Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"If you think of the breath as coming in only through the nose, then you have just a tiny opening to pull the breath through, so you end up putting more pressure on the body, the neck, or the head to breathe. But if you think of the body as like a large sponge, with lots of pores, lots of openings for the breath energy to go in and out, that image actually makes it easier to breathe because you put less pressure on the body." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

"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. ...

"How do you adjust the breath? If you put too much pressure on the breath to adjust it, then no matter how much you adjust it, it’s not going to feel good because you can’t get a sense of ease through pressure. So you have to learn a light touch. Just hold in mind the perception: “The breath is going to feel good all the way in, all the way out,” and see what that does to the way the body actually breathes." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Discernment in Concentration"

"Just the way you breathe, sitting here focusing on your breath, makes a difference in the mind’s sense of well-being. And it’s potentially always there. Sometimes you’ll find yourself in a mood that takes a while to get back there, but it’s there. The more quickly you can tap into this sense of well-being, the easier it is to deal with unpleasant things coming up inside. You find that you can breathe right through them. And it helps to alleviate that pressure that you sometimes feel, that you’ve just got to get it out of your system by saying something nasty to someone else, or saying something hurtful, or whatever. The old attitude that “As long as I’m suffering, I might as well make everyone else suffer” — you realize that it doesn’t accomplish anything at all. It just makes things worse. So when the pressure builds up inside, you can tell yourself, “I can just breathe through it, allow it to dissipate.” This gives you an immediate handle that this conviction is som...

"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. ...

"So, trust in the process, and give yourself to the process. Be aware of the breath. Keep reminding yourself to stay with the breath. That act of mindfulness is important: Every time you breathe in, every time you breathe out remind yourself, “This is where you want to be; this is where you want to stay.” And if you find that you’ve forgotten, that you’ve wandered off someplace else, well, remind yourself again. And then come back and be as alert to the breath as possible: How does it feel? Where do you feel the breath? Try to put aside whatever notions you have about how the breath should feel or where you should feel the breath, and try to be sensitive to how you actually feel. Where are the sensations that let you know now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out? And what’s the quality of those sensations? Is it comfortable? Are you putting pressure on it? If you are, step back a little bit. Allow the sensations to have a fullness of their own witho...

"There are times when you’ll find that your conception of the breath gets confused, as in the tendency to confuse the breath energy with the liquid energy in the body. When liquid runs up against obstacles, it can’t go through. It gets squeezed in. It builds up pressure. But the breath doesn’t have to be squeezed in. Yet when we start breathing as if it were, that creates problems. So, remember: It’s totally free to go anywhere at all, all the time. The neat boundaries we place around it are artificial. Learn to erase them and see what happens. As for the pleasure or rapture you want, that will happen on its own. You can squeeze it, you can force it, but squeezed and forced pleasure is not going to last very long. It’s like squeezing a piece of fruit to make it ripe. You know that ripe fruits are supposed to be soft, so you squeeze your piece of fruit, squeeze it and squeeze it until it’s soft, but that doesn’t ripen it. You just get mush. The right way is to leave th...

"Try to stay focused on the breath, wherever you feel it most vividly. If you don’t know where it’s most vivid, take a couple of good, long, deep in-and-out breaths. Let it calm down until it feels just right — not too heavy to be comfortable, but not so light that you can’t follow it. And don’t put too much pressure on it; don’t put too little pressure on it. The Buddha’s image is of a person holding a baby chick in his hand. If you squeeze the chick too tightly, it’s going to die. If you hold it too loosely, it’s going to fly away. So try to keep tabs on the breath with just the right amount of pressure. If you catch the mind wandering off, just bring it back. No matter how many times it’s going to wander off in the course of the hour, bring it back, bring it back. Each time you come back, reward yourself with a breath that feels really gratifying, because you want to get the mind to feel good about being here so it’ll be more likely to settle in and wander off less. The less th...

"Ajaan Lee talks about the bases of the breath, which correspond pretty closely to what the Indians call chakras. These are the sensitive energy centers in the body. You can find one that feels congenial to you, one where you’ll notice if you’re putting undue pressure on the breath, either with the in-breath, or with the out-. Try to maintain a sense of ease and just-rightness there at that spot, all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out-. To do this, you’ve got to relax tension in different parts of your body. This is why this is called a center of breath energy, because it’s connected with a lot of other energy channels, where energy flows in the different parts of the body. If you can keep this spot open and relaxed, you’ll find that its influence automatically radiates out through different parts of the body. Then you think of the breath spreading from there to other parts as well. If you find that there are some areas where the energy doesn’...

"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 put...

