Lesson ane • Breath Meditation

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Today we volition brainstorm our exploration of CONCENTRATION with something you've known how to do all of your life: breathe. This do entails paying attention to each in-and-out breath, and when your mind wanders (and it will, that's natural), noticing any has captured your attention, then letting go of the thoughts or feelings without berating yourself for it. You then return to focusing on your breathing. In this way, the meditation trains united states to stay in the moment earlier us instead of reliving the past or worrying about the hereafter. Information technology also teaches us how to be gentle with ourselves and others, to forgive our lapses and motility on.


It can be very supportive to establish a physical infinite that you can utilise every 24-hour interval for your practise. This meditation corner could exist in your bedroom or office; in the basement or on the porch. Wherever you practice, pick a place where you tin be relatively undisturbed during your meditation sessions.

QUESTION: When I endeavour to meditate, I go so conscious of the breath that I nearly feel like I'g going to hyperventilate. How exercise I just breathe commonly?

Reply: When I was a beginner, I found that every time I began one breath, I would already be anticipating the next. Leaning frontward was the habit of my mind; I was very wary and concerned near what would happen next in life, and I brought that hyper vigilance into meditation practice. I had so much functioning anxiety that I couldn't concentrate on my breath. What I needed was to settle back in my mind and let the breath come. But sometimes we settle back too far, get too relaxed, and that's when we get sleepy or bored or distracted. When that happens, we need to rev up our energy - take more of an interest in the procedure of breathing, refocus, reconnect. One way to do that might exist to give yourself a piddling claiming: see if you can experience the terminate of one breath and the beginning of the next. Losing and restoring balance is part of the practice. The trick always is to begin again - to realize that nothing is ruined when nosotros lose rail of our breath.


My name is Sharon Salzberg. I've been practicing meditation since 1971 and teaching since 1974. Over the next four weeks, I'll be guiding you through practices to deepen concentration, mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of emotions, and the heart practices of loving kindness and compassion. These are adapted from my book Existent Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Plan, which I wrote to help anyone brainstorm or strengthen a regular meditation practice. These meditation exercises are ancient techniques expressed in a modernistic way. Together, we will explore meditation as a skills preparation, beginning with concentration.

A archetype foundational practise in meditation is focusing on the feeling of the in and out jiff. The breath is chosen, they say, for many reasons. For one thing, you don't have to believe anything in society to feel your breath. You don't take to call yourself a Buddhist or a Hindu or reject anything else. If you're breathing, you tin can be meditating. It's also said that the breath is very portable. If we tin can practice being continued, beingness aware, when we're sitting formally, when we say, "Oh, now I'chiliad going to exist meditating," we can also exist practicing standing in line impatiently at the grocery store, sitting anxiously in a doctor'southward waiting room. Anywhere we are breathing, we can exist meditating. In this system, the breath that we focus on is the normal menstruation of the in and out breath. Nosotros don't try to brand the breath deeper or different, just however information technology's appearing and even so information technology's changing.

This archetype meditation exercise is designed to deepen the force of concentration. If you consider how scattered, how distracted, how out of the moment we may commonly be, you can come across the benefit of gathering that energy, gathering our attention. To have a sense of reclaiming all of that free energy, which could be available to united states, but usually isn't considering we throw information technology away into the past, into the future. We gather all of that attention and energy to become integrated, to take a center, to not be so fragmented, so torn apart. So fifty-fifty though nosotros accept a very unproblematic object, an ordinary object, like the feeling of the breath, it has the effect of really bringing us to a sense of wholeness, a sense of empowerment.

To begin with, you can sit down comfortably and relax. You don't have to feel cocky-conscious, every bit though y'all're nigh to do something special or weird. Just be at ease. It helps if your back can exist straight without being strained or over-arched. You tin can shut your eyes or non, however y'all feel comfortable. And observe where the feeling of the breath is most predominant. At the nostrils, at the breast, or at the abdomen. Rest your attention lightly in just that expanse. Run into if y'all tin can experience just ane breath from the offset, through the middle, to the end. If yous're with a breath at the nostrils, information technology may be tingling, vibration, warmth, coolness. If at the abdomen, it may exist motion, pressure level, stretching, release. You don't have to name these sensations, but feel them. Information technology's simply one breath. If images or sounds, emotions, or sensations should ascend, but they're not potent enough to actually take you away from the feeling of the jiff, but let them flow on past. You don't have to follow after them, you don't accept to attack them. You lot're animate, information technology's just ane breath. It'southward like seeing a friend in a oversupply. You don't take to shove everyone else bated or brand them get away, but your enthusiasm, your interest is going toward your friend. "Well, in that location's my friend!" There'due south the breath, there's the breath. If something arises, sensations, emotions, thoughts, whatever it might be that'south strong enough to take your attending away from the feeling of the breath, or if you fall comatose, if you become lost in some incredible fantasy, see if y'all tin can let go and begin once more, bringing your attention dorsum to the jiff. If you have to let go and begin once more thousands of times, it'south fine, that's the practice. It'southward but ane breath.

You may notice the rhythm of your breath changing in the course of this meditation session. You can but allow it to be all the same it is. And if you lot see your attention jumping to the past, jumping to the hereafter, judgment, speculation, that's alright. Our practice is to gently let go and simply return. You can shepherd your attention back to the feeling of the breath. Think that in letting become of distraction, the important word is gentle. We tin can gently let go. Nosotros can forgive ourselves for having wandered, and with great kindness to ourselves, we can begin again.

And when you feel ready, y'all tin open up your eyes. Sometimes we feel energized and exhilarated subsequently this kind of do. Sometimes calm and rested, and sometimes too rested, every bit though nosotros were waking upwards from a nap a little groggy. All of that is normal. See if you lot tin can bring an sensation of your breath several times throughout your twenty-four hours.

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