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You’re experiencing the body from within. Throw out your old outside preconceptions, particularly the assumptions that draw on materialism: the idea that you’re primarily matter, and only secondarily conscious.

"Many people have trouble staying with the breath or getting in touch with the breath energies in the body because their conception of how their body works is determined by what they’re told about how it works: what other people can observe; what a doctor says or what a machine can measure about their breath from the outside. But when you’re meditating, you’re not looking at the body from outside. You’re experiencing it from within, and that means throwing out a lot of your old outside preconceptions, particularly the assumptions that draw on materialism: the idea that you’re primarily matter, and only secondarily conscious. If you function totally in a materialistic universe, it’s going to make you suffer. And yet when we come to meditation, even though part of us realizes that materialism is a miserable way of thinking, we still carry a lot of materialistic assumptions into the mind. So turn things around. Awareness comes first, the material world later. You’re exp...
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If the breath feels comfortable, learn to maintain it. It’s okay to be attached to the breath when it’s comfortable.

"If the breath feels comfortable, learn to maintain it. It’s okay to be attached to the breath when it’s comfortable. Desire can also be a good thing, when you learn how to be skillful in what you desire. We tend to think that the Buddha said desire serves no other purpose than to cause suffering, but that isn’t true. Skillful desire, the desire to be skillful, to let go of unskillful mental states, to develop skillful ones, is actually a part of the path. It comes under the factor of right effort." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Don't Listen to This Talk"
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When you have this state of well-being inside the body — with the happiness, the pleasure and the sense of refreshment that can come from that — you can see that it’s a harmless pleasure, a harmless refreshment.

"So, work with the breath right now. Create this state of becoming, because it functions in several ways that are going to be useful on the path. One is that when you have this state of well-being inside the body — with the happiness that comes from that state, the pleasure that comes from that, the sense of refreshment that can come from that — you can see that it’s a harmless pleasure, a harmless refreshment. It’s not like the pleasures of the senses. The pleasures of the senses can get us all wound up in greed, aversion, and delusion, and we end up doing a lot of unskillful things. But the pleasure that comes from breathing in a comfortable way has never led anybody to kill or steal or have illicit sex, to lie or to take intoxicants. It’s a safe pleasure, a nourishing pleasure. So it’s okay to indulge in it. And you realize it’s much better than a lot of the other pleasures you’ve had outside senses. That enables you to step back from the process of how you engage...
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Any part of the body that seems tired or tense, in need of a little refreshment, a little bit of soothing: Let the breath do that.

"When you focus on the breath, try to breathe in a way that feels really refreshing. Think of the breath energizing your entire torso all the way down, and then even beyond the torso down through the legs, down the back. Any part of the body that seems tired or tense, in need of a little refreshment, a little bit of soothing: Let the breath do that." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Goodwill, Gratitude, No Guilt"
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When the defilements are clamoring for instant gratification, you see you’ve got this alternative form of pleasure, the pleasure of concentration, right here, to feed them.

"When the defilements are clamoring for instant gratification, you see you’ve got this alternative form of pleasure, the pleasure of concentration, right here, to feed them. You’ve got this comfortable way of breathing. It’s free. It’s immediate. It’s visceral. Just that fact can help peel away a lot of the appeal of things you were attached to before." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Fourth Noble Truth"
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Walking meditation gets you used to maintaining your center in other activities as well, so that even when you’re engaged in complex activities, even when you’re thinking about things, you can still have a sense of inhabiting the body, being centered within the breath.

"Focus on the breath. Even though you’re walking and looking ahead to make sure you don’t trip over things, you want to maintain the sense of being centered in the breath as much as possible. Don’t let the looking and the walking pull you away from your center. This requires practice, maintaining a center in the midst of movement. This is important for two main reasons. One, as I said just now, is that it gets you used to maintaining your center in other activities as well, so that even when you’re engaged in complex activities, even when you’re thinking about things, you can still have a sense of inhabiting the body, being centered within the breath. You may have so many other things going on that you can’t keep track of when the breath is coming in or going out, but you should be able to maintain a sensitivity to the energy tone in the body — where it’s relaxed, where it’s tight, what you can do to keep it relaxed and comfortable in all situations. You’re inhabiting the body. Yo...
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We do walking meditation to keep that sense of fullness, refreshment, pleasure going no matter what we do.

"As you walk down the street, be sensitive to the breath. Learn how to watch your perceptions. Notice what there is along the street that pulls you out. This is easier to see if you’re walking down the street with that sense of fullness. Can you maintain it while you’re walking? This is one of the reasons we do walking meditation: to keep that sense of fullness, refreshment, pleasure going no matter what we do. Try to develop a sense of a steady center." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Fabrication at the Breath"
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