Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"As the Buddha said, when you get involved in other meditation topics, unskillful states can sometimes arise, in which case you should always come back to the breath. He compared it to the beginning of the rainy season in India. During the hot season everything is dry with lots and lots of dust in the air. But when the first rains come, they wash all the dust out of the air and leave the air very clean, clear, and refreshing. The same way with breath meditation: When you do it right, it can clear the mind, refresh the mind, wash away all its dust." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Breath All the Way" (Meditations6)

"If you want to bring the mind to concentration, the breath can be very soothing. If it’s not soothing to begin with, you can make it that way. It’s a good bodily process to work with. If you’re feeling tense, you can breathe in a way that’s relaxing. If you’re feeling tired, you can breathe in a way that’s energizing. It’s a good way of bringing things into balance." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Your Secret Foundation"

"Your frame of reference is just this: the breath coming in and going out; your sense of the body right here, right now. Think of the breath cleaning out all the parts of the breath energy in the body that haven’t been ventilated for a while. We tend to have stagnant areas in different parts of the body, so make a survey. See which parts are not getting as much breath as the other parts. Wherever there’s a sense of blockage or a sense of things tightening up, loosen it up. Remind yourself that the breath can go through anything. It’s like cosmic rays that can cut through rock. The breath can go through anything in the body: the bones, old tight muscles. Try to notice which muscles you tend to tighten up just to hold the body erect. Can you keep the body erect while loosening them? Try to figure out which patterns of tightness in the body are totally unnecessary right now." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Free for the Time Being"

"The breath has one narrative: It’s in and it’s out, it’s comfortable and it’s not. That’s it. Not much of a narrative. And it’s a great dissolver for the narratives the mind spins for itself. Once the mind spins its narratives, it snares itself, like a spider caught in its own web. Someone once said that the universe [of our lives] isn’t made out of atoms, it’s made out of stories." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Meaning of the Body" (Meditations3)

"Someone asked me the other day what I found interesting in the breath. And I said, “There’s just so much to explore in the area of how your awareness relates to this physical body here. How is it that it can move the body? Why is it that your perceptions change the way you sense the body? How does this all work?” If you’re interested in these questions — and how can you not be interested? — the breath is the ideal interface for watching the relationship between body and mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Sport of Wise People" (Meditations8)

"The reason the breath seems mechanical is because you’re not really sensitive to what you’re doing. You’re not giving it your full attention, your full sensitivity. Think of meditation as listening to a piece of music you’d like to hear, but it’s far away, so you have to make yourself really quiet and really sensitive. Learn how to be a real connoisseur of the breath." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Full Attention"

"Someone raised the question, “What is this business about spreading breath energies throughout the body? The Buddha never said anything about breath energies.” Well, there are a lot of things the Buddha didn’t say about the practice. He sketched out the main outlines. It’s for us to fill in the details. For instance, there’s that passage where he says that when you get the mind to settle down with a sense of pleasure and rapture and fullness around your object, you should spread that well-being through the body. But he doesn’t say how. This is where Ajaan Lee’s teachings on spreading the breath energy are really useful. They give you some ideas to explore for how you could use the breath energy to spread the pleasure and rapture around so that you can have body, feelings of pleasure, and mind all together right here." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Significance"

“When you focus on the breath, measure things by how much pleasure you feel. If both the breath and the mind feel pleasant, you’re doing okay. If either the breath or the mind feels uncomfortable, that’s when you have to make adjustments.” ~ Ajaan Fuang Jotiko, "Awareness Itself" compiled and translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

"What does this flow of energy feel like as it comes through the body? What kind of flow would the body like to feel right now? Do you know? Can you tell? Most of us live within the body for how many years, and we don’t know what kind of breathing the body would like to do, what would feel good for the body to do right now. So take some time to explore, to get acquainted with it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "New Feeding Habits for the Mind"

