Mindfulness Meditation Lesson 1
Counting Breaths
Before we get to the outline and other details about this course, we're going to jump right in with our first mindfulness practice, Following Our Breathing By Counting Our Breaths. The first step in practicing mindfulness is to start training our mind to pay attention better and stay more focused, and the practices we'll be doing in this lesson are designed to help us learn to keep our attention focused on our breath.
Don't worry if you find it difficult to maintain your concentration when you first attempt these practices and try not to be discouraged if your mind wanders a lot. We're not used to paying attention in this way, and so it takes a while to train out minds to be able to do this better. Just do the practice as best you can, trying not to judge yourself regardless of your experience.
Following Our Breathing By Counting Breaths
In this practice you'll simply be counting your breaths from one to ten. When you get to ten, starting over again at one. At first you'll count
Two as you exhale ...
Three as you inhale ...
Four as you exhale ...
Once you’re able to make it to ten without losing track, then try counting once per inhale/exhale cycle
... exhale ...
Two as you inhale ...
... exhale ...
Three as you inhale ...
... exhale ...
If you continue for longer than ten breaths, once your count gets to ten, start over again at one. If you lose track, don’t worry about where you were, just start over again at one.
Make sure you're sitting in a comfortable and alert posture, and won't be disturbed or distracted for the next few minutes. When you're ready, play the guided audio track below.
On the next few pages we're going to outline the content of this course, but we'll return to this practice and discuss what it was like for you later in the lesson.
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Please purchase the course to download audio files and access Lessons 5-10.