Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"You’re perfectly free to breathe in any way you like, perfectly free to try deep breathing, say, for a while, to see if it feels really good. There’s nobody out there to say, “Well, you failed that test, or you are not right, this is not as comfortable as it could be.” You’re the one who is gauging the results, and it’s up to you to decide what feels good over the long term. Sometimes you’ll find the rhythm of the breathing will change, as your physical condition changes, as the mind begins to settle down. Other times you’ll find there is a fairly steady rate that feels good, and all you have to do is stay with that steady rate. But it is entirely up to you. After all, this is a time for the mind to look after itself, and so it has the freedom to decide what to do with the breath." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Our Primary Responsibility"

"Get the mind really to settle down and be at ease with one object: the breath. Think of the breath as the energy flowing through the body that helps the air come in and out of the lungs. And you can look at that flow of energy anywhere in the body. Take a couple of good, long, deep in-and-out breaths and notice: Where do you feel that energy flow most prominently? Focus there. And then ask yourself if it feels good. If the way you’re breathing right now doesn’t feel good, you can change it. Make it longer, shorter, or in-long out-short, in-short out-long, fast, slow, heavy or light. There are lots of ways you can adjust your breathing. Try different ones for a while and see which ones seem to have the best effect, are easiest to stay with, and actually feel really good. Notice that some areas of the body are more sensitive to the flow of breath energy than the others. For some people, the most sensitive spot is in the area around the heart. For others, it’s in the a...

"You’re perfectly free to breathe in any way you like, perfectly free to try deep breathing, say, for a while, to see if it feels really good. There’s nobody out there to say, “Well, you failed that test, or you are not right, this is not as comfortable as it could be.” You’re the one who is gauging the results, and it’s up to you to decide what feels good over the long term. Sometimes you’ll find the rhythm of the breathing will change, as your physical condition changes, as the mind begins to settle down. Other times you’ll find there is a fairly steady rate that feels good, and all you have to do is stay with that steady rate. But it is entirely up to you. After all, this is a time for the mind to look after itself, and so it has the freedom to decide what to do with the breath." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Our Primary Responsibility"

"Keep using your ingenuity to figure out what way of breathing is going to be good for the body right now. Sometimes, if you’re tired, you need some good, heavy, deep in-and-out, long in-and-out breathing, or long in-breaths and short out-breaths, to give yourself energy. If you’re tight or tense, then short-in, long-out can be relaxing. But you’ve got the choice. If neither of those two kinds of breathing works, you can try all kinds of other breathing. You’ve got a whole hour to experiment with the breath, to see what really feels right right now." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "All Your Old Baggage"

"The way you focus on the body has an impact on how you perceive the body, how you actually sense the body. We think of sensations as being primary, the raw material, the basic building blocks of experience, but there are conscious decisions being made that precede the sensations. Look at the teaching on dependent origination. Sankhara, or “fabrication” is way down there, prior to the sensations you feel in terms of form, feeling, and so forth. So how are you going to fabricate the body? If there are feelings of tension in the body, sometimes that’s a sign of too much earth property, so you can think of the breath. This is one of the reasons we start with the breath. It’s the property that’s most easily manipulated — classically it’s called the kaya-sankhara, the factor that fashions the body. It’s also the property that most directly works through tension. Wherever there’s a sense of tension, focus on it and see if you can get a sense of gentle, healing motion going through it....

"With the breath, you can see that it is a kind of fabrication. The way you breathe sometimes goes totally on automatic pilot, but there is an intentional element, and all too often that automatic pilot disguises some underlying intentions you don’t notice. So you try to bring them up into consciousness. Ask yourself: “I’m deciding when to breathe in, when to breathe out, so how can I do that well? How can I find a sense of ease and well-being through the breath? And then how can I calm the effect of the breath on the mind?” " ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Anupassana" (Meditations10)

"Get the mind really to settle down and be at ease with one object: the breath. Think of the breath as the energy flowing through the body that helps the air come in and out of the lungs. And you can look at that flow of energy anywhere in the body. Take a couple of good, long, deep in-and-out breaths and notice: Where do you feel that energy flow most prominently? Focus there. And then ask yourself if it feels good. If the way you’re breathing right now doesn’t feel good, you can change it. Make it longer, shorter, or in-long out-short, in-short out-long, fast, slow, heavy or light. There are lots of ways you can adjust your breathing. Try different ones for a while and see which ones seem to have the best effect, are easiest to stay with, and actually feel really good. Notice that some areas of the body are more sensitive to the flow of breath energy than the others. For some people, the most sensitive spot is in the area around the heart. For others, it’s in the area in the nec...

