When I first came across the Gentle Breath Meditation™ at the Universal Medicine presentations and courses in 2007, I could not get into it. I’d tried many different styles of meditation and always felt like I was going through the motions and would either fall asleep or feel agitated at the end of it (now that’s quite an oxymoron!). I was always the one in a group that ‘didn’t get it’ when everyone else was having what sounded like amazing experiences during their meditation.
When we did the Gentle Breath Meditation™ as a group, my mind would not shut up and my body was restless, but I could not deny what I felt being in the group. Even though I struggled initially because of the raciness I was in, I loved the feeling of being in the group and how that helped me settle.
It was sometime in the early days of coming across the Gentle Breath Meditation™ that the notion of ‘being gentle’ was presented.
Say what? Be gentle!
I’d never considered this before. Not that I would have described myself as rough but that being gentle was even a ‘thing’. Nobody had ever put to me about being gentle and I had to ask someone what that actually meant – that’s how disconnected I was from my body. The wise words given back to me were “do everything as gently as you can, and fake it until you make it”, in other words overdo it – exaggerate it until it becomes natural.
And so that’s what I did. I started with basic everyday things where I would focus on my arms and my hands when setting the dinner table, for example, and literally move them gently as I very deliberately placed the cutlery gently onto the table rather than haphazardly doing it while I was thinking about something else, and I started to do this with many other basic tasks in my day.
And so it was through moving my body more gently with everyday tasks that I was able to more fully connect to my body while doing the Gentle Breath Meditation™. I was then able to take that back into how I moved again, how I did things in my day – simple things like opening a door, getting into my car and fastening the seatbelt, passing something to someone, putting on shoes, making my bed… and the list goes on. When I considered everything I did in a day, it amounted to 100s if not 1,000s of things that I did for myself and others.
Through this time, I came to know that the purpose of meditation is to simply re-connect me to my body by bringing my mind in line with what my body is doing, known as conscious presence. In this re-connection with my body, I get to feel my essence, my inner-heart, without the interference of the constant thoughts. And it is a ‘re-connection’ rather than a ‘connection’ in that our essence never leaves us, it is always there waiting for us to take the steps back to feeling our inner beauty – our essence – the true ‘being’ part of us that is beyond the physical. The Gentle Breath Meditation™ is a tool that I now use to either confirm that I am connected or it supports me to re-connect. There is nothing more settling than breathing my own breath, rather than my breath being determined by a conversation with someone, or a situation happening around me.
Being gentle doesn’t mean being soft and fluffy. We live in a world that does not have gentleness as its standard – far from it, and so we live day in and day out getting bombarded by energy that is anything but gentle. Is it any wonder that at the end of a day, people feel exhausted, smashed, worn out and reach for things to pick them up like sugar, alcohol, or some form of entertainment when what would support them would be to go inwards, and re-connect to the quality of gentleness as a starting point where they are once again breathing their own breath.
“When we lose ourselves, we lose the rhythm of our breath – meditation is a coming together. It is a stop to recollect yourself and gather your true breath.”
Serge Benhayon, Esoteric Teachings and Revelations, Volume I, Ed 1, p. 507
By Sandra Dallimore, Change Manager, Meditation/Esoteric Yoga Facilitator, Melbourne, Australia
Further Reading:
Breathing my Own Breath
Gentle Breath Meditation in daily life
The Gentle Breath Meditation: caring for me at work
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
Wonderful words Sandra; and what a great foundation for life I too find it now, after I was first introduced to this novel idea of bringing gentleness into the perfunctory actions of everydayness.
Life is about the truly simple things.
Life is not meant to be hard or complicated.
So simply described and written Sandra, such that anyone can relate. The first time I attended a Gentle breath Meditation everything felt ‘alien’ because the world I was living in and moving in never asked me to slow down or pause for a moment, it actually demanded the opposite. There was something about the meditation that kept drawing me back no matter how ‘alien’ it felt originally. Gentleness has now become my way of approaching most things in my life and one of the beautiful outcomes is that most of my regular interactions have changed, reactions have reduced and my restless body is more settled.
In our disconnection to our innermost essence I don’t feel that we realise just how rough we are being with ourselves as we have got so used to the movement. We do not stop to consider the possibility that there is a force coming through us to constantly keep us in the disconnection to ourselves.
Much is understood once we start to live in the most gentle of movements as it takes the racy-ness out of our day and sets a rhythm that allows our body to surrender to our Soul.
Love it Sandra – and how the connected way you choose to move these days can be so easily felt in your words.
Sandra, I can relate to how you used to lived as that described me to a tee. The Gentle Breath Meditation has been a godsend in helping me learn again what it means to be gentle and then to bring that gentleness into my movements. It’s an ongoing thing, but I now know that the gentleness is always there and I have a way to reconnect back when I can feel I have lost my way. Thank you – a great reminder to keeping checking in with myself regularly throughout each day.
A great reminder that nothing happens in isolation and that we cannot expect the Gentle Breath Meditation™ to deliver when the rest of our life is chaotic, haphazard and rough. And if it did work, the meditation would not serve as a tool of reconnection but be a mere means of withdrawal.
“The Gentle Breath Meditation™ is a tool that I now use to either confirm that I am connected or it supports me to re-connect.” Thanks Sandra for your wonderful blog! I can never be reminded enough about the simplicity of the gentle breath and the way it supports me to connect to my essence and my soul, and to remain steady and present with my body throughout my day.
Love what you share here. Imagine everybody would put focus to being gentle, despite the roughness and hecticness we have made so present in this world. This alone would bring enormous change to how we are with each other.