Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"One of Ajaan Fuang’s students talked about the time when he was meditating in a bus — he wasn’t normally that good a meditator, but for some reason when he sat on a bus he found it very easy for the mind to settle down — and the breath felt delicious. Well, how do you make the breath delicious? How does that happen? In other words, try things out. Use your ingenuity. Use your imagination." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Beginner's Mind"

"You have the power to shape your experience. You learn how you’re already shaping it, and then you use your ingenuity to figure out new and better ways of shaping it. The Buddha gives you some help, but sometimes the particulars, like issues around the breath, are things you’ve got to learn how to explore things on your own. But we explore not just to play around; we play around not just to play around. We play around to learn. From learning, then we can shape the rest of our experience in good ways as well, even while we’re not here meditating. Learn how to inhabit your body fully, so that it is your place. Nobody else can invade it. And then you’ll go through the world with a lot more solidity, both in body and in mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Shaping Your Breath, Shaping Your Life"

"So do your best to get acquainted with the breath energy issues in the body, what it means for the breath to flow well, and be ingenious at finding new ways of solving new problems as they come up. That way, this area of the body, this area of the mind that tends to get closed off, you can start to reclaim and you can use that dimension of your awareness to your own advantage — your own skillful advantage. This is one of those meditative skills that’s meant to be used throughout the day, so don’t leave it on your meditation cushion. Take it with you. It’ll be your support in times of need." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Reclaim Your Breath"

"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"

"We talk about listening or looking at the breath, but, of course, it’s not a matter of looking or listening with the eyes or ears. It’s a matter of being really sensitive to what the body needs. Now, you do want to be very careful, and this is where the analogy of listening comes in. Think of it as an analogy, of course. There are times when you listen very, very carefully for very subtle sounds and that helps to refine the breathing, because the mind is more intent and more sensitive at that time. That’s when it’s really ready for refined breathing. But if you’re not ready for it, you just drop off to sleep. So in the same way that you would, say, listen to the inner voices of a piece of music, the ones that are hard to hear, or to a very soft sound off in the distance, try to make yourself really, really quiet, and very, very intent. That will help make the breath more subtle without your forcing the breath too much. But listen to the body and the mind: If you run...

"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"

"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"

"One of Ajaan Fuang’s students talked about the time when he was meditating in a bus — he wasn’t normally that good a meditator, but for some reason when he sat on a bus he found it very easy for the mind to settle down — and the breath felt delicious. Well, how do you make the breath delicious? How does that happen? In other words, try things out. Use your ingenuity. Use your imagination." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Beginner's Mind"

 " Ardency: The breath is one of the few processes in the body over which you can exert conscious control. An important part of breath meditation is learning how to make skillful use of this fact. You can learn which ways of breathing foster pleasant sensations in the body, and which ones foster unpleasant ones. You learn a sense of time and place: when and how to change the breath to make it more comfortable, and when to leave it alone. As you develop this knowledge, you can use it as an aid in developing skillful qualities of mind. This sort of knowledge comes from experimenting with the breath and learning to observe the effects of different kinds of breathing on the body and mind. You can call this sort of experimentation working with the breath, for you’ve got an ardent purpose: the training of the mind. But you can also call it playing with the breath, for it requires that you use your imagination and ingenuity in thinking of different ways to breathe and to picture the b...

"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"

"One of Ajaan Fuang’s students talked about the time when he was meditating in a bus — he wasn’t normally that good a meditator, but for some reason when he sat on a bus he found it very easy for the mind to settle down — and the breath felt delicious. Well, how do you make the breath delicious? How does that happen? In other words, try things out. Use your ingenuity. Use your imagination." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Beginner's Mind"

"We talk about listening or looking at the breath, but, of course, it’s not a matter of looking or listening with the eyes or ears. It’s a matter of being really sensitive to what the body needs. Now, you do want to be very careful, and this is where the analogy of listening comes in. Think of it as an analogy, of course. There are times when you listen very, very carefully for very subtle sounds and that helps to refine the breathing, because the mind is more intent and more sensitive at that time. That’s when it’s really ready for refined breathing. But if you’re not ready for it, you just drop off to sleep. So in the same way that you would, say, listen to the inner voices of a piece of music, the ones that are hard to hear, or to a very soft sound off in the distance, try to make yourself really, really quiet, and very, very intent. That will help make the breath more subtle without your forcing the breath too much. But listen to the body and the mind: If you run up against th...

"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"

"One of Ajaan Fuang’s students talked about the time when he was meditating in a bus — he wasn’t normally that good a meditator, but for some reason when he sat on a bus he found it very easy for the mind to settle down — and the breath felt delicious. Well, how do you make the breath delicious? How does that happen? In other words, try things out. Use your ingenuity. Use your imagination." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Beginner's Mind"

"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"