Three-Minute Breathing Space

Here is a mindfulness exercise I thought I'd share with you. It's called the Three-Minute Breathing Space. It's a great way to integrate mindfulness into everyday life. You can do it several times throughout the day to check in and ground yourself. It is a useful tool to step out of “automatic pilot” and bring yourself into the awareness of the present moment.

Awareness

Bring yourself into the present moment by deliberately adopting an erect (but not rigid) and dignified posture. If possible, close your eyes, or close them half-way, focusing a few inches in front of your feet. Then ask yourself:

What is my experience right now... my thoughts... my feelings... my bodily sensations?

Acknowledge your experience in this moment, even if it is unwanted.

Gathering

Now, gently direct your awareness to your breathing, following each inbreath and each outbreath, one after the other. If necessary, say to yourself, “I am breathing in. I am breathing out.”

The breath can function as an anchor to bring you into the present moment since the breath is always with us and available at any time as a focus of attention. Regulating the inbreath with the outbreath can assist in maintaining awareness and stillness.

Expanding

Now, expanding your awareness to the whole body, imagine that you are breathing with the body as a whole, including your posture and facial expression. When you’re ready, take a deep, cleansing breath, and then open your eyes and return to your day. You may find that you bring with you a little bit of something that wasn't there before.

This exercise can be found in The Mindful Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself From Chronic Unhappiness, by Williams, Teasdale, Segal and Kabat-Zinn. It is taught in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) courses, but it can be a useful exercise for anyone.

The Guest House, by Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-- Jelaluddin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks


Paintings by Leah

Love After Love, by Derek Walcott

The time will come when,
with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door,
in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Untitled, by Kabir

I said to the wanting-creature inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.
Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or nesting?















There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.
There is no tow rope either, and no one to pull it.
There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!

And there is no body, and no mind!
Do you believe there is some place that will make the
soul less thirsty?
In that great absence you will find nothing.
 
Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don’t go off somewhere else!
 
Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of
imaginary things,
and stand firm in that which you are.