Sports | Competition

Hi, and welcome to this competition exercise. Now, the idea of this is how do we step out of the busy-ness of the mind and instead find a state of readiness, of flow beyond thought beyond feeling? Now you can do this exercise, either sitting down or standing up with your eyes open or your eyes closed but wherever you are right now just sitting comfortably or standing comfortably just take a moment to settle both the body and the mind. So begin with lightly just to focus on the breath and start just by taking a couple of nice, big, deep breaths breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. As you breathe in you focusing on the sensation of the body, filling with air and as you breathe out, just feeling the muscles soften, the body relax, as you let go. Just taking a couple of breaths like that. And with the next out breath if you choose just gently closing the eyes or just maintaining a very soft focus, the eyes open but not really looking at any one particular thing right now allowing the breath to return to its natural rhythm. As you just focus on the points of contact. So it may be the contact between the body and the chair or the floor, the bench beneath you, maybe the contact between the soles of the feet on the floor. Just noticing the distribution of weight pass, so whether you feel the weight more to the back, to front, to the side, just finding a place of balance where you feel grounded and centered in the body. And as well as focusing on those physical sensations just starting to take in the sounds around you now. So not blocking them out, allowing them in it's almost as though you're settling back into that soundscape just allowing sounds to come and go. And as you just bring the attention now back to the body, and starting to notice that readiness that state of ease of flow in the body, just starting at the top of the head, just working your way down towards the toes, just gently, evenly scanning, noticing how the body's feeling and just centering body, mind on that point of focus as you travel down through the body. And as you become more aware that feeling the sensations in the body just starting to notice now the breathing as well. It's a really good indication of how the mind is behaving, without breathing in any special way just starting to notice how the body is breathing whether the breaths are long or short, deep or shallow just following that movement of breath and either with your eyes closed or just maintaining a very soft focus as you stare into the distance. And having focused the mind in this way, you can either just stay with the breath for just a few moments longer, or if you have your eyes open just...