Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"Ajaan Chah says that sometimes your mind will say, “How much longer am I going to sit here?” And your answer should be, “I don’t know. Let’s see. Can I sit with this breath? Can I sit with the next breath?” Sit with one breath at a time and you find after a while that you get a lot of breaths under your belt without you’re having to carry them around or find them oppressive or burdensome." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Four Bases of Success"

"Dealing with pain: Pain tends to get glommed together with the earth element, your sense of solidity in the body. Of course, that makes the pain seem solid. So to get past that, you learn how to question the solidity of the pain. You experience the breath before you experience the pain: Think of it in that way. We have a subconscious tendency, when there’s a pain, to allow the breath energy to flow up to the pain and then stop. Well, that makes it worse. We tighten up around the pain in our childish desire to put a boundary around it, to keep it from spreading, and then the energy can’t go through. We feel that the pain is there first and the breath comes second. So reverse that. The breath is first. The pain is second. And the breath is something other than pain. It’s a physical element, but pain is something else. It’s that sharpness, that heightened sense of displeasure or discomfort. But once you untangle it from the solidity of the body, you begin to realize it...

"Dealing with pain: Pain tends to get glommed together with the earth element, your sense of solidity in the body. Of course, that makes the pain seem solid. So to get past that, you learn how to question the solidity of the pain. You experience the breath before you experience the pain: Think of it in that way. We have a subconscious tendency, when there’s a pain, to allow the breath energy to flow up to the pain and then stop. Well, that makes it worse. We tighten up around the pain in our childish desire to put a boundary around it, to keep it from spreading, and then the energy can’t go through. We feel that the pain is there first and the breath comes second. So reverse that. The breath is first. The pain is second. And the breath is something other than pain. It’s a physical element, but pain is something else. It’s that sharpness, that heightened sense of displeasure or discomfort. But once you untangle it from the solidity of the body, you begin to realize it’s a lot more ...