{"id":358,"date":"2025-11-18T14:55:26","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T19:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opentextbooks.concordia.ca\/contemplative-pedagogy\/?post_type=chapter&p=358"},"modified":"2026-03-24T09:51:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T13:51:36","slug":"arriving-breathing-focusing-practice","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbooks.concordia.ca\/contemplative-pedagogy\/chapter\/arriving-breathing-focusing-practice\/","title":{"raw":"Arriving\/breathing\/focusing practice","rendered":"Arriving\/breathing\/focusing practice"},"content":{"raw":"

Donetta Hines<\/h4>\r\n
\r\n\r\nCategory \/ branch (in the tree of contemplative practices<\/a>):<\/strong> Stillness and Ritual\/Cyclical\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
\r\n\r\nThis is my adaptation of two practices that I first experienced thanks to others: Susy Molgora, my yoga instructor, and Beth Sherman, a presenter on my \u201cMindfulness in Writing and Literature classrooms Roundtable\u201d at the 2020 Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention, and contributor to the special cluster of mindfulness in writing and literature classroom articles I subsequently co-edited in Modern Language Studies.<\/a>\r\n\r\nSusy begins each yoga class with a series of mindful mind-body-breath arriving phrases. When I began practicing yoga with Susy, I\u2019m not sure how many times I heard the phrases until one day, their power suddenly became clear to me\u2014in my mind and my body. I realized that up to that moment, I had only been partially present in my yoga classes. Although my body had been present in the class, my form would frequently need adjusting because my mind was still elsewhere, thinking about the classes I would teach later that day, recalling a conversation with someone, planning dinner or errands, etc. Until one day, the power of Susy\u2019s affirmations crystallized and I \u201cgave myself permission\u201d to fully focus my mind on Susy\u2019s guiding prompts and to fully feel my body as it experienced each moment, pose, micro adjustment, and flow of yoga. I still remember how amazing that \u201cfirst\u201d fully present yoga class felt, finally understanding how yoga fosters full presence by integrating body and mind and why Susy repeated the same phrases each class. To this day, I tell myself these phrases for all my activities and notice a marked increase in my presence and focus.\r\n\r\nI resonated with Beth\u2019s basic breathing practice after experiencing it and learning that she used at the beginning of her first-year undergraduate writing courses with students who had little to no prior experience with mindfulness practices, similar to my teaching context at the time. One key difference was that Beth and Susy were both seasoned practitioners, and I was just beginning to offer explicit mindfulness practices in my online courses and looking for ways to feel safe, comfortable, and experienced enough to begin.\r\n\r\nWith Susy and Beth\u2019s permission, I adapted their practices for my online classes on Zoom (classZooms) first; after all, it was Fall 2020, in the midst of\u00a0 COVID-19 restrictions, and I sensed that my students and I could benefit from mindfulness for its potential to enhance presence, attention, focus, connection, self-regulation, and embodiment in our sudden and ongoing social and physical isolation and seemingly disembodied teaching and learning environments. (See note below about adapting for in-person contexts).\r\n\r\nFor me the invitation to close email, browsers, and unneeded windows, silence phone, allow outside and past\/future things and people to \u201cwait\u201d really helps me transition and settle into the space and focus my mind, energy, and attention for the people in the room and tasks of the day. Especially when I first started contemplative practices in the classroom, these arriving phrases also prepared me to further settle my mind and body, readying and relaxing me enough to be able to guide my new students (many of whom were completely new to meditation!) with the breathing\/focusing lines. Even when combined, these practices are short enough to constitute an accessible starting practice for anyone new to this form of contemplation\/mindfulness yet valuable for anyone more experienced, in a similar way that every yoga practice includes a mountain pose or downward dog.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Cultural or historical origins<\/h1>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
\r\n\r\nAlthough basic breath practices are widely recognized as originating in\/from spiritual practices and traditions in Buddhism and Hinduism, they have been introduced to secular Western mindfulness by Buddhist leaders like Thich Nhat Han and the Dalai Lama and by Western teachers and scholars, including Sharon Salzberg and Daniel Siegel. Many in Judaism, Christianity, and other faith traditions have also claimed deep resonances with the culturally and historically Buddhist and Hindu practices. My practice here aligns more closely to secularized versions, with deep gratitude and respect for the traditions from which they emerge and with which they resonate.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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What to be aware of<\/h1>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
\r\n\r\nTrauma-informed research, such as that of Gabor Mat\u00e9, and pedagogy, such as that of David Treleaven, have revealed and increased awareness of the ways past experiences of trauma are \u201ctriggered\u201d and re-experienced in our bodies and our breathing. Since a \u201cbreathing practice\u201d like the one I offer here uses the breath as the explicit focus, or anchor, of the practice, I also offered trauma-informed adjustments\/alternatives before and during the practice:\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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