When there’s a catch in the breath, a tightness in the chest, a tightness in the stomach, or your hands or arms begin to tense up, you know something’s wrong — a new emotion has appeared in the mind.

"Being in touch with the breath gives the mind a sense of being “at home” no matter where it is. Wherever you go, the breath is there. The sense of fullness that comes from learning how to breathe with a sense of the whole body gives a strong sense of nourishment both to the body and to the mind.

And you find that you’re hungering less for specific things to happen. Your sense of wanting people to say things like this or act like that gets loosened up quite a bit. When people say things that don’t strike you as proper, don’t strike you as what you want, then you’re not all that upset about it. It’s almost as if in the past you were looking for food from other people and you had to accept whatever scraps they spit in your direction. Of course you got upset when they gave you garbage. But now you don’t need food from anyone else. The mind is getting its nourishment right here simply through breathing. So what other people serve up to you or spit at you is no longer a big issue, because you don’t need their food. You’ve got your own food, your own nourishment, right here.

At the same time, you’re more in touch with the mind’s reactions to things. You’ll notice, say, when there’s a catch in the breath, a tightness in the chest, a tightness in the stomach, or your hands or arms begin to tense up. You know something’s wrong — a new emotion has appeared in the mind.

If you don’t have the time to deal with that emotion immediately, you can just breathe through it in the same way that you breathe through any sense of tightness or tension in the body as you’re sitting here meditating. It helps to dissipate the antsy feeling that you’ve got to get that anger, or whatever it is, out of your system by saying something or doing something. You don’t have to say or do anything. Just breathe right through the feeling and let it dissipate out. That way, the tense, nervous energy is gone.

Then you have the chance to look at the purely mental side of what’s going on. Are you angry? Are you afraid? What’s the emotion that made a change in the body? And what’s the best thing to do right now? Once you’re free from the feeling that you’ve got to get something out of your system, you can act in a much more reasonable, much more appropriate way."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Sensitize Yourself"

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