Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"[Walking meditation] gets you used to maintaining your center in other activities as well, so that even when you’re engaged in complex activities, even when you’re thinking about things, you can still have a sense of inhabiting the body, being centered within the breath. You may have so many other things going on that you can’t keep track of when the breath is coming in or going out, but you should be able to maintain a sensitivity to the energy tone in the body — where it’s relaxed, where it’s tight, what you can do to keep it relaxed and comfortable in all situations. You’re inhabiting the body. You’re not going off entirely into some other thought world. This keeps you grounded. It gives you a place to return to as soon as you’ve done whatever work needs to be done in that thought world." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Walking Meditation: Stillness in Motion" (Meditations4)

"The best way to deal with the breath is simply to think: allow. Think of the breath going down the back. You don’t push it down the back. You allow it to go. When you think of the breath going to the different parts of the body, don’t try to push it. You allow it. If you push it, you’re pushing the blood. You’re pushing the liquids in the body. What you can do is just think: open up, open up. Keep your wrists relaxed, keep your ankles relaxed. All your joints: Keep them relaxed. Think of opening up the passages by which the breath can flow. You can’t make the breath flow. It’s something it’s going to do on its own once you’ve opened the channels. So you maintain the thought of just “breath.” You might want to picture the body and, say, think of breath going down the back, out the legs, down the shoulders, out the arms, spreading out in all directions. You can keep that picture, that perception in mind, but try not to force anything in the body. As soon as you start forcing things...

"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’s meant to b...

"Give yourself a good comfortable place to stay and be aware of the breath coming in, aware of the breath going out. Notice how the breathing feels in different parts of the body, because the breathing is a whole-body process. If it’s not a whole-body process, that’s a sign that there’s a blockage someplace you’ve got to work with. But first get a good breath rhythm going in any one spot where it’s easy to watch. It might be at the nose, the chest, the abdomen, the neck, the middle of the head — any place where all the different pressures of the breath coming in and going out and the pressures of your blood circulation feel right together. Focus right there and allow the breath to find whatever rhythm feels good, feels gratifying. If the mind wanders off, bring it right back. If it wanders off again, bring it back again. You’re trying to put it in position — which means finding a good, comfortable posture for the mind — and then trying to get it to stay in position." ~ Thani...

"Now the Buddha doesn’t say to ignore other people and just be very selfish. He says there’s a different way to approach the whole issue of happiness. In other words, you find a source for happiness that doesn’t take anything away from anyone else, so you don’t have to be afraid of other people. When you’re not afraid of them, you find that you can actually be more compassionate to them. So developing and maintaining this center inside is not a selfish thing. The Buddha’s not teaching you to be insensitive. He’s just saying to put yourself in a stronger position and to trust that you’re stronger by not trying to go outside and fix up people’s moods and all the other things that we think we can do with other people when we’re dealing with them. Just stay inside and have a sense of confidence that you’re strong inside. After all, your source of happiness lies inside. Because it’s not taking anything away from anybody else, you don’t have to be afraid of them. Especially when you can...

"The pleasure and refreshment that can come from working and playing with the breath provide your ardency with a source of inner food. This inner food helps you deal with the obstreperous members of the committee of the mind who won’t back down unless they get immediate gratification. You learn that simply breathing in a particular way gives rise to an immediate sense of pleasure. You can relax patterns of tension in different parts of the body — the back of the hands, the feet, in your stomach or chest — that would otherwise trigger and feed unskillful urges. This alleviates the sense of inner hunger that can drive you to do things that you know aren’t skillful." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "With Each & Every Breath: A Guide to Meditation"

"Use what strategies you can to make the breath interesting, comfortable, a pleasant place to stay, an interesting place to stay. Learn to think of the breath not as the air coming in and out of the lungs but as the movement of energy through the body. Then you can explore how the movement of the energy is going right now in different parts of the body. You can wander around the body for a while to see which part of the body seems easiest to focus on or when you focus on it has the most beneficial effect on the breath. Take your time to choose your main focal point. You’re not just clamping down someplace. You’re actually exploring and choosing which kind of breathing feels best, which part of the body seems to be the best place to stay focused. You may settle at a place for a while and then decide that you don’t like it after all. Well, you can move again. This way, the meditation is not an exercise in clamping down on the mind. It’s an exercise in exploration, seeing what way of...