The breath isn’t just in and out. There’s the breath energy that flows up as you breathe in; there’s the breath energy that flows down as you breathe in. Try to balance things so it doesn't flow up too much or down too much.

"Find a spot in the body where you feel that you can easily settle down and stay here. It might be in the middle of the head, the middle of the chest, the abdomen, anywhere in the body where you feel that your attention can settle in settle in, settle down, and begin to fit together. All the scattered little parts of your mind come together and they click into place.

So you’re fully here with the breath. You can fully observe it, get more acquainted with it, in all its many aspects. After all, the breath isn’t just in and out. There’s the breath energy that flows up as you breathe in; there’s the breath energy that flows down as you breathe in. If it flows up too much, you tend to get a headache. If it flows down too much, you get drowsy. So try to balance things. There’s breath energy that comes in from the back, breath energy that comes in from the front. As you get more sensitive to it, you begin to realize there is breath energy that’s constantly waiting to come into the pores of your skin, so that you don’t have to pull it in. The more the different energies in the body get connected, the less you have to breathe. They nourish one another. They connect with one another, so that the body can get more and more still, and the mind can experience an even greater sensation of stillness."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Befriending the Breath"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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"
Read more

You can float and be buoyant, but stay in place. There’s a sense of lightness and buoyancy, so keep that sense of lightness, but stay where you are.

"Breathe in such a way that there’s no holding on, so that things are allowed to flow smoothly. The breath flows smoothly, the blood flows smoothly, and there’s a sense of ease all the way through the breathing process. Some people at this point begin to get a sense of floating, but try not to drift out. You can float and be buoyant, but stay in place. There’s a sense of lightness and buoyancy, so keep that sense of lightness, but stay where you are. You’ve learned to breathe in such a way that the whole body feels at ease throughout the in-breath and out-breath. Try to maintain that sense of awareness of the whole body, and let the pleasure radiate out through the body. Just learn how to maintain that, to stick with it. If you find yourself losing focus when you open up your range of awareness to the whole body, go back to surveying the body spot by spot, section by section, and then try settling down with the whole body again. You may find yourself going back and forth like this
Read more

Keep the sense of relaxation in your feet and hands as steady as possible by comparing one side to the other

"No matter how the breath is cycling through the rest of the body, keep the sense of relaxation in your feet and your hands as steady as possible. It doesn’t have to be an enormous relaxation, just enough for you to know that it’s more relaxed than before. One way of checking it is to compare one hand to the other, one foot to the other. See which one is more tense and then allow it to relax as much as the other one." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Grass at the Gate" (Meditations3)
Read more