Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"If you give the breath an hour to do its healing work, totally opening up the body to allow the breath to bathe every nerve out to every pore, you know that you’ll come out at the end of the hour with a body and mind in much better shape. The body will be soothed; the mind, bright and alert. And you don’t need to stop being bathed in the breath when the hour is up. You can keep it going in all your activities. That way, even though you may not be armed with a whole set of plans for facing the future, at least you’re in a position where you don’t need that kind of armor. You’ve got the armor of a healthy body and mind. You’ve got an invisible armor: the force-field of this all-encompassing breath, continually streaming out from your center to every pore, protecting you on all sides. That’s something you feel in every cell of your body, something you know for sure, for you can sense it all around you, right here, right now. And you know that whatever the future brings

"You need a higher pleasure, a more refined pleasure, a pleasure that can saturate your whole sense of the body to compare with the pleasure that comes from sensuality. This is why it’s important that you develop a sense of ease and well-being inhabiting your body, relaxing the different parts of the body, easing the breath energy throughout the different parts of the body, getting the breath energy to feel good and allowing it to spread, and then enjoying it. That’s an important tool for prying you loose from your sensual desires." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Fires of Sensuality"

"The steps in this second tetrad are these: You train yourself to breathe in and out sensitive to rapture, to breathe in and out sensitive to pleasure, to breathe in and out sensitive to mental fabrication — which are your feelings and perceptions — and then to breathe in and out calming mental fabrication. With regard to the first step, of inducing rapture, note that the word for rapture here, pīti, can also mean refreshment. In some instances and for some people, these sensations will be strong and clearly rapturous, even ecstatic. For others, they will be gentler and simply refreshing. This is not a measure of the power of your concentration. It’s simply an indicator of how much energy your body has been lacking, and how it responds when the energy becomes more full. The Buddha says elsewhere that the kind of rapture you’re trying to induce here is both physical and mental. You induce physical rapture or fullness by the way you breathe; you induce mental rapture by the percept

Question: If I correctly understood your teaching this morning, the breath should be a pleasant flow, with no holding or pressing, etc. In yoga practice, there is kapalbhati breathing and alternate-nostril breathing, where we hold the breath for 16, 20, or even more counts, which is not always pleasant. How is this breathing technique related to meditative breathing? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: The technique we’re teaching here is basically designed to get the mind energized through the processes of bodily and mental fabrication and then get it to calm down with a sense of ease. In other words, the main emphasis is on the effect on the mind. We do it as a means for giving rise to insight and tranquility together. As for the yoga technique, that’s mainly for the sake of bodily health. But you can also use the Ajaan Lee technique for bodily health as well. He himself discovered this technique after he had had a heart attack deep in the forest, and he was able to recover from the heart attack

"When you begin meditating, there’s a sense that the breath is coming into the body from outside. After a while, though, you develop a sensitivity to how the breath energy actually originates inside the body: the only thing coming from outside is the air. This is in line with the Buddha’s way of analyzing the breath: He doesn’t say that it’s a tactile sensation felt at the skin. Instead, it’s part of the wind property in the body itself: the flow of energy in the body as felt from within. So look into the body to see where the breath seems to originate. Ajaan Lee talks about “resting spots” of the breath — the tip of the nose, the middle of the head, the base of the throat, the tip of the breastbone, above the navel — but there are other possible spots as well. Focus attention on wherever the breath seems to originate, and think of breath energy radiating effortlessly from that spot. If there are any feelings of tension that seem to get in the way of that radiating energy, think o

Question: In the teachings called The Basics, you talk about the possibility of comparing our attitudes to the breath to those of the brahmavihāras . The tensions that I feel in my body have developed so that in the course of my practice they now occupy principally only one part of the body. So in reciting the names of the brahmavihāras like a mantra, I find that I can address myself a bit to both sides. That permits me to better stay in contact with this difference between the two sides of the body. Is it possible that a chant that you recite internally is one of the tools you can use in meditation? And is it wise to choose a tool specifically for the difficulty you’re encountering? If so, could you please give me some examples? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: There are times when chanting a particular word will help, and this will vary from person to person. But when I talked about using the brahmavihāras or comparing them to your approach to the breath, I was thinking not only of the names