Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"When you breathe in, know you’re breathing in; when you breathe out, know you’re breathing out. Notice where in the body you have the sensations that tell you, “Now you’re breathing in; now you’re breathing out.” Notice how the sensations feel. Do they stay comfortable all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out-? If there’s some stress and strain at the end of the in-breath or the end of the out-breath, it’s a sign that the breath is too long. Allow it to be little bit shorter. Or if the in-breath doesn’t feel satisfying, you might want to try a little bit longer. See how the rhythm of the breath affects your sense of the body. And see how your conception of the breath affects your sensation of the body. If you feel that you have pull the breath in, you really have to fight to pull it in, that’s really unnecessary — because the breath is going to come in and go out on its own without your having to fight. In fact, it’s much better for the body i...

"Turn your sense of the body inside out. It’s not the solid body that the breath has to push into. The breath is there first. It’s got every right to be there first. The other sensations of solidity and warmth and coolness: They come after. When you turn things inside out like this, you get a new perspective, and it loosens up a lot of your old attachments." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Switch the Context"

"The Buddha says, “Breathe in sensitive to rapture. Breathe out sensitive to rapture.” Well, how do you become sensitive to rapture? Where are you going to find it? You have to look at the breath. You notice where in the sensation of breathing there is a sense of fullness, a sense of refreshment, because that’s the other meaning of the word we translate as rapture, piti . How does the breath feel refreshing? And when it feels refreshing, then the next step is: How do you let that sense of refreshment spread throughout the body? How do you maintain that?" ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "WYSIWYG"

" 1) You’re not concerned with your breath as it might be observed by a doctor or a machine outside you. You’re concerned with your breath as only you can know it: as part of your direct experience of having a body. If you have trouble thinking of these energies as “breath,” see if thinking of them as “breathing sensations” or “body sensations” helps — whatever enables you to get in touch with what’s actually there. 2) This is NOT a matter of trying to create sensations that don’t already exist. You’re simply making yourself more sensitive to sensations that are already there. When you’re told to let the breath energies flow into one another, ask yourself if the sensations you feel seem unconnected to one another. If they do, simply hold in mind the possibility that they can connect on their own. This is what it means to allow them to flow. 3) These energies are not air. They’re energy. If, while you’re allowing the breath energies to spread through the various parts of the bod...

"I once had a student who was manic-depressive. She found that a large part of the problem was anticipating her ups and downs. The anticipation in and of itself would exacerbate the extremes. But she also found that in her extreme moods, the experience of the body was very different. This is where the breath became helpful. When she was feeling down, she could breathe in a way that would add more breath energy, make the body lighter, lighter, lighter, so she didn’t feel so weighed down all the time. And without the physical experience of being weighed down, her depressive mind states didn’t have so much to latch onto. This began to cut through the pattern. Similarly, when she found she was getting more manic, she could breathe in a way that made the body heavier. She would think a lot about the earth element, find whatever sensations in the body were solid, still, heavy, and substantial, and just focus on those sensations. That would balance things out. It would balance out the en...

"The other set of problems has to do with your image of the breath energy in the body. For many people, this is a very strange or exotic notion, but actually it’s something very directly present to your awareness: your sense of the body as you feel it from within. It’s simply a matter of interpreting what you already feel in a different way. If you were to hold out your arm, the sensations that tell you that you have an arm there could be interpreted as perceptions of solidity or as perceptions of breath energy. The choice is yours. The sensations are the same, but the perceptions — and what you can do with the sensations based on the perception — will be different. The advantage of seeing the sensations as energy is that you can do things with energy that you cannot do with solidity. For example, if there’s a spot in your back that you think of as solid, you will simply leave it as solid. However, if you perceive it as energy and you realize that the energy is blocked, then you c...

