Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"Try to be as alert as possible to how the breathing feels. Try to make it feel refreshing. This way the work becomes something you can easily keep on doing, because you feel refreshed in doing your work. Sitting here, it feels good breathing in, feels good breathing out. Ordinarily large areas of the body are starved for breathing energy, so give them a chance to drink it in, to bathe in it. Think of the energy going to the different parts of the body — “Who wants this breath? Who wants the next one?” — until you’ve got the whole body nourished. If it feels good, do it again. Next time around try to be even more perceptive as to what’s going on, what’s needed where." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Generating Power" (Meditations2)

"The perception you hold in mind will have a huge impact on how you experience things. So trust in the fact that holding on to this perception of “breath, breath, breath” as you breathe in, as you breathe out, “whole-body breath” as you breathe in, as you breathe out, “calming the breath” as you breathe in, breathe out, can take you to a sense of ease, a sense of well-being, a feeling in which you can really settle down in the present moment and be very clear and alert about it. It really can make a change in what you’re experiencing. That’s a very important lesson right there: that what you choose to focus on and how consistently you hang on to that focus can have a huge impact on what you’re experiencing. Then you learn how to take this lesson and apply it to other aspects of life: When you’re sick, when you’re bored, when you’re anxious, whatever the situation outside, you realize, “I may not be able to change the situation outside, but I can change my perception so that I ...

"As soon as that refreshing breath sensation begins to fill up in the body, you let go of everything else. No matter what other disturbances come, you’re not the least bit interested because you’ve got something really satisfying. You could almost say that it’s a sensation to die for. You let down your guard, let go of everything else, because this sensation is so totally absorbing. You’ve opened up every part of the body, every part of your awareness for this sensation to come in." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Tuning-in to the Breath" (Meditations1)

"Breathe through your discomfort and dissolve it away. Let the breath create physical feelings of ease and fullness, and allow those feelings to saturate your whole body. This physical ease helps put the mind at ease as well. When you’re operating from a sense of ease, it’s easier to fabricate skillful perceptions as you evaluate your response to the issue with which you’re faced." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Head & Heart Together: Bringing Wisdom to the Brahmavihāras"

"The Buddha’s not saying that when you practice renunciation you should simply do without. He provides you with an alternative pleasure: the pleasure of right concentration, the pleasure of jhana. The absorption you get in when you’re fully inhabiting the body, the sense of ease that comes with the breath, the sense of fullness that comes with the breath as you allow it to spread throughout the whole body: When you have this alternative pleasure, you learn how to cultivate it, enjoy it, and then you can use it for getting the mind into even deeper concentration." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Sense Pleasures & Sensuality" (Meditations12)

"If you give the breath an hour to do its healing work, totally opening up the body to allow the breath to bathe every nerve out to every pore, you know that you’ll come out at the end of the hour with a body and mind in much better shape. The body will be soothed; the mind, bright and alert. And you don’t need to stop being bathed in the breath when the hour is up. You can keep it going in all your activities. That way, even though you may not be armed with a whole set of plans for facing the future, at least you’re in a position where you don’t need that kind of armor. You’ve got the armor of a healthy body and mind. You’ve got an invisible armor: the force-field of this all-encompassing breath, continually streaming out from your center to every pore, protecting you on all sides. That’s something you feel in every cell of your body, something you know for sure, for you can sense it all around you, right here, right now. And you know that whatever the future brings...

"There’s enough suffering in life. You don’t have to compound it by breathing in a way that’s harsh, uncomfortable, or unhealthy. So you look at the breath and see how it’s affecting the body in different parts: where the breath energy seems comfortable, where it seems strained, what you can do to make it comfortable throughout, all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out, and all the way through all the different parts of the body." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Goodwill First & Last"

"The Buddha says that when there’s a sense of ease coming with the breath, let it spread throughout the whole body. When you can think of the breath energy as going through the body, it’s a lot easier to let the feeling of ease spread along with it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Breath Energies"

"Close your eyes and watch your breath. Watch it all the way in, all the way out. Notice where you feel the breathing in the body, and notice if it feels comfortable. After all, the breath is the force of life, it should feel good coming in and going out. So if it doesn’t feel good, see if you can change it. Make it shorter, longer, faster, slower, heavier, lighter, deeper, more shallow to see what feels best. Think of the breath energizing the whole body, nourishing the whole body." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Weaponize Good Thoughts"

"You may have noticed, when you really look at your inner sense of the body, that certain parts seem to be missing. There’s a holding in, a tension that blocks things off. But as your sensitivity to the breath begins to get more and more subtle, the blockages dissolve and you realize that what seemed to be a physical blockage had its mental side as well. It’s opening up now that you have the physical and mental tools to deal with it, along with the sensitivity to use those tools well." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Close to the Heart" (Meditations2)

