The breath has the potential to get the mind into a state of concentration where there's pleasure and rapture filling the body

"The breath has a lot of potential. As the Buddha said, it can get the mind into a state of concentration where there’s full mindfulness, full alertness, awareness filling the body. And before you get there, there’s pleasure filling the body, rapture filling the body. It’s all in this constricted area right here: just your awareness with a body. It does have those potentials. There are also the potentials of the mind that are applied here, where you can watch to see how the mind fashions its experiences with its perceptions, with its ways of talking to itself. You can fashion them in all kinds of ways. But you want to fashion them in a way that leads the mind to want to settle down.

These potentials are all here. Just be confident that they are, and then learn to look for them. But it’s important as you’re doing concentration that you do restrict yourself here. That forces you to make the most of what you’ve got."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Success with Breathing"

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