Welcome to the Daily Meditation Podcast. I'm Mary Meckley and I'm a meditation teacher who shares a different

meditation technique every day on the podcast, and each technique is

customized around a weekly theme. And I want to congratulate you for giving yourself permission to slow down today as you meditate.

In fact, our weekly theme this week is slowing down.

So you are in the right place to giving yourself more peace, energy, and clarity as you slow down.

And in today's episode, which is episode 697,

you're going to be guided in a breathing technique.

Every Tuesday I share a breathing technique on the podcast.

So you'll be guided as you relax your body and start to notice your breath and then go into

a guided breathing technique.

Now this breathing technique is going to kind of

energize you a little bit and that might sound a little bit odd if you're doing a

slowdown meditation and the reason why I'm going to have you do a breathing technique that's a little bit more energizing is because, and I think you'll be able to relate to this if you have children especially. Sometimes in order to really slow down

it's important to energize yourself just a little bit because when we have pent up energy and we

feel a little bit restless sometimes we need to kind of get that energy out before we can relax and slow down.

And people often tell me that one of the most challenging parts of meditation is that they get

all ready, they sit down and they're nice comfortable meditation spot. No one's interrupting them. Everything seems ideal for

them to meditate. And then the mind starts to wander or they feel like they have an itch to scratch or they just

can't stop this restless feeling. So if that issue you are going to really appreciate

today's breathing technique. Now you could also compare energizing yourself before you go into more of a state of stillness when you think about children. If you have young children, I'm sure you can relate to this.

A lot of times before they'll lie down and take a nap or go to bed, it's good to kind of get them outside so they can run

around a little bit to let go of that pent-up energy. and you even see this with animals. I know we take our dog for a walk and he'll run around and then he'll come in and he'll just settle down and be nice and calm throughout the day.

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