You can’t place pressure on the breath. As soon as you do, you’re not really focusing on the breath, you’re focusing on the solid or the liquid parts of the body. The breath is something that flows back and forth or stays still, but you can’t catch it. You can simply be aware of where it is.

"Give the mind a chance to settle down, and try to learn just the right amount of pressure to put on the breath to keep it there. For a lot of people, if you could take a picture of what they’re doing to their mind as they’re practicing concentration, it’s as if they’re strangling it, which is why the mind rebels. Other people are just barely touching it, so of course the mind wanders off.

The Canon has an image of holding a baby chick in your hand. If you squeeze the chick too much, it is going to die; if you hold it too loosely, it’s going to fly away. So you have to be sensitive to what’s just the right amount of pressure to place on the breath, to place on the body.

Actually, you can’t place pressure on the breath. As soon as you do, you’re not really focusing on the breath, you’re focusing on the solid or the liquid parts of the body. The breath is something that flows back and forth or stays still, but you can’t catch it. You can simply be aware of where it is. If you’re putting pressure on the breath, it’s usually a sign that you’re putting pressure on the blood flow in your body. So if you find that happening, lighten up a bit. The breath is coming in, the breath is going out on its own, and all you have to do is keep tabs on it, maybe nudge it a little bit here, nudge it little bit there, but just that. Don’t put a lot of pressure on it as you try to change it.

After all, you’re trying to create a sense of ease here in the present moment, and you can’t create ease with a heavy hand. You need a gentle touch but a firm touch, sticking with it. That’s the trick. As Ajaan Fuang used to say, it’s a small thing that you’re doing here, but you have to do it continuously. The phrase works better in Thai because it’s a pun. The word for small is nit, and the word for continually is nit, spelled in a different way, but pronounced the same way.

So it’s a slight effort, a slight amount of pressure, but it’s a pressure you can maintain continually over long periods of time. Just remind yourself: Here is the body, here is energy flowing around, energy flowing on the surface, energy flowing through the body, and you keep tabs on that fact."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Gentle Touch"

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