spare a thought?

Take a moment right now to notice your body, how your shoulders are lying. Are the facial muscles relaxed, are you sitting comfortably? Are you tense or peaceful?

We rarely give a thought to our body unless we are bathing, going somewhere special, or checking for spinach between the teeth.

Now, notice how you are breathing. Is your breathing pattern fast or slow? Steady or uneven?

We notice the breath even less than the body, yet breathing is our most important activity. It has a significant role in maintaining optimum energy of the body and keeping the mind calm.

Beneath the turbulent waves of the mind, there lies an inner stillness if you can brave the randomness of the thougths and not permit them to carry you away.

Breathing usually occurs without any conscious effort, enabling you to perform your daily tasks without any distractions. However, if you are not aware of the condition of your breath, the knock on effect is a mind that is also free to roam wherever it chooses, allowing erratic thoughts and behavior to occur and creating a cycle of events that create disruption in your life. You end up losing sleep, rehashing past mistakes and conversations and then shooting forward to the future, worrying about possible outcomes.

Take Back Your Life.

During your meditation practice, concentrate on slowing the breath down and keeping it slow and steady.

Focus on the breath and let it become deeper and deeper.

Following the end of your meditation session, stay mindful of the breath.

Look for opportunities to practice this breath awareness. Ideal places include:

• When standing in line in a shop
• When waiting for a pot or the kettle to boil
• In the shower

You are basically retraining the mind to notice the breath. After a few sessions, your body sends you a gentle reminder that says “Hey, I’m breathing too hard, or too fast. Slow it down.”

The Benefits.

The rate of the breath is linked to the thoughts that occur in the mind and your ability to control which thoughts you choose to act upon.

You, and only you, can choose to remove past patterns of behavior and put new habits into motion, ones that allow you to take charge and redirect your life in the direction you wish to go.

The breath is what carries you through every event that life sends your way and while the past is gone, you determine the future by what you do, mindfully, right now.