Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"You have to treat your experience of the breath, not as an end in itself, but as a tool for understanding the role of perception in creating suffering and stress. You do this by de-perception: questioning your assumptions about breathing, deliberately changing those assumptions, and observing what happens as a result." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "De-perception"

"The breath is something that’s always there and always immediately relevant to whatever is going on in the mind. If there’s anger in the mind, the breath gets involved. If there’s lust, the breath gets involved. If there’s fear, the breath gets involved. When you’re sleepy, the breath gets involved. When you’re anxious, restless, the breath gets involved. And although there are times when it’s hard to grab hold of the issues going through the mind, it’s a lot easier to focus on the breath. It’s like two sides of the same coin. There’s the mental side and there’s the physical side. We work first on things from the physical side, because it’s easier to see and easier to work with. There’s in and there’s out. There can be a long in, and short in, or long out, short out. Fast, slow, heavy, light. It may not seem like much to work with, but as you get more and more in touch with the breath, you find that you get a better and better sense of precisely which kind of breathing is good fo...

"When there’s fear, you can try using the breath to deal with fear. Get in touch with the physical side of the fear and breathe right through it. Notice how the breath can help deal with boredom, how it can help deal with illness, how it can help deal with pain. There’s a lot to explore here. And as the possibilities of the breath capture your imagination, you find that this skill is useful, not only when you’re trying to sit with your eyes closed, but also wherever the present may be, wherever you may be in the present. Whatever the context, whatever the situation, you find that the breath has something to offer — if you explore it. And to explore it, you have to get a sense that it can capture your imagination. It gives you that kind of challenge, along with the sense of reward that comes when you’ve explored something and discovered something new, a valuable skill." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Imagine" (Meditations1)

"Think of the breath and try to keep the breath in mind: That’s mindfulness, the keeping-in-mind part. You have to start out with the intention that you’re going to stay with the breath all the way in with the in-breath, all the way out with the out-breath — and then with the next breath and then the next. But take it one breath at a time. If you start thinking about how many breaths you’re going to have to follow in the course of the hour, you’ll lose it. You’ve got just this one breath right now. Then watch what’s going on. That’s alertness, to see how the breath feels, and also be alert to notice when the mind is beginning to wander off. If it wanders off, bring it right back. That’s the beginning of the quality called ardency. In other words, you really do want to work at doing this meditation skillfully. So when the mind wanders off, you don’t let it take a long time to wander around before it comes back. As soon as you catch it wandering off, you don’t even have to let the t...

"You’re going to stay right here at the breath. You can’t wander off, can’t go anyplace else. And like the elephant with its forest memories and forest desires, the mind is going to stray. But if you treat it right, if you feed the elephant properly, play nice flute music in its ears, after a while it’ll like being next to the post. When it settles down next to the post, then you can train it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Slowing Down to Look"

"So it’s important that you have a good, solid place to stay right here in the present moment. You’re not running off into some corner and hiding out from things. You’re just staying right here in the present moment, trying to develop a sense of a center where you feel at ease, where you feel solid. Then you can look at things for what they are without feeling threatened by them. So it’s important to be able to relax around the breath in the present moment, to get a sense of ease, well-being, a sense of being nourished and healed by the breath. But it’s also important to learn how to use that new center you’ve developed, to see even deeper into the way the mind causes itself unnecessary stress and suffering, because that act of seeing leads to where the real freedom lies." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Basic Breath, Basic Insight"

"So if you give the mind something good to feed on — like the comfortable sensation of the breath coming in and going out — the mind has a good source of nourishment. As it gets a taste of comfort, you begin to notice when it’s not comfortable. Often that discomfort is associated with unskillful states of mind arising: anger, greed, jealousy, fear. These things will cause a change in the breath. If you’re there with the breath and you’re used to having it comfortable, you notice these changes immediately. They’ll alert you to the fact that something’s gone wrong in the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Survival Tactics"

"So notice, when you breathe long right now, is it pleasant? If it’s not, you can change. Make it shorter or in long, out short; in short, out long. From there you can extrapolate — heavy, light, fast, slow, deep, shallow. Then as the body gets energized by the breath, you want to spread your awareness to fill the whole body, because you want that sense of energy to suffuse the body along with this sense of pleasure. Then, when everything feels nicely energized by the breath, the breath energy in the body feels full, you can allow the breath to calm down." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Psychology of Harmlessness"

"Breath energy in the body has lots to offer. On the physical side, it can relieve a lot of stress, a lot of diseases associated with stress. On the mental side, it can create a sense of ease and belonging here in the present moment so that you enjoy being right here just breathing in and breathing out. When you get on more friendly terms with the breath, and the breath becomes your friend, then you're more inclined to want to stay, to see what you can learn from the breath." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Basics" (Meditations2)

"Is there anybody out there that you can’t wish that happiness for? Learn how to straighten your thoughts out around this issue. When you can do that, it’s a lot easier to settle down with the breath or whatever your topic of meditation is. Otherwise, there are going to be simmering resentments that don’t allow you the measure of happiness that you could find if you could let go of them. So you’ve got to check out your mind to see what needs to be taken care of. If there are areas of unfinished business in terms of resentment or whatever, take care of them and then settle down with the breath. But here again, the instructions are not cast in stone. Sometimes it’s hard to feel goodwill [mettā] for others unless you can have some sense of well-being or refreshment inside yourself. So work on the breath first until that feels good, then you can start thinking about goodwill for others." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "No One Size Fits All"

"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)