Mindfulness of Breath Practice (Breath Awareness)

See below for a streaming audio version of a guided mindfulness of breath awareness practice. This is also available here for download.
This is the initial practice to given to beginning students of mindfulness meditation to begin to build concentration, presence and stabilize the mind. For many this is a lifelong practice.
Enjoy!

Where are your feet?

In the swirl of stimuli and the 150 mph culture that we live in we often lose track of our body.  It takes both effort and intention to be in the present and one of the easiest ways to access this is through our physical body.  I like to check in with myself several times [...]

Email ping, phone ring

In our technological world there are some everyday opportunities to wake up. I am often on the computer or answering the phone to reply to or communicate with clients and colleagues and I try to use this time as an opportunity to wake up and practice some mindfulness.
I will set the intention to take [...]

Mindfulness and Forgiveness Guided Meditation Part 2

Please enjoy the following streaming audio of a guided mindfulness and forgiveness exercise. This is part 2 of the practice I introduced a few days ago.
This practice will help you begin to unwind the chronic tension in the mind and body around unfinished business with a situation or memory in which you feel [...]

Mindfulness and Forgiveness Guided Meditation

Please enjoy the following streaming audio of a guided mindfulness and forgiveness exercise. This practice will help you begin to unwind the chronic tension in the mind and body around unfinished business with a person you feel has hurt you. Please pick something of fairly low emotional intensity to work with at first (this [...]

Guided Deep Relaxation

Note: This guided deep relaxation is now available for download as a podcast on the itunes store and as an mp3 file on this website.
Please enjoy the following streaming audio of a guided deep relaxation technique I’ve developed for my clients. This is a cross between a progressive relaxation and a mindfulness of [...]

The Body Scan

A useful mindfulness of body exercise that helps us get a sense of our internal landscape and the physical and emotional sensations going on in this moment is the known as the body scan.
I often use this excercise as a way to take pause and get back in touch with myself in the present moment. [...]

Fresh Start

Often, there are interruptions to our practice, or at least our formal practice.
Interruption, does not mean we have to throw away the whole practice, or castigate ourselves. It is an unhelpful habit to think that ‘I am a failure’, and to somehow feel negatively towards ourselves because our formal practice has fallen away. Of course [...]

Doing Time

Sometimes mindfulness meditation feels pleasurable, we enter into deep states of stillness or we encounter body sensations of peace and a sense of groundedness. Other times it feels very difficult, encountering anxiety, restlessness, sadness, frustration, anger/rage, or any other type of intense sensory experience that can be accompanied by compelling and painful thoughts. At [...]

Home Retreat Program

Shinzen Young is offering introductory home-based Vipassana retreats through his website BasicMindfulness.com. These are retreats which you can do anywhere in the world as long as you have access to a phone with either a handsfree or speakerphone option. Previously, only those who had done a residential or non-residential in-person program with Shinzen could [...]