The tip of the nose doesn’t give you much in terms of pleasure or pain as you breathe in and breathe out. Those are the things you’ll notice further down in the body, say, in the chest, in the abdomen, the diaphragm, the shoulders — the parts that are really sensitive to how the breath feels.

"I’ve been running into a group of doctrinaire people who say that you have to focus on the tip of the nose and nowhere else. Otherwise you’re destroying the religion, they say, which is pretty extreme. The thing is that the tip of the nose doesn’t give you much in terms of pleasure or pain as you breathe in and breathe out. Those are the things you’ll notice further down in the body, say, in the chest, in the abdomen, the diaphragm, the shoulders — the parts that are really sensitive to how the breath feels. If you can stay steadily with an area that’s sensitive like that, the breath will have to become more refined, more comfortable. It’s when you’re not paying careful attention to the breath that it can get rough, harsh, or restricted."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "An Island in the Flood"

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