"As you go through the body, working up to this full body awareness, you can also learn how to calm the breath so that the sensation of breathing feels good. You begin to realize that breathing is not just a process that you feel in one or two points in the body. The entire body is involved in the breathing process, or it can be involved in the breathing process. The more it becomes a whole-body process, the more refreshing it feels." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "On the Path of the Breath"

"When Ajaan Fuang noticed that I was having trouble getting my head around the concept of breath energy in the body the first time I was there — the concept appealed to me, but I wasn’t quite sure how to handle it — he said that it refers to the sense of feeling already there throughout the body, it’s just a matter of learning to recognize that feeling as breath energy. Then you just start working with what you already feel, seeing it as a type of breath. So take that concept and see how it helps you to get the mind to settle down." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Language of the Heart (1)"

"Most of the evil in the world is done because people feel threatened or afraid. But if you have a good and secure basis for the mind here in the body like this, and have trained your awareness so that you can fill the body with a sense of rapture, fill your awareness with a sense of ease, fill the body with your awareness, then the normal petty ways of the world just get less and less attractive. This is good for the body. But that’s incidental. The really important part is that it’s good for the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Body as Path"

"We try to develop this sense of well-being in the body as our refuge. As the Buddha points out, if we didn’t have any other alternative to pain, we’d just go for nothing but sensuality, because that would be the only other option out there offering some pleasure. So, it’s important that you find a strong sense of pleasure simply sitting here in the body as it’s felt from inside." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "See Your Thoughts as Strange" (Meditations10)

"When you focus on the breath, try to breathe in a way that feels really refreshing. Think of the breath energizing your entire torso all the way down, and then even beyond the torso down through the legs, down the back. Any part of the body that seems tired or tense, in need of a little refreshment, a little bit of soothing: Let the breath do that." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Goodwill, Gratitude, No Guilt"

"You’re aware of the breath in a way that gives rise to a feeling of pleasure. If you can’t get the whole body pleasant, you try to get at least part of the body pleasant. Find which part of the body responds to the way you breathe, is sensitive to the way you breathe. For a lot of people, it’s down around the sternum, or it could be in the throat, or some place in the middle of the head. But wherever you’re especially sensitive to how the breath feels, try to focus your attention there and ask yourself, “What kind of breathing would feel really good? What would nourish the sense of well-being at that spot?” As that spot gets comfortable, keep on breathing in a way that maintains the sense of comfort. Then let your awareness encompass the whole body, and see how the breath relates to the whole body. Wherever there’s a sense of ease, let it spread. There are two ways of doing this. One is just thinking of the sense of ease flowing out from that one spot, running along the blood ve...

"Then you allow the mind to get more and more steady. What perceptions allow it to get more steady? Perception of the breath as a whole body process gets it more steady. Your perception that you’re not separate from the breath, that you’re not in one part of the body or inhabiting one part of the body and watching the breath in some other part of the body, but you’re actually one with the breath, immersed in the breath, bathed in the breath, surrounded by breath: That perception helps steady the mind even further." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Balancing Tranquility & Insight"

"Breathe through your discomfort and dissolve it away. Let the breath create physical feelings of ease and fullness, and allow those feelings to saturate your whole body. This physical ease helps put the mind at ease as well. When you’re operating from a sense of ease, it’s easier to fabricate skillful perceptions as you evaluate your response to the issue with which you’re faced." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Head & Heart Together: Bringing Wisdom to the Brahmavihāras"

"When anger comes, when fear comes, when you’re lying awake at night and can’t get to sleep, you can focus on the breath. It’s like having something to play with, or a friend to talk to at any time at all. And as with any friend, when you don’t know the friend very well, you just sit there and you have no idea what to say. The friend doesn’t know what to say. But after a while, you start asking questions, and the other person starts answering. If you don’t ask the questions, there are no answers. So you can ask questions about the breath. What kind of breathing would be good for your lungs? What kind of breathing would be good for your intestines? How about the tension in your shoulders or a pain in your back: What kind of breathing is good for that? As you get to know the breath, you realize it’s not just air coming in and out of the lungs. It’s the whole flow of energy in the body. For the most part, we ignore it, and then we miss out on the benefits that can come f...

"No matter how the breath is cycling through the rest of the body, keep the sense of relaxation in your feet and your hands as steady as possible. It doesn’t have to be an enormous relaxation, just enough for you to know that it’s more relaxed than before. One way of checking it is to compare one hand to the other, one foot to the other. See which one is more tense and then allow it to relax as much as the other one." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Grass at the Gate" (Meditations3)