Feeling My Breath

In my regular meditation practice, my morning meditation is mindfulness of breathing. It has evolved over the years and for the past few months I'd been using a phrase in my head, one on the in breath, one on the out breath.

Words can be very good during meditation, they can give me a focal point and help keep my mind from wandering.

However, I'd recently noticed that I would suddenly be saying the words very fast, which means that my breathing had sped up. Then I realized that while I was tuning in to the words about breath, I wasn't actually tuning in to my breath. And while my brain was still churning on other things at the same time, it was getting too busy, speeding my breathing rate up.

Back to the breath. That's where I've gone. The words can still be helpful, but for me they are secondary to actually noticing the breath. The rise and fall, the feeling in my body. And as soon as I do that, my breathing again becomes slow and deep.

Sometimes it is easy to get caught up in a certain process and forget what it's all about (being in the moment, a connection with myself and tapping into something greater than me).