Mindfulness Meditation Lesson 1

Following Your Breath Again

We've already practiced two techniques to help keep our attention focused on our breath, counting and measuring our breaths. Now we're going to follow our breath again, this time without a guided audio track. The audio file below consists of:

• a bell at the start
• a bell at one-and-a-half minutes and at three minutes as reminders to bring your attention back to your breath if your mind has wandered
• three bells after five minutes to signal the conclusion of the practice

You can try counting your breaths, or measuring your breaths, or one of the other methods below. You'll be doing this practice throughout the week, so you'll have lots of opportunity to experiment with the different options.

Counting and Measuring Your Breaths

Silently counting breaths from one to ten helps us maintain our attention on our breathing over a period of time, while measuring our breaths helps us keep our attention on the breath throughout the duration of each individual breath. Neither practice is better, it's just a matter of personal preference, and some people find one more helpful than the other.

You can also try combining the two practices, and measuring each breath while counting your breaths:

Or by counting only the in-breath while measuring:

Breathing In, Breathing Out

While the counting aspect of counting or measuring breaths can help keep your attention focused on your breathing, it's not necessary. Instead, you can follow your breathing by simply silently repeating to yourself:

Or you can shorten it to simply: