Affectionate Breathing to Calm Your Mind and Body During Scans (Beth Sandweiss)

Welcome to this affectionate breathing meditation. Practicing this guided meditation is a powerful way to calm your mind and body before, during and after scans.

It's natural to feel a wave of worry and uncertainty during the process. This meditation invites you to use the breath as an anchor to find a steady and calm state of being.

So to begin, please find a posture in which your body is comfortable and will feel supported for the duration of this meditation. Let your eyes plows partially or fully. Let's begin with a slow, easy breath. Releasing any unnecessary tension in your body.

Now take another slow, easy breath. And this time allow your body Ready to relax all the way down to your toes.

Allow your awareness to settle inside your body. Perhaps becoming aware of your breath in your whole body. And if you like, place a hand over your heart or any other soothing place as a cue that you are bringing a kindly awareness to your breathing and to yourself. You can leave your hand there or let it rest at any time.

Now beginning to know Notice your breathing in your body, feeling your body breathe in and feeling your body breathe out. Perhaps noticing how your body is nourished on the in -breath and relaxes with the out -breath.

Nourished on the in -breath. Relaxing with the out -breath.

There is nothing else you need to do.

Now, taking a moment to feel the rhythm of your breathing, resting awareness within the natural rhythm of breathing. Perhaps in climbing your attention toward your breathing, as you might, toward a beloved child, or a dear friend.

Feeling your whole body subtly moving with the breath like the movement of the sea. Maybe imagining a wave flowing and returning to the sea. The breath has a rhythm like this. Gently swelling and settling. Letting your mind and body settle around the rhythm of your breath.

Letting go of any ideas of how you think the breath ought to be. And resting in the awareness of how the rhythm of your breath is. Moment by moment.

If you notice there's a sense of watching your breath, see if you can let that go and be with your breath, feeling it, allowing your whole body to be gently rocked Massaged by your breath. Just breathing.

Let's broaden attention now, allowing kindness to flow out to others, allowing them to rest in the natural rhythm of your breath.

Spanding still more. As you get a sense of the whole world breathing, the whole planet rising and falling, swelling, subsiding, the rhythm of the natural world.

allowing any hard edges of separation to soften. As you sit here quietly, resting with the breath moment by moment,

onlying that you are not alone. Taking your place fully and taking place fully, your place in humanity,

And now gently releasing your attention to your breathing, sitting quietly in your own experience and allowing yourself to feel whatever you're feeling and to be just as you are.

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