It’s not as if you’re up here in your head looking down at the breath in the body. Think of the whole body, from the head on down, being bathed in the breath. You feel the breath; you wear the breath.

"You try to learn which ways of breathing feel good for the body. I’ve had people ask me what kind of breathing is best, and the answer is that you have to figure out for yourself what your body needs right now. What it needs right now may not be what it needs tomorrow, or even at the end of the hour. You have to be on top of what kind of breathing feels good each time you breathe: what kind of feelings you can create by the way you breathe, different feelings of pleasure in different parts of the body. When you have a feeling of pleasure, how do you spread it around?

Think of the image of the bathman kneading water through the dough of the bath powder he’s trying to create. How do you do that in a way where you’re not forcing things too much, one where you allow things to flow? When you force the breath too much — even though it starts out comfortable — the fact that you’re squeezing it too much or pushing it too much turns it into something else. This is a skill you have to learn by observing on your own: What perceptions of the breath, what perceptions of the body, what perceptions of where you are in the body right now in relationship to the breath, are most conducive to getting the mind to settle down?

We talk about watching the breath, and sometimes that’s an unfortunate image. It’s as if you’re up here in your head looking down at the breath in the body. What works much better is to think of the whole body, from the head on down, being bathed in the breath. You feel the breath; you wear the breath."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Learning from Labor"