This is a CBC podcast.

Hi, my name is Dr. Hilary McBride, and I wanted to share a meditation that I wrote for you.

To start, I invite you to take a posture or form that allows you to feel both engaged and at ease, present and settled.

Sensing yourself here, having landed in this place, in this place, and at ease, present and settled.

Sensing yourself here, having landed in this place, in this particular moment,

you might allow your gaze to soften, letting your eyes linger just a few feet in front of you,

or closing your eyes, doing whatever feels right for you.

When you're ready, try to turn your attention to the rhythm of your breathing.

Without doing anything different, simply allow yourself to notice what it feels like to take a few rounds of breath. You might see your breath as a cycle, a kind of unbroken circle.

And as you breathe in and out, you might trace the shape of the circle with your mind.

Coming down one side of the circle as you exhale, touching the bottom of the circles you pause between

your exhale and your inhale, and then allowing yourself to sense the tracing up the other side

of the circle.

And this might be where you stay for the rest of our time together.

But if you choose, you can imagine massaging the shape of the circle,

pulling the top and the bottoms of the circle away from each other to elongate the shape

into a kind of oval.

In doing so, imagining that you are extending your inhale and extending your exhale.

You know, As you continue to trace the in and the out of the breath as you move around this oval,

you might consider with more attention the exhale for a moment.

Allowing the inhale to drift into the background of your mind as you give your attention to breathing out.

Notice as you exhale how you can soften down the length of your body, allowing your jaw to become more at ease.

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