"The second question is, “As you’re focusing on the breath, why do you mess around with the breath? Why don’t you just leave it alone?” The answer is that it’s very hard to leave the breath alone because the breath is an intentional process in the body. It’s what the Buddha calls bodily fabrication, and we have a lot of issues with the breath. Often we don’t realize it, but they’re there. You can start digging them up as you meditate. You find that as you work with the breath energy in certain parts of the body, memories come up. Attitudes come up. Emotions come up, because the way you breathe is an important part of the emotions. There was once a teacher who heard that one of my former students was working on the breath this way. He said to her, “Why are you fooling around with the breath? Why are you trying to straighten out the breath? The breath is just a fabrication. It’s just a sankhara.” She mentioned that to me, and I told her that if he had said that to me, I would have...

"The breath comes in, goes out, keeps us alive, and for most people that’s it. But the Buddha found that by focusing attention on his breath, breathing in different ways to help the mind to settle down — energizing it when it needs energizing, calming it when it needs calming — that was his path to awakening. So there’s a lot of potential right here. Take some time to explore it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Potentials Past & Present"

"If you give the breath an hour to do its healing work, totally opening up the body to allow the breath to bathe every nerve out to every pore, you know that you’ll come out at the end of the hour with a body and mind in much better shape. The body will be soothed; the mind, bright and alert. And you don’t need to stop being bathed in the breath when the hour is up. You can keep it going in all your activities. That way, even though you may not be armed with a whole set of plans for facing the future, at least you’re in a position where you don’t need that kind of armor. You’ve got the armor of a healthy body and mind. You’ve got an invisible armor: the force-field of this all-encompassing breath, continually streaming out from your center to every pore, protecting you on all sides. That’s something you feel in every cell of your body, something you know for sure, for you can sense it all around you, right here, right now. And you know that whatever the future brings...

"You need a higher pleasure, a more refined pleasure, a pleasure that can saturate your whole sense of the body to compare with the pleasure that comes from sensuality. This is why it’s important that you develop a sense of ease and well-being inhabiting your body, relaxing the different parts of the body, easing the breath energy throughout the different parts of the body, getting the breath energy to feel good and allowing it to spread, and then enjoying it. That’s an important tool for prying you loose from your sensual desires." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Fires of Sensuality"

"The steps in this second tetrad are these: You train yourself to breathe in and out sensitive to rapture, to breathe in and out sensitive to pleasure, to breathe in and out sensitive to mental fabrication — which are your feelings and perceptions — and then to breathe in and out calming mental fabrication. With regard to the first step, of inducing rapture, note that the word for rapture here, pīti, can also mean refreshment. In some instances and for some people, these sensations will be strong and clearly rapturous, even ecstatic. For others, they will be gentler and simply refreshing. This is not a measure of the power of your concentration. It’s simply an indicator of how much energy your body has been lacking, and how it responds when the energy becomes more full. The Buddha says elsewhere that the kind of rapture you’re trying to induce here is both physical and mental. You induce physical rapture or fullness by the way you breathe; you induce mental rapture by the percept...

Question: If I correctly understood your teaching this morning, the breath should be a pleasant flow, with no holding or pressing, etc. In yoga practice, there is kapalbhati breathing and alternate-nostril breathing, where we hold the breath for 16, 20, or even more counts, which is not always pleasant. How is this breathing technique related to meditative breathing? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: The technique we’re teaching here is basically designed to get the mind energized through the processes of bodily and mental fabrication and then get it to calm down with a sense of ease. In other words, the main emphasis is on the effect on the mind. We do it as a means for giving rise to insight and tranquility together. As for the yoga technique, that’s mainly for the sake of bodily health. But you can also use the Ajaan Lee technique for bodily health as well. He himself discovered this technique after he had had a heart attack deep in the forest, and he was able to recover from the heart attack ...

