Tapping into the Breath
July 17, 2017
Time and again, I say—when you’re focusing on the breath—to remember that the breath is not so much the air coming in and out of the lungs, as it is a flow of energy in the body. One of those flows is the flow that allows the air to come in and out. The question is, “Where does that flow come from?” It doesn’t come in with the in-breath. It actually comes from within the body itself. So if you’re having trouble breathing comfortably, you might ask yourself, “Where does the breath actually start in the body?” Ajaan Lee lists what he calls the resting spots of the breath, such as the tip of the sternum or a spot just above the navel. And you can try any one of those. In fact, you’ll find that there’s no one spot where the breath starts—it starts from many—but you can focus on one and make the most of it. Say, for instance, that you’re going to focus at the tip of the breastbone. You have to relax around that spot in order to allow the breath to spread from there in a way that actually feels good for the body. Because when we have different patterns of tension in the body, we tend to breathe with those patterns of tension and we just make things worse.