A Mayo Clinic Exercise

So I invite you to put hand over the heart, hand over the belly, and this is a gesture that first of all, helps us to get in touch with our own breath. So we breathe in and out through the nose and we notice what it feels like to breathe into a soft belly.

What I also like about this gesture is that it's a gesture of kind attention. Right. When we're feeling extra anxious or fearful, we look at the world through the lens of threat. And so this is a gesture. Where can we look at the world and look at our bodies through the lens of kindness and exhale, watch the breath, leave the body.

Exhale through the mouth as if you're blowing out a kiss. And watch the belly lower. And again, inhale through the nose.

Exhale through the mouth, final time. 

Inhale through the nose.

Exhale through the mouth, coming back into a natural style of breath, just noticing what's here now in terms of felt sensation in the body, noticing if there's. Some tension in the heart. Maybe noticing the quality of breath, maybe even a rumbling of the belly.

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