"When you begin meditating, there’s a sense that the breath is coming into the body from outside. After a while, though, you develop a sensitivity to how the breath energy actually originates inside the body: the only thing coming from outside is the air. This is in line with the Buddha’s way of analyzing the breath: He doesn’t say that it’s a tactile sensation felt at the skin. Instead, it’s part of the wind property in the body itself: the flow of energy in the body as felt from within. So look into the body to see where the breath seems to originate. Ajaan Lee talks about “resting spots” of the breath — the tip of the nose, the middle of the head, the base of the throat, the tip of the breastbone, above the navel — but there are other possible spots as well. Focus attention on wherever the breath seems to originate, and think of breath energy radiating effortlessly from that spot. If there are any feelings of tension that seem to get in the way of that radiating energy, think o...

Question: In the teachings called The Basics, you talk about the possibility of comparing our attitudes to the breath to those of the brahmavihāras . The tensions that I feel in my body have developed so that in the course of my practice they now occupy principally only one part of the body. So in reciting the names of the brahmavihāras like a mantra, I find that I can address myself a bit to both sides. That permits me to better stay in contact with this difference between the two sides of the body. Is it possible that a chant that you recite internally is one of the tools you can use in meditation? And is it wise to choose a tool specifically for the difficulty you’re encountering? If so, could you please give me some examples? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: There are times when chanting a particular word will help, and this will vary from person to person. But when I talked about using the brahmavihāras or comparing them to your approach to the breath, I was thinking not only of the names...

"We’ve talked for the last couple of days in the Q & A about different ways of working with the breath energy, and it’s important to take some time to explore this aspect of your relationship to your body. What kind of movement of the breath is actually helpful? What kind of movement of the breath makes it more difficult to stay with the body? And learn to play. Take the breath energy in the body as your playground here and be open to new ideas about how the breath energy can move. You’ll notice, in Ajaan Lee’s basic instructions, that he talks about the breath energy going down the spine and down the legs as you breathe in. But it can also do that as you breathe out. There are other times when he talks about the breath energy starting in the soles of the feet, coming up the legs and up the spine, in the other direction. You may read in manuals on Tai Chi that there’s an energy circle running from the navel down to the spot between the legs and then back up the spine, and down...

"Years back, I knew someone who was going to study in Thailand and she’d been practicing Ajaan Lee’s method. She was staying with an ajaan who didn’t have any background in Ajaan Lee’s method, and he told her, “Why are you adjusting the breath? It’s just a fabrication.” She told me that, and my response, although I didn’t say it to him, was, “Well, why are you washing your body? Why do you clean your body? It’s just a fabrication.” You have to take care of these things because they’ll then take care of you. And in taking care of them skillfully, you learn an awful lot about the body and the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Tapping into the Breath" (Meditations9)

"You’re asked to look at your breathing and to ask questions. What feels good? You get to choose. What do you want to do with the breath? You get to choose. What do you do to get the best results out of it, so that there’s a sense of fullness, a sense of ease, pleasure, simply through the way you breathe. How do you do that? You get to explore." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Bowing & Chanting"

"You want to learn how to breathe in a way that’s skillful, comfortable, that feels good inside, feels nourishing inside. Get so that you can tune into that, tap into that, access that, any time of the day. It’s good to stop at random times in the day and ask yourself, “Where’s the comfortable breath right now?” At the very beginning, you can clearly see how you can easily wander away from comfortable breathing, even though it’s so nearby and can do so much good for you. So it’s good to be able to make a resolve: Stop for a second and say, “I’m not going to do anything until I get that comfortable breath back.” Then see how long you can carry it. Because that’s an important tool in counteracting the unskillful members of the [mind's] committee." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Right Resolve & Right Concentration"

"For bodily serenity, you work with the breath. Remember the Buddha’s instructions that once you’re aware of long breathing and short breathing, try to make yourself aware of the whole body and then notice the effect that the breath is having on the body. Then try to make that effect more serene, make it more refined. Try to breathe in a way that’s gentle to the body. This helps to calm things down within the body. All the different processes calm down. Whatever tightness you may feel here or there in the body: Think of it dissolving away. If there’s a sense that the breathing requires a lot of effort, just remind yourself: The breath is going to come in and out on its own. There are pores all over your body. You don’t have to pull it in or push it out. The breath will come in naturally, go out naturally. Any perception you can hold in mind that helps to make the breath easier: Experiment to see what way of picturing the breath to yourself helps to make the process of...