"Breathe in a way that’s refreshing, that gives rise to a sense of fullness in the body. Think of the breath as the energy flowing around the body, and ask yourself: Where does it feel good? Where does it not feel good? Focus on the areas that you can make good by the way you breathe, and hold in mind the right perceptions that allow that to happen. For example, be careful not to squeeze the end of the in-breath or the end of the out-breath to mark the difference between the two. Think of your experience of the body as being primarily energy. It’s not the case that you’re trying to pump the breath energy into a solid body. It’s more like allowing the breath to flow freely into the energy already there without any clear dividing line between the two. When you hold that perception in mind, it gives rise to a floating feeling in the body. See if you can maintain the position of your focus on that perception, on that feeling of lightness, buoyancy. This is what gives fl...

"3. A third common problem is an inability to feel breath sensations in different parts of the body . This is often a problem of perception: The breath sensations are there, but you don’t recognize them as such. Part of your mind may think that it’s impossible for there to be breath energies flowing through the body. If that’s the case, treat this as an exercise in imagination: Allow yourself to imagine that breathing energy can flow through the nerves, and imagine it flowing in some of the patterns recommended in the basic instructions. Or imagine it flowing in the opposite directions. At some point, you will actually start to feel the movement of energy in one part of the body or another, and then this will no longer be an exercise in imagination. In the meantime, survey the body and relax any patterns of tension you may feel in its various parts. Start with the hands and work up the arms. Then start with the feet and work up through the legs, the back, the neck, and into the he...

"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...

"This is where the pleasure in the present moment comes in as you try to stay with whatever pleasant sensations in the body you create through the way you breathe, through the way you perceive your breath. Think of the breath coming in and out through all the pores. It can flow anywhere in the body, so wherever there’s a sense of tightness or blockage, hold in mind the perception that allows your mind to believe, okay, the breath can go through the blockage, no matter how solid your bones or the pains or any other solid-seeming parts may seem. There’s a lot of space inside the atoms of the bones, so you can think of the breath flowing through that space, to create a sense of ease, fullness, refreshment throughout the body." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "In the Present" (Meditations8)

"Like the whole issue of inhabiting your body: We know that ultimately you have to let go of your attachment to the body, but in the meantime, learn how to inhabit it purposely. Be fully aware of the whole body. This is part of the path. Breathe into the body. Think of the whole body breathing. Every cell in the body, your whole nervous system, is engaged in the flow of energy. Think about that. Then look at what sensations you have in the body that would correspond to that. Look at whatever sensations are blocking that sensation. In other words, there may be tightness here, tightness there, that’s getting in the way of the sense of flow in the body. Well, relax the tightness. As long as you’re going to identify with something, identify with this sense of the whole body, inhabit the whole body, and then learn how to stay there. What usually happens is that we inhabit part of the body for a while, then we run off to something else. If you could take a picture of your sense of your ...

"Begin with the task of trying to get the mind to stay comfortably focused for long periods of time on the breath — and right there you run into two operative assumptions: What does it mean to breathe? What does it mean to be focused? It’s common to think of the breath as the air passing in and out through the nose, and this can be a useful perception to start with. Use whatever blatant sensations you associate with that perception as a means of establishing mindfulness, developing alertness, and getting the mind to grow still. But as your attention gets more refined, you may find that level of breath becoming too faint to detect. So try thinking of the breath instead as the energy flow in the body, as a full body process. Then make that experience as comfortable as possible. If you feel any blockage or obstruction in the breathing, see what you can do to dissolve those feelings. Are you doing anything to create them? If you can catch yourself creating them, then it’...

"When you breathe in, know you’re breathing in; when you breathe out, know you’re breathing out. Notice where in the body you have the sensations that tell you, “Now you’re breathing in; now you’re breathing out.” Notice how the sensations feel. Do they stay comfortable all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out-? If there’s some stress and strain at the end of the in-breath or the end of the out-breath, it’s a sign that the breath is too long. Allow it to be little bit shorter. Or if the in-breath doesn’t feel satisfying, you might want to try a little bit longer. See how the rhythm of the breath affects your sense of the body. And see how your conception of the breath affects your sensation of the body. If you feel that you have pull the breath in, you really have to fight to pull it in, that’s really unnecessary — because the breath is going to come in and go out on its own without your having to fight. In fact, it’s much better for the body i...

