“Learn how to really feel and hear your breathe”, the quiet unassuming Yogi said.”How long should I practice it, to get optimal results?” The eager yet impatient and ambitious student asked.”For how long?”, the Yogi repeated, somewhat humorously, “how about for the rest of your life?”
Something magical happens the first time you really FEEL your breathe. The first time you really hear your breathe. The first time you really watch your breathe….with grace and gratitude, and without taking it’s gift for granted.
Here is a little secret:
Mindful breathing, or at least the kind that I do, isn’t really about breathing at all.
It’s about paying attention. Careful, curious and close attention. And noticing nuance. And getting increasingly closer to the amazing experience of being fully, truly and amazingly AWAKE and alive.
Most of us spend the vast majority of our moments caught up in the small stories, dubious dramas and epic, unfolding emergency that we mistake for our lives.
Learning to truly re-inhabit our bodies, to hear our heartbeats, to feel our feet, to to step OUT of the stream of background noise and nonsense, and back into the magic and great mystery of life itself – growing, flowing, ebbing and exploring – moment by moment – is like an incredible superpower. (and addictively fun and seductive as well)
The exercises we’re going to share with you in this short course are 100% free – super easy to try and apply, don’t require any special equipment, any optimal state of health or wealth, can be done sitting or standing, walking in a crowded city or standing at the top of a distant mountain in a far away lonely land.
None were invented by me. Any wisdom I have to offer here, is stolen wisdom 🙂
Some are super and deceptively simple. So simple, you may say – (like I once did!) that they can’t possibly be useful.
But a wild, weird and wonderful window into a magical invisible world has opened for many millions of people, simply by watching the breath
And quite often for the first time, a sense of compassion, composure, confidence and CALM is what remains.
If you can count to ten, you can wake up. And waking up, slowly, surely, deliberately and with passion, purpose and power – is what I believe, we’re all here to do.
Tomorrow we’ll begin. 🙂
Ian + the MM crew.
PS – connect with us on facebook (@themindfulmarket) HERE!
