Manipulate the breath to, as the Buddha says, "Breathe in and out sensitive to rapture"

"Remember that rapture’s a quality you experience both in body and in mind by how you fashion the body through the way you breathe. This is why Ajaan Lee recommends, at the beginning of the meditation, that you take three or seven good, long, deep in-and-out breaths, and only then think of calming the breath down. And even then, you may not want to calm it down quite yet.

I know some people complain about this part of his method. I remember when I first read about the Buddha’s teaching on the breath meditation, I was told that in yoga you manipulate the breath, but in the Buddhist practice you don’t change the breath at all. And to this day there are people who make this a partisan issue, saying that Ajaan Lee’s method is non-Buddhist — it’s a yoga method, or a brahmanical method — because he manipulates the breath. But nowhere does the Buddha say not to manipulate the breath. In fact, he says, as part of his breath meditation instructions, “Breathe in and out sensitive to rapture; experiencing rapture.” He doesn’t mean simply sitting there, waiting until the rapture somehow comes on its own. You’ve got to induce it.

And you can do that by the way you breathe. How else could you do it? The breath is the only physical function that you can manipulate so easily. So you try long in and short out; get more oxygen into your system."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Energizing Your Meditation"

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