"If the breath is tight and constricted, ask yourself, “Is there another level of breath?” You can leave this level of breathing and focus on a level of breath that’s a lot more comforting, soothing. It’s there. After all, this is the force of life. Open your mind to new possibilities of what sensations in the body are actually breath sensations. Maybe you’ve been pushing and pulling liquid sensations around, mistaking them for the breath. That just gets things all mixed up." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Meditation"

"If you don’t find the breath refreshing, ask yourself, “What is getting in the way? What needs to be refreshed in the body right now? What’s not getting the refreshment it wants? Can you think of the breath helping with that spot? If you’re feeling dissatisfied with the sensations in your body right now, what can you do to change them?” But first you’ve got to analyze: Where’s the problem? What’s the dissatisfaction coming from? What’s feeling starved of breath energy? Make a survey, go around the body, go to the spots that you don’t normally focus on and allow them to open up. It’s good to perceive the breath and breath meditation not so much as a chore, but as an opportunity." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Full Attention"

"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....

"This is one of the great things about the breath. Unlike a lot of the other functions or processes in the body, you really can change it. If you want it to be longer, just think “longer” and you can make it longer. Shorter, faster, slower, heavier, lighter, deeper, more shallow: You can play with the breath for a while to see what feels good right now. Or you can simply pose the question in the mind each time you breathe in, “What kind of breathing would feel really good this time around?” and see how the body responds. To gain a sense of whether it’s really comfortable or not, try to expand your awareness to fill the whole body. If you have trouble taking the whole body at once, you might go through the body first section-by-section. When you breathe in, watch it down around the belly for a while: How does that feel? When you breathe out how does it feel? Keep watching there for a while. If you notice that one way of breathing feels more comfortable than another the...

"Focus your desires on staying with the breath. All too often we hear that the Buddha bad-mouthed desire, calling it the cause of suffering. But not all desires cause suffering. Some desires are part of the path, like the desire to get the mind in a good state with a sense of well-being with the breath. Breathe in a way that feels good. And if it doesn’t feel good, then have the desire to figure out how to make it feel good. You can try longer breathing, shorter breathing, faster, slower, heavier, lighter, deeper, more shallow. The desire to keep doing this counts as right effort. Take some time to get to know the breath. Try to fully occupy your body right here. In other words, any thoughts that go outside of the body, just let them be. You don’t have to continue them. As they say in Thai, you don’t have to continue the weave. Lots will come up. That’s normal. But you don’t have to get involved with everything that comes up. Instead, you want to have a sense of bein...

"We’re trying to sensitize ourselves to an area of our awareness [the feeling of breathing] that all too often we ignore. We spend most of our time paying attention outside, and this area inside here gets squeezed out, left behind. Its potentials for giving us a sense of well-being don’t get developed. So here’s our chance to give it some time, give it some space. If you really pay attention here, if you’re consistent in your awareness of the breath, smooth in your awareness of the breath, then the breath becomes smooth as well. It becomes more and more comfortable. And what starts out as just an ordinary feeling of being okay becomes more intensely pleasant. You can let that feeling spread throughout the body...." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Pleasure of the Middle Way"

"I mentioned one of the drawbacks of the phrase, “Watch your breath,” which is that it assumes that the breath is out there in front of your eyes, when it’s actually behind your eyes. Another one of the drawbacks, though, is that you get the sense that the knowledge has to be up in your head. Actually, there’s an awareness in your hands, in your feet, in every part of the body. You can let the awareness stay there, the awareness of the breath coming in, going out. You don’t have to bring it up into the head. The awareness of the breath in the knee is in the knee; the awareness of the breath in the foot is in the foot. Then try to connect those spots of awareness." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "For a Routine That Isn't Routine"