Inspiration

Hi friends, let's continue our journey into the breath through exploring inspiration and aligning a little bit more with our mind and our heart. So go ahead and lie yourself down again. Be comfortable. I've got my head resting on a blanket. And let's set up for windshield wiper. So knees are bent, soles of the feet on the floor. Reach your arms up over the top of your head. Soften the elbows if it makes the shoulders feel a little bit better. And then begin to coordinate your movement with the breath. So inhale here. And as you exhale, slowly let your knees come to a side. As you inhale back center. And as you exhale over to another side. Just really like do your best to coordinate this. Inhale center. Exhale to a side. Inhale center. Exhale to a side. A couple more times. Your effort to coordinate your movement with your breath, your effort to tether that will help bring you into what's happening right now. So next time your knees come over to the right, so you can feel a stretch on your left side. Lengthen a little bit through your left side. So stretch through your left arm and kind of reach through your left thigh. So you can feel more your left ribcage. And use that sensation to start to be more aware of your left lung. And let your breath help bring you here. So as you inhale, kind of feel the expansion of your left lung. And as you exhale, let that soften. Yeah. Inhale. Feel the expansion. And as you exhale, let that soften. And this brings us to our first fact of the breath.

Fact number one. The breath responds immediately. In general, as soon as we bring our attention to our breath, and as soon as we ask it something to do, it does it. Okay. Inhale. Bring your knees back up. Exhale. Knees over to the other side and lengthen through the right arm. Now feel that stretch to the right side of your body. Like feel that big in the right ribs and feel how you can use that to tune your attention into your right lung. And let the breath help tether you here. And it's usually we tend to focus on the front of the lung, be a little bit more aware of the back of the lung. Okay. So while the first fact of our breath today is that she responds immediately, the other fact to keep in mind, fact number two, she's been here the whole time. So whether you're paying attention to your breath or not, she keeps working, which is pretty amazing. Right? Pretty much one of the most essential parts of your being alive just keeps working without any special attention or effort. Okay, nice. Inhale. Bring your knees back up to center. One more time each side. Stretch the left arm and as the knees drop over to the right, like feel that on the left side. Yes. And here this time become a little bit more attuned. So this left lung, right? This left lung has a little bit of a special job and that the left lung snuggles the heart. So the physical heart, which sits central, but leans left. There's this sweet, intimate embrace here. Yeah. Beautiful. This left lung holding the heart. This brings us to the third fact to the breath. She's never really asked for anything. She responds immediately. She's been here the whole time and she's never asked for anything. Knees come back up to center one more time. The other side, just like feel your ability to reach with that right arm, feel your ability to lengthen this right side. Be aware of this right lung, which because it doesn't have the job of snuggling the heart is a little bit bigger than the left lung. She has three lobes instead of two. Yeah. But this brings us to our fourth fact because while she's responds immediately, been here the whole time, never asked for anything. The breath loves to be inspired. This is what we're going to explore next. Inhale, bring your knees back up to center, widen the feet a little bit, let the knees fall together and let the arms come down along your side. And then be aware now of both lungs. Just feel both sides of the lungs. Like feel how they rise on the inhale and feel how they fall on the exhale. Yes. And then right there tucked into the left lung, we've done a little bit of sort of identifying this physical heart which tucks into the left lung. And you might have quite a potent relationship here with this physical heart. Many yogis and practitioners have a little bit more sensitivity to what we call the spiritual heart. The Anahata is one of its formal names. Right more in the center of the chest behind the breastbone. You might be more attuned to this region as you feel the rise of the inhale and the fall of the exhale. And on our previous episode, we explored the region of the diaphragm, this beautiful dome-shaped muscle that sits beneath the lungs, right, and is intimately attached to the physical heart. So here, can you start to tune your keen sense of awareness of your anatomy? Can you feel how as you inhale, can you feel the ribs widening and this expansion and as you exhale, can you feel this softening? Yeah. Bring one hand to the heart, maybe one hand to the belly. Soften the jaw. For the last part of this lesson, which is focused primarily on inspiration, we're going to play with what happens to the breath when we align it with something inspiring. And so as you come across your next inhale, can you gently play with dropping a mantra, a word that is bigger than you in? So let's try one together.

So upon your next inhale, can you mentally hear the word love? And as you exhale, let it soften. And just as you inhale, hear the word love. And as you exhale, let it soften. And we're looking to see if that word that we've dropped in, if it can act like a sail that opens up for the wind of the breath. Well, no, we found the right word when it, it feels like the breath just opens and love might not be the word. So another word for you might be a word like freedom or vastness, truth. You're going to know the word, you're going to get it. You're going to hear it. It's going to be told to you joy. Yeah, a couple more moments. It's sort of like, you know, you've hopefully honed in on that word that that opens that expresses. And for a couple more moments, just allow that word allow that like alignment of your mind and heart to inspire the breath. Yeah. Beautiful. Let the effort of that relax, soft in the jaw, easy in the eyes. Let the effort and the mystery of that relax. But remembering our fourth fact of the breath, she loves to be inspired. Is there a little bit longer if it feels good? See you in the next episode. Love.