"Keep using your ingenuity to figure out what way of breathing is going to be good for the body right now. Sometimes, if you’re tired, you need some good, heavy, deep in-and-out, long in-and-out breathing, or long in-breaths and short out-breaths, to give yourself energy. If you’re tight or tense, then short-in, long-out can be relaxing. But you’ve got the choice. If neither of those two kinds of breathing works, you can try all kinds of other breathing. You’ve got a whole hour to experiment with the breath, to see what really feels right right now." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "All Your Old Baggage"

"This is why you’re practicing concentration. You try to develop a state of good solid concentration in the mind with a sense of ease and well-being that can come simply from being with the breath, being absorbed in the breath, filling the breath energy throughout the body with a sense of healthy energy. This puts you in a good position to compare things. You can look at the other pleasures you followed in life and ask, “Are they anything like this breath? Are they as steady, reliable, and harmless as this kind of pleasure?” You’re training yourself to be a connoisseur of pleasure, so that you can really understand where the pleasure lies, where the pain lies, and how things stack up. Which pleasure is greater? How about the pain of going back to your old ways of looking for pleasure? You see these things a lot more easily when you’re coming from a vantage point of stable well-being. Even though concentration isn’t the ultimate, it does give you a higher standard for ...

"You’re asked to look at your breathing and to ask questions. What feels good? You get to choose. What do you want to do with the breath? You get to choose. What do you do to get the best results out of it, so that there’s a sense of fullness, a sense of ease, pleasure, simply through the way you breathe. How do you do that? You get to explore." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Bowing & Chanting"

"This is why you’re practicing concentration. You try to develop a state of good solid concentration in the mind with a sense of ease and well-being that can come simply from being with the breath, being absorbed in the breath, filling the breath energy throughout the body with a sense of healthy energy. This puts you in a good position to compare things. You can look at the other pleasures you followed in life and ask, “Are they anything like this breath? Are they as steady, reliable, and harmless as this kind of pleasure?” You’re training yourself to be a connoisseur of pleasure, so that you can really understand where the pleasure lies, where the pain lies, and how things stack up. Which pleasure is greater? How about the pain of going back to your old ways of looking for pleasure? You see these things a lot more easily when you’re coming from a vantage point of stable well-being. Even though concentration isn’t the ultimate, it does give you a higher standard for ...

"The breath is called the fabricator of the body, or bodily fabrication — kaya-sankhara — both because the way you breathe has a huge impact on the way you experience your body, and because there's an intentional element in the breath. It's one of the few bodily processes that can be either voluntary or involuntary. So make the most of the fact that you can exert some voluntary control over it. You can choose when to breathe in; you can choose when to breathe out. Then it's a matter of learning the best reasons for choosing to breathe in or breathe out in any particular way. Can you sense how the body tells you that now's a good time for an in-breath, now's a good time for an out-breath? It has its signals, you know. There are certain feelings in the body that you can learn to recognize over time, and you can explore how best to respond to them. Take their cue in such a way that it leads to a sense of fullness. For example, you can breathe in till...

"Keep using your ingenuity to figure out what way of breathing is going to be good for the body right now. Sometimes, if you’re tired, you need some good, heavy, deep in-and-out, long in-and-out breathing, or long in-breaths and short out-breaths, to give yourself energy. If you’re tight or tense, then short-in, long-out can be relaxing. But you’ve got the choice. If neither of those two kinds of breathing works, you can try all kinds of other breathing. You’ve got a whole hour to experiment with the breath, to see what really feels right right now." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "All Your Old Baggage"

"Take a deep breath. Take a couple of deep breaths. Get a sense of the energy in your body: the energy of the breathing and whatever other energy there may be there. Think of everything being coordinated, everything getting along. Each breath as it comes in mingles harmoniously with the breath energy already there. You can focus your attention on any one spot in the body that seems convenient or you can focus on the body as a whole right from the start. The choice is yours. What’s important is that you allow the breath to be a good place to stay, a comfortable place to stay. If the body seems tired or weak, think of breathing in a way that’s more energizing. If you’re tense, think of a way of breathing that’s more relaxing. If your mind feels scattered, think of everything coming together: a sense of unity right here." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Dealing with Confusion"

