Breathing for concentration: 3 minutes, during a break

About this practice

Slow, spoken guidance for concentration. A breathing session you can do during a break. A guided session of about 3 minutes, suited to all levels. Nothing is recorded and no account is needed.

What this works on: concentration

Concentration fails for two reasons: the task is uninteresting, or the body is too activated to hold anything steady. The second one is fixable in minutes.

It tends to show up as:

• Attention sliding off within seconds
• Jumping between tabs
• Feeling physically unable to sit still

Lowering arousal raises the ceiling of what attention can hold. Practice first, then the task.

Doing this on a break

• Leave the room if you can
• Do not start anything else in the same gap
• Set a timer so the break has an end

A break spent half-engaged with a screen is not much of a break. Guard the whole five minutes.

How breathing works

A breathing practice uses the breath as the object of attention and as the control lever. Because exhaling slows the heart through the vagus nerve, it acts on the nervous system directly rather than through thinking.

• Keep the exhale longer than the inhale — that is the active ingredient
• Count the exhales and start again whenever you lose count
• Do not force depth; let the breath find its own level

What happens, minute by minute

1. 0:00Start with the noise that is already in the room. We are not going to try to remove it yet.
2. 0:17If you only manage half of it, that's half more than nothing.
3. 0:30We're going to move through the body in order, roughly from top to bottom.
4. 0:44Let your ribs widen on the in-breath instead of your shoulders lifting.
5. 0:57Follow one full breath from the moment it starts to the moment it ends.
6. 1:11Feel your ankles. Let them be loose.
7. 1:21Picture the difficulty of staying with one thing as a weather front passing over. You are not the weather. You are the sky it moves through.
8. 1:40If the attention that keeps sliding off starts telling you a story, let the story finish without you adding to it.
9. 1:57Notice the small pause before your body decides to breathe in again.
10. 2:10Notice the space around the urge to check something else. It is there, even if it is small. Put your attention in that space.
11. 2:29Notice how you're sitting. Adjust if you need to. Then settle again.
12. 2:42You can be as unimpressive as you like for the next few minutes.
13. 2:55If you drifted off, that was rest, and rest counts.

Questions people ask

Meditation is a practice, not a treatment. If you are dealing with ongoing distress, please also reach out to a professional.