Return to the present with conscious breathing

Practicing to stay in the present helps when we are not well physically. It allows me to overcome the tendency to complain. It makes me find my inner balance more easily, regardless of what is happening to me.

I can become more aware even when I am not well physically, indeed sometimes this is a stimulus to practice, instead of abandoning myself in long litany of complaints. This process helps me to find my inner balance more easily regardless of what is happening to me.

I start by taking 3 or 4 deep breaths, relax and shift my attention from my thoughts, which in the meantime have become annoying, fixed and obsessive, to my body.

I focus my curiosity in my body. This shift of attention is the basis of the work. I use my curiosity to illuminate and explore the inside of my body as if it were a deep, dark cave.

My curiosity is not directed to see but to feel. How do I feel? In pain? Where do I feel the sensations of pain or not feeling well physically? I avoid quickly attributing a superficial label to not being well: I have a headache; I have a terrible backache! and I get curious by penetrating the pain area.

What kind of pain is it? I become curious and penetrate deeper, under its surface, to explore its complexity. What are the most subtle sensations that make it up? What characteristics do they have? Are they constant or intermittent? What happens to pain while I observe it with curiosity? Does it fade? Does it increase? Does it move?

I breathe in it with delicacy: a soft and loving breath. I am curious to see how it transforms under the influence of my loving attention.

Are you sending me a message? I am in the body, deep in the area of discontent. I remain there until, even though the pain is still there, I can recover that state of internal peace that I had lost.