"Then choose any one spot in the body that seems most congenial or most interesting. Allow your attention to settle there and then to spread out to fill the whole body, so that you’re aware of the whole body breathing in, the whole body breathing out. As your awareness spreads, think of it as exerting no pressure at all on your body. It’s like the light of a candle in an otherwise dark room: The flame is in one spot, but the light fills the entire room. Or like the spider in the middle of a web: The spider is in one spot, but it’s sensitive to the whole web. Try to maintain this sense of centered but broad awareness all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out. Maintain this quality of awareness as long and as steadily as you can. Try to master it as a skill. Your attention will have a tendency to shrink, especially during the out-breath, so each time you breathe in and out remind yourself, “Whole body, whole body.” Allow the breath to find whatever rhythm feels...

"This is why you’re practicing concentration. You try to develop a state of good solid concentration in the mind with a sense of ease and well-being that can come simply from being with the breath, being absorbed in the breath, filling the breath energy throughout the body with a sense of healthy energy. This puts you in a good position to compare things. You can look at the other pleasures you followed in life and ask, “Are they anything like this breath? Are they as steady, reliable, and harmless as this kind of pleasure?” You’re training yourself to be a connoisseur of pleasure, so that you can really understand where the pleasure lies, where the pain lies, and how things stack up. Which pleasure is greater? How about the pain of going back to your old ways of looking for pleasure? You see these things a lot more easily when you’re coming from a vantage point of stable well-being. Even though concentration isn’t the ultimate, it does give you a higher standard for ...

"It’s crucial to have a center for the mind. But to maintain that center, you have to enjoy it. If you don’t, it simply becomes one more burden to carry in addition to your other burdens, and the mind will keep dropping it when your other burdens get heavy. This is why we spend so much time working on the skill of playing with the breath, making it comfortable, making it gratifying, making it fill your body with a sense of ease. When you have that kind of inner nourishment to feed on, you’re less hungry for things outside. You don’t need to feed on the words and actions of other people. You don’t have to look for your happiness there. When you can develop a sense of inner fullness simply by the way you breathe, the mind can stay nourished no matter what the situation. You can sit in a boring meeting and yet be blissing out — and nobody else has to know. You can watch all the good and bad events around you with a sense of detachment because you have no need to feed on them. It’s no...

"It helps if you can visualize the body as a large sponge with lots of holes all over the place. In other words, all the pores of your skin are open for breath energy to come in and go out. It may be very subtle, and you may not feel anything for a while. But try to hold that picture in mind because you probably, someplace deep down in your brain, have another picture of what’s happening when you breathe, and that picture may not be all that helpful. So bring a new perception in. When you breathe in, it’s not just a little pair of holes here in your nose that the breath can come in. It can come in anywhere in the body. In fact, if you have the perception that it is coming in everywhere, see what happens. It’s not a question of whether it’s true that there is breath energy there or not — or exactly what’s happening. But holding that perception allows you to work with the energy in the body in ways you might not have been able to do if you had other perceptions. You can think of th...

"Take a deep breath. Take a couple of deep breaths. Get a sense of the energy in your body: the energy of the breathing and whatever other energy there may be there. Think of everything being coordinated, everything getting along. Each breath as it comes in mingles harmoniously with the breath energy already there. You can focus your attention on any one spot in the body that seems convenient or you can focus on the body as a whole right from the start. The choice is yours. What’s important is that you allow the breath to be a good place to stay, a comfortable place to stay. If the body seems tired or weak, think of breathing in a way that’s more energizing. If you’re tense, think of a way of breathing that’s more relaxing. If your mind feels scattered, think of everything coming together: a sense of unity right here. What you’re trying to do is to create a place where the mind can settle down and just watch what’s going on in as balanced and impartial a way as possible." ~ T...

"The breath is called the fabricator of the body, or bodily fabrication — kaya-sankhara — both because the way you breathe has a huge impact on the way you experience your body, and because there's an intentional element in the breath. It's one of the few bodily processes that can be either voluntary or involuntary. So make the most of the fact that you can exert some voluntary control over it. You can choose when to breathe in; you can choose when to breathe out. Then it's a matter of learning the best reasons for choosing to breathe in or breathe out in any particular way. Can you sense how the body tells you that now's a good time for an in-breath, now's a good time for an out-breath? It has its signals, you know. There are certain feelings in the body that you can learn to recognize over time, and you can explore how best to respond to them. Take their cue in such a way that it leads to a sense of fullness. For example, you can breathe in till...