"The more attention you pay to the breath, the more you realize what it can do for you. For most people the breath just keeps them alive, that’s all. But if you pay attention to how the breath feels in the body, you begin to realize that you can breathe in a way that feels good in the stomach, feels good in the chest. This is good for the different organs in your body. Breathe in a way that your shoulders don’t tense up as you breathe in, and you’re not holding on to tension in your shoulders as you breathe out. You can think of whatever tension or tightness or heaviness there is as dissolving away as you breathe out. And you can think of the breathing as a whole-body process. When the texts talk about the breath, it means any sensation of energy, movement, or aliveness in the body. Parts of the breath energy in the body feel still; other parts move. But if you think of them as all being breath, then you don’t create divisions in the body, as when you think of one pa...

"So that the breath energy flows smoothly throughout the entire body, that’s your work. And the work gives rise to the results: a sense of ease, fullness, refreshment. That sense of well-being helps you an awful lot, because it makes it easier to do the right thing. When you have a sense of well-being you can tap into at any time, you’re not so hungry to go after unskillful ideas or unskillful motives or impulses. The reason we go after unskillful things is because part of the mind demands a hit of pleasure right away. So you try to feed that demand in a more skillful way, just by the way you breathe. This is a huge area of our awareness that most of us don’t take advantage of. When the body feels uncomfortable, we just accept the fact that it’s uncomfortable and we look outside for some ease to distract ourselves. But many times that lack of comfort can be changed simply by the way you breathe. So here’s free medicine. Take advantage of it. It doesn’t cost anything ...

"When we focus on the breath, we focus on the sense of movement in the body, the energy-flow. When you breathe in, where does that energy-flow seem to start? How do you know when to stop breathing in? When to start breathing out? Explore these things. The more you explore them, the more you get sensitive to what’s going on here. Instead of sloughing over things and saying “Of course, of course, of course! I know this,” ask yourself, “Well, do you really know it?” A lot of the great discoveries in the history of science happen when people look again in places where everybody thought they knew everything already, and realizing that they didn’t. Think of Isaac Newton. Everybody knew it was the nature of objects to fall. Certain objects fell; other objects didn’t fall. The moon didn’t fall, for instance, which meant, they thought, that the moon was made of something different from, say, apples or rocks. But he asked a question that everybody thought was a stupid question: “Why do th...

"Take some long deep in-and-out breaths. Have the sense that the breath is sweeping through your whole body, from the top of the head down to the tips of your toes. Try to notice where there are any patterns of tension in the body. Allow them to relax and let the breath sweep right through them. Then allow the breath to find a rhythm that feels really comfortable. You can experiment for a while, to see what kind of breathing feels most refreshing. Sometimes shorter breathing is what the body needs, sometimes longer, sometimes deeper, more shallow, heavier or lighter, faster or slower. Try to keep on top of whatever the body needs." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Meditator is a Good Friend to Have"

"Appreciate the simple quality of getting the mind still, finding a sense of ease simply by the way you breathe; gaining a sense of well-being, rapture, equanimity when you need them. In this way, you nourish the mind with good food. That’s right livelihood in the highest sense. It puts you in a position where, while you’re still alive this time around, you weigh lightly on the world around you. And you’re developing the skill so you don’t have to come back and weigh the world down again. This is why the Buddha’s teachings are not selfish. They’re an act of kindness both for you and for the whole world around you." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Right Livelihood" (Meditations4)