3 Minute Breathing Space

The 3-Minute Breathing Space

1. In the first step of the 3MBS the invitation is to bring attention to our experience in a wider and more open manner that isn’t really involved with selecting or choosing or evaluating, but simply holding—becoming a container for thoughts feelings or sensations in the body that are present and seeing if we can watch them from one moment to the next. So a widescreen on which all kinds of things can show up. So we hang out there for about a minute.
2. In the second step, we’re asked to let go of that widescreen and to bring a focus that’s much more concentrated and centered, so narrower, on breathing in one region of our bodies—the breath of the belly, or the chest, or the nostrils, or anywhere that the breath makes itself known, and keeping that more concentrated focus. So the attention here is narrow, in the first step it’s wide.
3. In the third step, when we move out to become aware of sensations in the body as a whole, sitting with the whole body, the whole breath, once again we move back to wider and spacious container of attention for our experience.

In the space of about 3 minutes our attention goes from wide, to narrow, to wide again. This practice can help to centre and ground you, and to switch you from a place of operating on autopilot, ruminating or stress and anxiety to a calmer present.