Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Refreshing Breathing

"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 from paying at...

"You want to have a sense of positive enjoyment in how it feels to have a body. One of the reasons you work with the breath is so that you feel comfortable inside your body. No matter what the world outside may say about your body, you’re perfectly fine with it inside. That way, you’ve got a friend inside." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Will Meditation Make You Grim & Dull?"

"Ask yourself: “What kind of breathing would feel really good? How do you perceive the breathing? Do you perceive it in a way that prevents it from feeling good?” Think of it as something that’s going through your nerves, down through your blood vessels, down to the tips of the toes, not so much the quantity of air that comes in and out of the lungs, which tends to get mechanical. But think of a flow. And you’re not outside doing the squeezing or the pulling. You’re in the midst, being bathed by the breath sensation, letting it come in, letting it go out, and directing it simply with a thought: “longer” or “shorter,” “deeper,” “more shallow.” 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...

"You come to realize that this spot being here with the breath — where you can watch what’s happening in the mind, watch what’s happening in the body — is really the best place to be. You can monitor things. You can gain some control. There’s even an element of control over the body as you get more sensitive to the comfortable sense of the breath. You can learn to maintain that in different situations, and it’s good for the health of the body. A sense of the breath energy flowing throughout the whole body means that every part of the body is getting properly nourished with energy, with the blood flow. It’s much more likely to stay healthy, and you cut through a lot of stress diseases. As for the mind, it’s good to have a place to stay. After all, the world is swept away. But here you’ve got a home that’s not swept away by the world. You’ve got a place where you can take shelter. The world doesn’t give you shelter but you can make your own shelter here. When things co...

"Some people complain that it's asking too much of them to pay attention to the events of the day and to the breath at the same time. Well, if you're sitting in the back of your head watching the breath in the body and watching things outside, it does add an extra burden: You've got two things to watch at any one time instead of just one. But if you think of yourself as immersed in your body, inhabiting your whole body, this puts you in a different position. You're standing in the breath, in a position of solidity, a position of strength. From that position you watch things outside, so that instead of having extra things to do, you've simply got a better place to maintain your stance." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Immersed in the Body" (Meditations3)

"You sometimes hear people say that they won’t be able to breathe easy until a particular problem is solved or a situation gets resolved. But how many times have you seen the problems of the world get totally solved once and for all? One problem is usually replaced by another. When that’s the case, if you can’t breathe easy in the midst of problems, you’ll never be able to breathe easy. And that’ll make the problems more and more difficult to endure. So one of the lessons of breath meditation is that you can choose to breathe in a way that’s on your side, you can make the breath your friend, you can breathe easy even in the midst of difficult situations. Even when you’re sick, you can ease the breath." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Breathe Easy"

"Do your best to get interested in the breath. Because here it is, this element in the body. It keeps you alive. It’s the meeting place between the mind and the body. Of the different elements in the body, it’s the most responsive to the mind, and it’s the one that can be used to affect the other elements in the body, too. It’s also the closest to the mind. Without the breath, body and mind would go their separate ways, so it only stands to reason that if you can get the breath energies flowing well in the body, it’s going to be good for the body and for the mind. It’s healing for the nerves of the various organs. Think about how much you use your eyes especially, now in this age of screens, taking in all kinds of harmful information — things that are designed to give rise to greed, aversion, and delusion. Those nerves need to be rested. They need to be soothed. So here you have the chance to close your eyes, soothe those nerves, soothe all the different organs in the body. Think ...