As Ajaan Lee pointed out, you can really get the mind into a good state of concentration if you change the way the mind thinks of the breathing process and labels the different sensations going through the body.

"You focus on the breath coming in and going out. As you do that, there’s always the question of which of your sensations in the body right now are related to the breath. A lot of it depends on your perception, the way you conceive of the breath. If you think of the body as a big bellows, and the breath simply as the air coming in and out, you’re going to have one series of perceptions around the breath. You’ve got this solid body, or this relatively solid body, which can’t be permeated by breath just like the bellow is not, and then there’s the big space inside where the breath comes in, goes out the tiny nozzle. That’s one way of perceiving the breath.

But then you notice that there are these other feelings that flow through the body as you breathe in and breathe out. What are you going to do with them? Are they useful to focus on or not? As Ajaan Lee pointed out, you can really get the mind into a good state of concentration if you focus on them as “breath” as well. In other words, you change your perception. You change the way the mind thinks of the breathing process and labels the different sensations going through the body."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Coming into the Present"

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