The Mindfulness of Breathing practice helps us to become more calm and to become more energized and refreshed. In the long term, it helps us to develop more awareness so that we have more freedom to choose what our responses are going to be in any given situation.
Before we start
the first stage of mindfulness practice we have to adjust our posture to align
our body with the mind to produce a mutual coordination.
Once you've taken a tour of your whole body, begin to focus on the physical
sensations of your breath. Let yourself become absorbed in the sensations of
the breath flowing in and out of your body. Then begin counting (internally)
after every out-breath:
Breathe in - breathe out - 1 to 10. ... and so on until you reach ten.
Once you get to ten, start again at one. Keep following the breath, and counting,
for at least five minutes If your mind wanders, just come back to experiencing
the physical sensations of the breath, and begin counting again.
Counting allows us to "measure" how long we're maintaining our awareness. Sometimes
it's hard to stay focused on the breath even for three breaths. The numbers
subtly alter your perception of the breath. When you count after the out-breath
then that's the part of the breathing process that you're most aware of. So
in the first stage of the practice you're more aware of breathing out.
Stage
2
In the second stage of the practice we continue to count in cycles of ten
breaths, the difference being that this time we count just before each inhalation.
Whenever you regain your awareness after being distracted, take your mind gently
back to the breath. Now you've tried the first two stages of the practice, we
recommend that you spend a few days practicing them together, and appreciating
the subtle differences between them.
Once you've done that, feel free to come back and try stage three. At this point
it may be a good idea to step back from learning meditation and reflect a little
on how it's going.
Learning meditation is not easy - in fact I think it's one of the more challenging and heroic things that a human being can chose to do with his or her life. Learning meditation involves learning to see ourselves - warts and all. It requires that we take responsibility for ourselves, rather than using other people as scapegoats for our own failings.
Stage
3
In the third stage of the practice, drop the counting, and just follow the
breathing coming in and out. Concentrate your mind on (replacing the counting)
sensational point, you find during the breathing process.
You might want to make your meditation a little longer now, perhaps five minutes
per stage, making fifteen minutes. Perhaps this is a good time to remind you
of your body. I've emphasized that it's important to set up your posture at
the start of a period of practice. Doing this provides you with better conditions
for meditating. While stage one helps to develop more calm (by emphasizing the
qualities of the out breath), and stage two helps to develop more energy and
awareness (by emphasizing the qualities of the in breath), the third stage emphasizes
both the in breath and the out breath equally. This helps us to blend the calm
relaxation of the first stage with the energized awareness of the second stage.
A good meditation is one where you have taken every opportunity to return your
attention to the breath -- no matter how distracted you have been. So you might
have been very distracted, but every time you realized that you had been distracted
you'd taken your awareness back to the breath.
Stage
4
In the final stage begin to narrow the focus of your awareness, so that you're
focusing more and more on the sensations where the breath first passes over
the rims of the nostrils. You may even notice the sensations where the breath
passes over the upper lip. If any of these sensations are hard to find, just
notice the breath at the first place you can feel it as it enters and leaves
the body.
We recommend alternating the Mindfulness of Breathing practice and the Metta
Bhavana practice. Each practice feeds into and deepens the other. You can do
them on alternate days, or even do one in the morning and one in the evening.