Be interested in what you’re doing, be intent on what you’re doing. If you see that this is an interesting process — how the energy flows through the body, something you haven’t explored much before — it makes it easier to stick with it.

"We think of the breath coming in from outside, but that’s the air coming in from outside. The breath energy originates in the body. You can think of every cell breathing in, breathing out. Notice where the movement of the energy seems to be smooth and where it seems to be interrupted. Ideally, it should flow smoothly throughout the body. The different organs all get nourished as they’re allowed to breathe in, breathe out.

Where there’s tension or tightness, it’s a sign that the breath is not flowing well. So, we can think of the breath either going through those patterns of tension or, if it’s a line of tension, it either goes through the middle of the line or it starts at one end of the line and goes down the line to the other end.

Allow parts of the body that seem to be starved of breath energy to have their share. Sometimes you have a sense that some of the muscles are doing most of the work of the breathing, and they get tired after a while, so think of the breath coming in other parts of the body. Let the muscles that are doing most of the work have a little vacation, and you’ll find that other muscles will pitch in.

Years back, when I had malaria, I found that the muscles involved in breathing were getting really, really tired. They lacked oxygen because the malaria parasite was eating up all the oxygen in the blood cells. So I thought deliberately of the breath entering in the different spots that Ajaan Lee says are the “resting spots” of the breath: the middle of the forehead; the top of the head; base of the throat; just above the navel. That relieved a lot of the tiredness, as other muscles pitched in.

So, there’s a lot to explore here. This is one of the ways of developing concentration: You develop it through interest. The Pali term, citta, literally means mind, but it can also mean really being interested in what you’re doing, being intent on what you’re doing. If you see that this is an interesting process — how the energy flows through the body, something you haven’t explored much before — it makes it easier to stick with it.

Otherwise, it’s just in-out, in-out, in-out... then the mind is going to go out and stay out. But here’s something very intimately related to your sense of the body as you feel it from within. You come to see that you’re carrying around a lot of tension that you don’t have to, and here’s a way of relieving it.

Nobody’s forcing you to breathe in an uncomfortable way. Think of the breath as free medicine. You can breathe any way you like. You can think of the breath any way you like that you find interesting. If you have any chronic pains or illnesses, ask yourself, “What kind of breathing would be good for that? What would help to relieve the pain or help to treat the illness?”

As Ajaan Lee points out, there are some illnesses that are related to how you breathe. Then there are conditions that come from other causes, but you can still treat them with the breath."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Explore & Experiment"

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