You’re causing yourself so much unnecessarily suffering even just by the way you breathe. But once someone points out that you can breathe in lot more comfortable ways, you can start exploring that.

"As you get more and more sensitive to the breath, you find that you develop the sensitivity you need to dig deeper into the heart. At the same time, it gives you a sense of exactly how much suffering you’re unnecessarily causing yourself even just by the way you breathe, something we do every day: breathe in, breathe out. Again, it’s just one of those things that’s part of life, but if you turn your attention to the breath and really focus on it, you begin to realize that there are comfortable breaths and uncomfortable breaths. And why on earth would you want to breathe an uncomfortable breath? Nobody’s forcing you. It’s just something you take for granted. But once someone points out, “Hey, you can breathe in a lot more comfortable ways,” you can start exploring that. And as you explore it, you become more sensitive to whole areas of your being in the present moment that you tended to cover up before, tended to ignore.

So this simple technique we have of just being with the breath, allowing the breath to be comfortable as you breathe in, as you breathe out; learning how to take advantage of that sense of comfort, allowing it to spread throughout the body: It’s an extremely important skill, both for bringing the mind to a stronger state of concentration in the present moment, a sense of a good, solid foundation, and for sensitizing yourself to what’s going on. You’re going to need that sensitivity because the movements of the mind are much more subtle than the movements of the breath. First you have to develop your sensitivity with the breath and then you move it into more subtle areas inside the mind itself. That’s where the meditation gets really moving.

So try to have an appreciation for what you’re doing and try to enjoy it as well. Ajaan Fuang would often use the word play with the breath. And it’s precisely what you want to do: You play around with it, the same way a little kid plays around with a guitar. Experiment to see what different ways of breathing are, what they do to the body. And different ways of conceiving the breath: When you think about the breath, what do you think is happening? There’s air coming in and out the nose. But why is it coming in and out of the nose? What’s happening in the body to pull the air in and then allow it to go out? What kind of energy flow is doing this? That also counts as breath. In fact, that’s the level of breath you really want to get in touch with. Where does that come in? Where does it come from? Where does it go?

You’ll find that you have all kinds of different ideas about this. Or maybe you just have one idea about it, but you’ve allowed it to take over. Learn to open your mind to other ways of conceiving and perceiving the breath. Ajaan Lee talks about the breath coming in and out of the back of the skull, in and out the middle of the chest, lots of different spots in the body. Allow yourself to conceive the breath in that way and see what happens to your experience of breathing as you do that."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Power to Transcend Suffering"