Practical Meditation Tips: Using the Breath

Controlling the rhythm and flow of the breath is probably the most common technique used by those beginning meditation. Breathing is something we do unconsciously all the time; in consciously focusing on the breath, we can then extend that awareness to our thoughts and the outside world. Breath is also intimately connected with emotion, and slow and steady breathing will help to calm our emotional being and help us be more calm and tranquil.

You don't have to try all the techniques below in one sitting - it's always good to start with the first one, and then you can focus on one or two of the others, changing them around from meditation to meditation to keep a sense of newness in your practice.

• First, you can begin by just watching the breath as it travels in through the nose and out through the mouth. Do not try and deliberately make it slower, but instead watch how it gets slower just as a result of you watching it. Always make sure you are comfortable at all times; if your breath is so slow that you feel you are not getting enough air, then adjust your rate of breathing accordingly.

• After a while, you can let your attention hone in on the tiny moment of pure silence between the inbreath and the outbreath. Feel the qualities of stillness and vastness in that space enter into your being.

• Another thing you can do is feel that the breath is not coming from your eyes or nose, but from the heart, from the place in the middle of our chest where we can feel the core of our existence. Feel that the breath is entering like a golden river of energy into the heart and then returning with the outbreath. After a few minutes of this, you can imagine that you have no eyes or nose, that instead you are only the heart, breathing in and breathing out.

• Also, you can try breathing in positive qualities, and breathing out their opposites. Feel that when you breathe in, inner peace is entering into your being and inundating every part of it. Then on the outbreath, you can feel that you are breathing out the opposite qualities; tension, worry and frustration are being expelled from your system. Then you could try breathing in the quality of joy and breathing out anything that is preventing you from attaining that joy. If you need to be more alert, you could try to breathe in energy from your surroundings, and feel that this energy is creeping into every corner of your being, making it refreshed and revitalized. On the outbreath you can then breathe out lethargy and tiredness. This latter exercise is particularly good in the morning to help chase away that sleepy state.