Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. Breathe Easy
     … Even when you’re sick, you can ease the breath. A lot of this skill has to do with perception. We perceive certain parts of the body as being unresponsive to the breath, parts that the breath can’t penetrate. Actually, the breath can penetrate everything. It’s an energy, a very refined energy. So that’s the first perception to hold in mind … 
  3. Brahmaviharas at the Breath
     … You could also remember that, of the various elements in the body, the breath is first. So if it runs into a pain, don’t think of the pain as being able to block the breath or to hem it in. The breath was there first. The breath can penetrate anything. If there’s a feeling of pressure someplace in the body, that’s … 
  4. Befriending the Breath
    To stay focused on the breath, you have to regard it as your friend and look at meditation as a way of developing a friendship. It’s going to take some time, and you have to be observant to see what your friend likes, to show your friend that you can be trustworthy—because sometimes the body reacts negatively to all the attention you … 
  5. Potentials for Refuge
     … The first change is to remind yourself that the breath comes first. It’s your primary experience of the body. Without the breath, you’d be paralyzed. Without the breath, you’d be totally numb. You wouldn’t feel the body at all. We tend to have the perception that we first experience the solid parts of the body and then we pull the … 
  6. Monologue on the Breath
     … just the breath. Keep directing your thoughts to the breath. Evaluate the breath as best you can. The evaluation is what takes a lot of time. As you get more and more familiar with the breath, your sensitivities will grow more and more precise. And as for the rest of the conversation, keep it directed toward helping you stay with the breath, helping you … 
  7. Grounded in the Breath
     … But here you want more out of the breath than just that. If you’re alert to the breath, you begin to see where there are rough patches in the breath. You want to smooth them out. When you sense that you’re breathing in a way that, as the Thais say, the breath doesn’t fill your stomach, think of it filling all … 
  8. Interested in the Breath
     … Focus on the breath. Take a couple of good, long, deep in-and-out breaths, and see where the breath is most obvious. It might be in the movement of different parts of the body or the air coming in and out of the nostrils. Anywhere in the body where you notice the breath most clearly, focus there. As you focus, don’t clamp … 
  9. Groundwork
     … If you found that you’ve lost the breath, just come right back. Direct your thoughts back to the breath. Direct them back to the breath. Each time you come back, reward yourself with a breath that feels especially good. What would feel really gratifying right now in terms of the breath energy in the body? Sometimes all you have to do is pose … 
  10. Wearing the Breath
     … Once you’ve done that, then you stop working and just stay very still, firmly implanted in the breath. Get so that you’re One with the breath. Let the breathing find its own rhythm. Let the depth of the breathing find its own depth. You’re just One with it and that’s all you have to do, stay planted in here. You … 
  11. Taking a Stance
    Taking a Stance February 20, 2005 Try to gather your awareness around the breath. Make the breath your center, a center from which you can act, speak, and have a sense of a good foundation. In Pali, the word for the object of the mind, arammana, literally means a “support” for the mind. When you meditate, you want to find a good, solid support … 
  12. Brahmaviharas & the Breath
     … The best way to develop that is with the breath: getting the mind to settle down and develop a sense of ease with the breath, comfort with the breath, and then learning what to do with that comfort. First, you adjust the rhythm of the breathing. You focus on one spot in the body to see how the breath feels at that spot and … 
  13. At Ease with the Breath
     … So if you’re meditating on the breath, try to be friends with the breath, be on good terms with the breath. Allow the breath to come in in a way that feels comfortable, to go out in a way that feels comfortable. Then, as you get more and more familiar with it, you begin to gain a sense of how the breath can … 
  14. Making a Difference
     … So these are the qualities you bring to the breath: mindfulness, keeping the breath in mind; alertness, being alert and sensitive to the breathing; and ardency, trying to make that sensitivity even more refined, more continuous. So, as we focus on the breath, it’s not that we’re just getting the breath. We’re also developing good qualities in the mind. These are … 
  15. A Diffuse Light
     … In other words, the perception of the breath originating in every cell is much calmer than the perception of the breath originating in any one spot to the detriment of others. And both are calmer than the perception that the breath has to come from outside. As the perceptions get the mind calmer, they get the breath calmer as well. This is one of … 
  16. The Power of Choice
     … We’re here sitting with our eyes closed, so focus on the breath. It’s a good place to be. There are lots of things you can do with the breath. Think about the breath in the different parts of the body that you don’t normally think about. How about the breath in the bones? Have you been looking at the breath in … 
  17. Concentration as Wilderness
     … In the beginning, this may mean deep, long breathing to energize parts of the body that ordinarily aren’t energized by the breath. Then, when that gets tiresome, you can let the breath get shorter, more shallow. Find a rhythm that feels really good, so that when the mind does wander away from the breath, you have something good to come back to. And … 
  18. Contentment
     … When the quality of the breathing isn’t good, it’s bound to have an effect on the body. At the same time, the breath can be a mirror for the mind. The least little thing happens in the mind, and it gets reflected in the way you breathe, in the way the breath energy flows in your body. If you’re sensitive to … 
  19. Establishing Priorities
    Establishing Priorities September 11, 2008 When you start to meditate, it’s important that you make a firm determination, establishing the firm intention that you’re going to stay with the breath for the entire hour. And it’s good to remind yourself of the reasons for why you want to do this, because that helps to firm up the intention. We’re here … 
  20. Concentration Teamwork
     … All too often, as we’re focusing on the breath, we tend to squeeze the breath energy out of the body as we’re breathing out, as a way of emphasizing the fact that now the breath is going out. That squeezing is not what you want. You’re actually trying to breathe in such a way that the breath energy in the nerves … 
  21. What Focus? What Breath?
    Focus on the breath: That’s how meditation instructions begin. A single sentence, takes just a few seconds to say it, but it can take months and years to figure out what it means to focus, and what the breath is. In the course of figuring these things out, you learn an awful lot of important lessons both about the body and about the … 
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