Instruction for BAM: Breath Awareness Meditation

Instructions for BAM

The body breath naturally.  Let’s call this the natural breath.
My mind can tell my body to breath or hold the breath.  Let’s call this the intentional breath.
In BAM, the instructions is simply to wait and pay attention to the happenings of the natural breath.
In doing so the mind is yielding to the natural functioning of the body and for an instant I can experience a gap in my train of thoughts.  BAM is the practice of patiently waiting with curiosity for each natural breath to happen and simply taking note of the newness of each breath.  With practice this gap in the stream of thoughts will gradually widen and allow an increased ability to still and redirect thoughts to fully experience the vividness of each moment and new perspectives.

The result is a gradually increased ability to pay attention to the here and now.  In my opinion, the ability to pay attention to self-management is the most important factor in the prevention and management of most chronic physical and mental conditions:

Infections, Inflammations, Intestinal conditions, Obesity, Diabetes, Hypertension, High cholesterol, Heart attacks, Strokes, Kidney failures, Arthritis, Neurological conditions, Eye conditions, Memory loss, etc. )
chronic mental conditions (childhood attention deficit disorders, behaviour disorders, eating disorders, self-harming behavior, anxiety, OCD, depression, etc.)
chronic pain conditions (neck pain, back pain, myofascial pain syndromes, fibromyalgia, etc.)