Skillfully feed the demand for immediate pleasure just by the way you breathe

"So that the breath energy flows smoothly throughout the entire body, that’s your work. And the work gives rise to the results: a sense of ease, fullness, refreshment.

That sense of well-being helps you an awful lot, because it makes it easier to do the right thing. When you have a sense of well-being you can tap into at any time, you’re not so hungry to go after unskillful ideas or unskillful motives or impulses. The reason we go after unskillful things is because part of the mind demands a hit of pleasure right away. So you try to feed that demand in a more skillful way, just by the way you breathe.

This is a huge area of our awareness that most of us don’t take advantage of. When the body feels uncomfortable, we just accept the fact that it’s uncomfortable and we look outside for some ease to distract ourselves. But many times that lack of comfort can be changed simply by the way you breathe. So here’s free medicine. Take advantage of it. It doesn’t cost anything and it can prevent you from doing a lot of unskillful things, as you find that this sense of well-being makes unskillful things seem unattractive."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Legacy of Strengths"

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