Allowing the breath to be comfortable is an extremely important skill, both for bringing the mind to a stronger state of concentration in the present moment, a sense of a good, solid foundation, and for sensitizing yourself to what’s going on.

"As you get more and more sensitive to the breath, you find that you develop the sensitivity you need to dig deeper into the heart. At the same time, it gives you a sense of exactly how much suffering you’re unnecessarily causing yourself even just by the way you breathe, something we do every day: breathe in, breathe out. Again, it’s just one of those things that’s part of life, but if you turn your attention to the breath and really focus on it, you begin to realize that there are comfortable breaths and uncomfortable breaths. And why on earth would you want to breathe an uncomfortable breath? Nobody’s forcing you. It’s just something you take for granted. But once someone points out, “Hey, you can breathe in a lot more comfortable ways,” you can start exploring that. And as you explore it, you become more sensitive to whole areas of your being in the present moment that you tended to cover up before, tended to ignore.

So this simple technique we have of just being with the breath, allowing the breath to be comfortable as you breathe in, as you breathe out; learning how to take advantage of that sense of comfort, allowing it to spread throughout the body: It’s an extremely important skill, both for bringing the mind to a stronger state of concentration in the present moment, a sense of a good, solid foundation, and for sensitizing yourself to what’s going on."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Power to Transcend Suffering"

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