Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"You stay with the breath, but you’re not clamping down on it. You try to stay with it smoothly. Try to make the breath like silk: smooth all the way in, smooth all the way out. That requires a certain steadiness of focus, and the question will come up: What’s next? This is what’s next: the next breath. And you do the same thing there, the same thing with the next one, and the next one." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "No Foolproofing"

"So breathe in a way that feels good, deep down inside. Think of the breath as a whole-body process. It goes through all the nerves in the nervous system, all the vessels in the circulatory system — out to the tips of the fingers, out to the tips of the toes. You have to think of yourself not sitting here looking at the breath but wearing the breath: surrounded by the breath, bathed in the breath, immersed in the breath, with the breath all around you, flowing smoothly. It soothes the body and it can also soothe the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Economy of Goodness"

"If you breathe with more knowledge and alertness, it helps to develop more skillful emotions. Because what is an emotion? It’s a thought that gets in your body. It has an impact on your heart rate and other physical processes. Well, the impact comes through the breath. So if you can learn how to get in touch with your breath and can smooth out the breath, soothe out the breath when it gets erratic or disturbed, then you have a grounding for developing skillful emotions and embodying skillful emotions, so they’re not just thoughts. You feel them in your body." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Living Forward, Understanding Backward" (Meditations6)

"The Buddha’s observation is that the fact that of being alert to the breath is one of the causes for pleasure. If you keep that alertness continuous, the pleasure smoothes out, and as it gets smoother, it gets more intense. It develops a kind of momentum. It builds up. And whatever good it’s going to do for the body, whatever good it’s going to do for the mind, you don’t have to go making exclamations about it to yourself." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Pleasure on the Path"

"You stay with the breath, but you’re not clamping down on it. You try to stay with it smoothly. Try to make the breath like silk: smooth all the way in, smooth all the way out. That requires a certain steadiness of focus, and the question will come up: What’s next? This is what’s next: the next breath. And you do the same thing there, the same thing with the next one, and the next one." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "No Foolproofing"

"So that the breath energy flows smoothly throughout the entire body, that’s your work. And the work gives rise to the results: a sense of ease, fullness, refreshment. That sense of well-being helps you an awful lot, because it makes it easier to do the right thing. When you have a sense of well-being you can tap into at any time, you’re not so hungry to go after unskillful ideas or unskillful motives or impulses. The reason we go after unskillful things is because part of the mind demands a hit of pleasure right away. So you try to feed that demand in a more skillful way, just by the way you breathe. This is a huge area of our awareness that most of us don’t take advantage of. When the body feels uncomfortable, we just accept the fact that it’s uncomfortable and we look outside for some ease to distract ourselves. But many times that lack of comfort can be changed simply by the way you breathe. So here’s free medicine. Take advantage of it. It doesn’t cost anything ...

"Bring your attention to the sensation of breathing. Breathe in long and out long for a couple of times, focusing on any spot in the body where the breathing is easy to notice, and your mind feels comfortable focusing. This could be at the nose, at the chest, at the abdomen, or any spot at all. Stay with that spot, noticing how it feels as you breathe in and out. Don't force the breath, or bear down too heavily with your focus. Let the breath flow naturally, and simply keep track of how it feels. Savor it, as if it were an exquisite sensation you wanted to prolong. If your mind wanders off, simply bring it back. Don't get discouraged. If it wanders 100 times, bring it back 100 times. Show it that you mean business, and eventually it will listen to you. If you want, you can experiment with different kinds of breathing. If long breathing feels comfortable, stick with it. If it doesn't, change it to whatever rhythm feels soothing to the body. You can try shor...

"Think about the breath and then be aware of the breath as it comes in and goes out. Keeping your thoughts directed to the breath: That’s mindfulness. Being aware of the breath as it comes in and out: That’s alertness. Keep those two aspects of the mind together. If you want, you can use a meditation word to strengthen your mindfulness. Try Buddho, which means “awake.” Think bud- with the in-breath, dho with the out. Try to breathe as comfortably as possible. A very concrete way of learning how to provide for your own happiness in the immediate present — and at the same time, strengthening your alertness — is to let yourself breathe in a way that’s comfortable. Experiment to see what kind of breathing feels best for the body right now. It might be long breathing, short breathing; in long, out short; or in short, out long. Heavy or light, fast or slow, shallow or deep. Once you find a rhythm that feels comfortable, stay with it for a while. Learn to savor the sensati...

"When you breathe in, where in the body does the in-breath energy — the swelling in the abdomen, the swelling of the chest — start? And when this in-breath impulse ripples through the body, does it spread smoothly or are there places where it’s caught up, where it’s blocked, where it’s tensed? Can you unravel the blockages? That’s one thing you might want to work at if you find this an interesting problem. See what you can do. If this problem doesn’t capture your imagination, if it doesn’t seem to be a problem, notice what is a problem for you right here, right now. In other words, learn how to pose questions about the breath that relate to issues that really concern you. Learn how to go about figuring out the answers and judging when you’ve found an answer that really works." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Joy in Effort" (Meditations5)

"You know there’s air coming in and out of the lungs, but as you begin to get more sensitive to how you experience the process, you begin to see there’s also a sense of energy that flows through the body. And that has a huge impact on how you’re going to be sitting here for the rest of the hour. If the energy is allowed to flow smoothly and freely, you’re more likely to be here with a sense of comfort. In fact, when the Buddha talks about the mind settling in, it’s to develop pleasure and rapture. It’s right here, in the way the breath energy flows, that the pleasure and the rapture are going to appear. So you work with that. Once you find a sense of ease, what can you do to maintain that ease? You can’t clamp down on it. But you can’t take a cavalier attitude toward it, either. It’s something you want to protect. You have to be very observant as to how you’re experiencing the body in the present moment and to what ways you can experiment with that experience. Notice which ways of...

