Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"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)

"We have a whole hour to work at this skill, a skill that you don’t leave here when the hour is up, but that you take with you. It becomes the basic pattern for how you relate to the body, how the mind relates to itself. It cuts through a lot of the unnecessary stress and frustration, unnecessary turmoil in the mind. So look at this hour as an opportunity to provide yourself with a center. And then after the hour is over, take the center with you wherever you go, because it’s always here. The breath is the point where the mind and the body meet, and as long as you’re alive you’ll have this breath right here. If you can learn to be at home right here, you’re going to have a home wherever you go. As a result, wherever you go will be your own space. A large part of our life is spent in feeling that somehow other people have taken possession of our space, and we need to depend on their approval so that we can occupy their space. But that’s not the case here. This is your space. When y...

"So if you give the mind something good to feed on — like the comfortable sensation of the breath coming in and going out — the mind has a good source of nourishment. As it gets a taste of comfort, you begin to notice when it’s not comfortable. Often that discomfort is associated with unskillful states of mind arising: anger, greed, jealousy, fear. These things will cause a change in the breath. If you’re there with the breath and you’re used to having it comfortable, you notice these changes immediately. They’ll alert you to the fact that something’s gone wrong in the mind." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Survival Tactics"

"Sometimes we feel we have to push and push and push the breath to get it to go through the body, but that’s not breath you’re pushing, you’re pushing the blood. The flow of the breath energy through the body doesn’t involve any pushing at all. It’s just a matter of relax, relax, relax, allow, allow, allow, as the breath comes in and the breath goes out. Try to catch and disperse areas in the body where you’re tensing up even the least little bit around the breath." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Get Out of the Way"

"You stay with the breath, get to know the breath, be friends with the breath. This is important. Many times, when we’re working with a meditation object and things don’t seem to be going well, the meditation object seems to become our enemy. If that’s your attitude, you’ll never be able to settle down with it. Realize that the breath is your friend. It’s what’s keeping you alive. If you get to know it, you find it has all sorts of other good qualities, other than maintaining mere survival. It can create a sense of ease, a sense of well-being, here in the present moment. You breathe in and feel full throughout the body; you breathe out and feel relaxed throughout the whole body. There’s a sense of energy and well-being that comes when you get to know the breath and learn to deal with it properly. When the sense of ease, energy, and well-being is solid, you can turn your attention to the issue of suffering." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Bright Tunnel"

"Start with something simple like the breath here. It’s where the mind and the body relate. If you learn to develop a sense of mindfulness and alertness here, a sense of solidity inside that’s not knocked over by sights or sounds or smells or tastes or tactile sensations or ideas about this that or the other thing, then once you can be solid inside, it’s a lot easier to be solid when you’re around other people. You can learn how to rely on yourself more, and other people can learn how to rely on you, too. It’s one of those rare areas of the world where everybody benefits." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Solid Inside"

"When you’re dealing more with sensuality, you are more focused on the object of your desire, and the processes of the mind get very muddled. So we do what we can to put aside our sensual desires to focus more on desires for the state of form, the ease and the pleasure in the sense of refreshment, fullness that comes from inhabiting the body in this way. When the breath feels easy, unblocked, connected, there’s a sense of abundant breath energy all around the body that we can tap into it anytime, so the breath isn’t a struggle, the breath can be effortless. That’s a sense of well-being, and it’s possible to get attached to it, and you actually do have to get attached to it if you want to get good at it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Riddle of 'I Am'"