"We talk about giving rise to a feeling of pleasure with the breath, pleasure with the concentration. Where does it come from? You can’t push pleasure into the body. You have to realize that there are lots of little centers in the body, little sensation centers, and all you have to do is give them a little bit of space, and then a feeling of what seems like neutrality to begin with will actually become pleasurable — if you give it space, if you’re not pushing and pulling it around too much. Then the more consistently you can maintain that sense of space, the greater the pleasure grows. And you let it spread without pressure. It becomes rapture: a sense of refreshment, fullness." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Isolating the Aggregates" (Meditations6)

"Try to work with the breath. It’s good, if one part of the body is especially ill, not to focus on that part immediately. If there’s a strong pain in some part of the body, find a part that’s not pained. Focus your attention there. And think of the breath flowing freely in that part of the body. Then as that little beachhead gets established, you can spread it to other parts of the body and finally into the pained part. Think of the breath energy flowing all around and through the pain. All too often we tighten up around pain, which just makes it worse. So think of the breath energy flowing well and going right through it. It can permeate anything. If you’ve got congestion in your nose or in your ears, think of the breath energy coming in and out every part of the body. That eases the pressure on the nose and the head, and eases the breathing process as a whole. There’s breath energy coming in through the pores all over the skin. And you may find that focusing on one part of the ...

"If you think of the breath as coming in only through the nose, then you have just a tiny opening to pull the breath through, so you end up putting more pressure on the body, the neck, or the head to breathe. But if you think of the body as like a large sponge, with lots of pores, lots of openings for the breath energy to go in and out, that image actually makes it easier to breathe because you put less pressure on the body." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

"You’re sitting here learning how to breathe in a way that feels really good. Have some goodwill [mettā] for the breath, goodwill for yourself. Be happy when the breath is comfortable. When it’s not comfortable, show some compassion. Try to figure out why it’s not comfortable. Are you putting too much pressure on it? Are you focusing in the right place or the wrong place? What perception of the breath do you have in mind? Is there a perception that can make things easier? I’ve talked about the perception of the body as being like a sponge, where the breath can come in and out of the body from all directions. You’re aware of the whole sponge, and there’s nothing in the way. You could also remember that, of the various elements in the body, the breath is first. So if it runs into a pain, don’t think of the pain as being able to block the breath or to hem it in. The breath was there first. The breath can penetrate anything. If there’s a feeling of pressure someplace in t...

"How do you adjust the breath? If you put too much pressure on the breath to adjust it, then no matter how much you adjust it, it’s not going to feel good because you can’t get a sense of ease through pressure. So you have to learn a light touch. Just hold in mind the perception: “The breath is going to feel good all the way in, all the way out,” and see what that does to the way the body actually breathes." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Discernment in Concentration"

"So, trust in the process, and give yourself to the process. Be aware of the breath. Keep reminding yourself to stay with the breath. That act of mindfulness is important: Every time you breathe in, every time you breathe out remind yourself, “This is where you want to be; this is where you want to stay.” And if you find that you’ve forgotten, that you’ve wandered off someplace else, well, remind yourself again. And then come back and be as alert to the breath as possible: How does it feel? Where do you feel the breath? Try to put aside whatever notions you have about how the breath should feel or where you should feel the breath, and try to be sensitive to how you actually feel. Where are the sensations that let you know now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out? And what’s the quality of those sensations? Is it comfortable? Are you putting pressure on it? If you are, step back a little bit. Allow the sensations to have a fullness of their own without your havi...

"If there’s pressure in any part of the body, remind yourself that it’s blood pressure. Breath doesn’t have to exert pressure on anything. It goes right through atoms. So if there seems to be a wall of pressure that you can’t push the breath through, remind yourself that you’ve made the mistake of pushing something else beside the breath. You’re trying to push the blood there. Just hold the thought in mind, “Breath can flow there, it doesn’t push anything.” The simple thought of allowing can relieve a lot of the pressure. 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’...

"When you get angry, you breathe in a certain way, and it’s become habitual. It builds up tension, builds up pressure in different parts of the body. When that gets unbearable, and you decide, “I can’t stand this any longer, I’ve got to get it out of my system,” the anger has hijacked your breath. So you want to learn how to get it back, to reclaim the breath, make it yours. Breathe in a way that breathes through the tension, that releases the pressure. If pressure builds up in the neck or the head, think of it dissipating down the shoulders. Think of Hakuin’s image of a big ball of butter on top of your head, melting, and the butter is going down your head, down your neck, down your shoulders. If the pressure builds up in your chest, think of it going out the arms, out through the palms of the hands. We’ve had our habitual ways of working with the breath energies in the body, even when we didn’t think of them as breath energies, that relate to the flow of the blood in the body, ...

"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...

"How do you adjust the breath? If you put too much pressure on the breath to adjust it, then no matter how much you adjust it, it’s not going to feel good because you can’t get a sense of ease through pressure. So you have to learn a light touch. Just hold in mind the perception: “The breath is going to feel good all the way in, all the way out,” and see what that does to the way the body actually breathes." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Discernment in Concentration"