"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"

"You stay with the breath, but you’re not clamping down on it. You try to stay with it smoothly. Try to make the breath like silk: smooth all the way in, smooth all the way out. That requires a certain steadiness of focus, and the question will come up: What’s next? This is what’s next: the next breath. And you do the same thing there, the same thing with the next one, and the next one." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "No Foolproofing"

"So breathe in a way that feels good, deep down inside. Think of the breath as a whole-body process. It goes through all the nerves in the nervous system, all the vessels in the circulatory system — out to the tips of the fingers, out to the tips of the toes. You have to think of yourself not sitting here looking at the breath but wearing the breath: surrounded by the breath, bathed in the breath, immersed in the breath, with the breath all around you, flowing smoothly. It soothes the body and it can also soothe the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Economy of Goodness"

"Sometimes we work with the breath and we think that “If I got perfect breath throughout the body, that’d be a sign that I have no clinging in my mind.” But that’s not the case. There are cases when there’s mental clinging and there is a tensing up in different parts of the body. But there’re lots of ways that the mind can cling that don’t have any effect on the breath at all. You can have perfectly good breath, smooth breath, wide-open breath, well-connected breath, and there can still be defilements in the mind. So, you have to remember that we’re here not to create perfect breathing. We’re here to breathe well enough so that the mind can feel comfortable with the breath and be willing to settle down so that it’s not disturbed by the breath." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Perfect Breathing Isn’t the Goal"

"Breathe in such a way that there’s no holding on, so that things are allowed to flow smoothly. The breath flows smoothly, the blood flows smoothly, and there’s a sense of ease all the way through the breathing process. Some people at this point begin to get a sense of floating, but try not to drift out. You can float and be buoyant, but stay in place. There’s a sense of lightness and buoyancy, so keep that sense of lightness, but stay where you are. You’ve learned to breathe in such a way that the whole body feels at ease throughout the in-breath and out-breath. Try to maintain that sense of awareness of the whole body, and let the pleasure radiate out through the body. Just learn how to maintain that, to stick with it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Right Resolve"

"So we’re learning the skills we need to bring to our experience, and we start with the breath. This is one of the fabrications, as the Buddha calls it: one of the intentional elements we bring to experience. Try to get really sensitive to how you breathe. Most of our lives, we’re interested in other things. The breath gets pushed into the background. It goes on automatic pilot. As a result, we don’t get as much out of it as we could. So now as we meditate, we’re learning to be more sensitive to this dimension of our experience. The more you get sensitive to the breathing and its impact on the body, the more you see that it’s going to have an impact on the mind. You can adjust the breath, work the breath energies in the body so that they have a good impact. At the same time, you’re priming yourself to be alert, at the very least, to what you’re bringing with the body, because the body is where emotions get lodged. A thought comes through the mind, and it’s not just a thought. It g...

"So that the breath energy flows smoothly throughout the entire body, that’s your work. And the work gives rise to the results: a sense of ease, fullness, refreshment. That sense of well-being helps you an awful lot, because it makes it easier to do the right thing. When you have a sense of well-being you can tap into at any time, you’re not so hungry to go after unskillful ideas or unskillful motives or impulses. The reason we go after unskillful things is because part of the mind demands a hit of pleasure right away. So you try to feed that demand in a more skillful way, just by the way you breathe. This is a huge area of our awareness that most of us don’t take advantage of. When the body feels uncomfortable, we just accept the fact that it’s uncomfortable and we look outside for some ease to distract ourselves. But many times that lack of comfort can be changed simply by the way you breathe. So here’s free medicine. Take advantage of it. It doesn’t cost anything ...

"You stay with the breath, but you’re not clamping down on it. You try to stay with it smoothly. Try to make the breath like silk: smooth all the way in, smooth all the way out. That requires a certain steadiness of focus, and the question will come up: What’s next? This is what’s next: the next breath. And you do the same thing there, the same thing with the next one, and the next one." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "No Foolproofing"

"The Buddha’s observation is that the fact that of being alert to the breath is one of the causes for pleasure. If you keep that alertness continuous, the pleasure smoothes out, and as it gets smoother, it gets more intense. It develops a kind of momentum. It builds up. And whatever good it’s going to do for the body, whatever good it’s going to do for the mind, you don’t have to go making exclamations about it to yourself." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Pleasure on the Path"

"When you breathe in, where in the body does the in-breath energy — the swelling in the abdomen, the swelling of the chest — start? And when this in-breath impulse ripples through the body, does it spread smoothly or are there places where it’s caught up, where it’s blocked, where it’s tensed? Can you unravel the blockages? That’s one thing you might want to work at if you find this an interesting problem. See what you can do. If this problem doesn’t capture your imagination, if it doesn’t seem to be a problem, notice what is a problem for you right here, right now. In other words, learn how to pose questions about the breath that relate to issues that really concern you. Learn how to go about figuring out the answers and judging when you’ve found an answer that really works." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Joy in Effort" (Meditations5)