Breathe into your heart space to release tension and cultivate a sense of openness and inner peace.

Health & Happiness

Presence

Mindfulness Meditation

Buddhism

Mindfulness

Traditions

English

We tend to spend so much of our time living from our heads rather than our hearts, but it's the heart that guides us over and over again back to the space of sacredness and love, connection, and oneness that leads us gently to the experience of contentment.

This practice is designed to bring us back into awareness, connection with, and openness to our own hearts: to the beautiful, most tender parts of ourselves we often hide or cover up, and to remember what it feels like to live and breath openly.

This practice is designed to bring us back into awareness, connection with, and openness to our own hearts: to the beautiful, most tender parts of ourselves we often hide or cover up.

Heart Breathing Meditation (Short Version)

 Hello and welcome. This meditation is a practice of heart breathing, one designed to bring us back into contact and connection with the energy, the feeling tones, the tenderness, the space of your own heart. And so I'll invite you as you find your way to practice today to find whatever looks like a comfortable posture position for your body. Taking a seat on the meditation cushion or in a chair. Maybe ruffling your feathers a bit as you arrive, finding a little bit of movement through the body that allows the spine to become long and tall. Placing the shoulders softly over the hips and the ears over the shoulders. Arriving in a posture that feels dignified, uplifted, awake. And then as well inviting a sense of ease into the body. Letting any tension in the muscles gently melt and soften. You can imagine perhaps the perfect balance between a strong back and a soft front. It can be helpful as we begin the practice just to acknowledge to the mind that for this next little while there's nowhere else to be. There's nothing else to do. Today in this moment you're giving yourself this gift of rest, of ease, of stillness. Letting the eyebrows begin to unfurl, relaxing through the jaw. Maybe getting a sense of and feeling the weight of the tongue in the mouth. Inviting the shoulders to melt down and away from the ears with a sense of heaviness and rest. Softening into the hands. And peeling into the gentle receptive presence here. Letting this next breath find a softening belly. Maybe beginning to get a sense of the way the body moves gently with breath. Relaxing through the hips, through the muscles of the legs, and all the way down into the feet. As if filling the cup with water, filling this whole body with awareness. From the soles of the feet back up to the crown of the head. Without any expectation, just letting the body come awake. Noticing what's here and alive for you in this moment. Recognizing sensations at the surface of the skin. Feelings of touch, pressure, warmth and cool. The movement of air. Welcoming the aliveness that's internal to the body. Feelings of comfort and discomfort. The movement of energy. The beating of the heart. Cultivating a spaciousness of attention that welcomes with openness, kindness, whatever arises in the space of the body. The feeling, tones and emotions. Allowing whatever arises to naturally come and go all on its own. And as you rest, feeling your body. Perhaps you've already noticed the feeling of the body breathing. And whether the breath feels alive at the nostrils, in the chest or the belly. Inviting yourself to draw the fullness of attention into the space of the heart. Feeling to feel as though it's the heart that's here breathing. Feeling the inhales as though expanding the heart space. And the exhales softening. And breathing not just into the front of the heart space, but into the back of the body. Feeling the heart enliven, expand, radiate on inhale. Drawing light energy into the heart with this breath into the body. Exhaling radiating back out. And simply resting the soft gaze of awareness on this rhythm of breath in and out of the heart. And opening to whatever sense and feeling and energy arises here. And the breath in and out of the heart. And then invariably at some point we'll find ourselves lost in some imaginative train of thought. When you find yourself letting this be the magic moment, real moment of practice, where with a softness, tenderness and curiosity, simply re-invite yourself back into your own heart, reconnecting to the breath that's alive here. Let that playfulness reinvestigate what's here in this moment, in this breath, what's alive in your heart. Resoften any tension in the body. Letting this breath find the aliveness in your heart space. Letting this breath find the aliveness in your heart space. Letting this breath find the aliveness in your heart space. Inviting yourself right here. Letting yourself right here. To become a safe space to explore the experience of an undefended heart. Perhaps allowing your exhales to release any shielding covering around the heart space. Letting this practice here on your cushion, your own body. Become the safe space to explore the tenderness and openness of your heart. Coming alive to what it feels like to breathe into an open heart. To accept yourself and the world around you in each moment with no reservations or tensions. Allowing yourself to become the safe keeper of your own heart. With the willingness to be open to and reflecting back the love that you already deserve just as you are. Letting this breath find the aliveness in your heart space. Letting this breath find the aliveness in your heart space. Thank you so much for taking this time for yourself today. The light in me sees and deeply honors the light in you. Namaste.