Breathing Exercise 1

The concept in this breathing exercise is easy – use your breathing as an anchor for your attention and to connect with your body. The way you breathe is very much connected to how relaxed you feel. If you breathe fast and up in your chest, that triggers the fight and flight part of us and can make you feel more stressed and anxious than you need to be. Breathing more slowly and ”down into your belly” helps us relax. What I am not that happy about here is that I ask you to try to stay focused on your breathing. That often triggers people to feel like they have to perform, and when you are stressed, that can make you feel more stressed. The most important thing is not that you are able to stay focused. Everyone gets distracted. Not even the most experienced meditators can stay focused all the time. Your brain is designed to try to solve your problems when it is not required to focus completely on something to prevent you from being hurt etc. By directing your attention to your breathing, your brain gets something easy to do, something that is also a relaxing activity. So think of your breathing as an anchor for your attention and a way to become more connected to your body if you want to listen to this meditation.

Written by: Sophie Påhlsson
Narrated by: Sophie Påhlsson
Background music: Adrift, by Christopher Lloyd Clarke.

Where to Buy and Stream

This is one of the first titles ever produced, back when Spotify Music was the only way to release them. So that is where you will find it. Today, my content is mainly released as audiobooks. The reason for that is that Spotify Music is built to handle short and small audio files. 10-60-minute recordings become very large and thus often make the system crash when uploaded. It also works better when you want to release something in multiple languages. Audiobook platforms let you filter author catalogs by language so that you can choose to see only what you actually want to listen to.