If you find that you’ve slipped off, just come right back and breathe in a healing way again. When you come back, reward yourself with an especially good breath, one that feels really, really satisfying.

"So each time you breathe in, think: healing breath. Each time you breathe out, it’s a healing breath. It’s a breath combined with your alertness and your patient mindfulness, knowing that sometimes the effects will take time but, hey, it’s better than not having these skills at all. If you find that you’ve slipped off, just come right back and breathe in a healing way again. When you come back, reward yourself with an especially good breath, one that feels really, really satisfying. Just pose the question in mind: What kind of breathing would feel really gratifying right now? Allow the body to breathe in that way.

And of course, when it breathes that way once, why stop with once? Ask yourself again: What kind of breathing would feel good now? How about now? Each breath coming, in going out, ask yourself: Where would this breath feel best? After all, the breath is a whole-body process. When you breathe in, the entire nervous system is involved — part of it more blatantly than others, but the whole nervous system is involved.

So if you have a feeling that the whole body is breathing in coordination — it’s breathing in in harmony, breathing out in harmony — that harmony has a lot to do with the healing effect here. When the mind stays here and isn’t jumping around all over the place, it has a healing effect on the body, and then the mind itself gets healed by this process, too.

So think of this as a medical treatment that you can take with you wherever you go. It’s always available because the breath is always here. As long as you’re alive, here is the breath right here."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Healing Skills"

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