Welcome everyone.

This is a short meditation and an introduction to the exploration of the breath.

Focusing on the breath can help ground us.

There's a couple of ways we can focus on the breath.

We can silently count our breaths.

We can count one on the in breath, two on the out breath, and onward, up to ten.

And then we can simply start over again.

Or we can use words like rise on the in breath and fall on the out breath.

Or we can just simply say, "in" on the in breath and "out" on the out breath.

We do this all silently to ourselves.

If you become distracted or your mind starts wandering, no big deal. Just begin again.

So let's find a comfortable seat.

And let's close our eyes. And we'll try this for a few minutes.

And we'll see what we learn along the way. And how we feel at the end.

I'll ring a gong at the end to let us know that our time is up.

But let's begin with an in breath.

If you find that the mind wanders.

There's no judgement, just begin again.

And feel free to experiment with the different methods.

If you were counting to yourself before, try using the rise and fall method.

If your body wants to move, try to deepen the breath.

Breath all the way down, deep into the belly.

Feel free to just let it out, and see how that feels.

It's all about exploring.

Take one last breath.

(gong ringing)