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Guided Meditation: Intimacy with Breathing

Warm greetings from Redwood City at the Insight Meditation Center. It's a simple thing we're doing together for the next half an hour: we are simply attending to our breathing. It is said that all of Buddhism can be discovered through this attention to breathing.

Attending to breathing—some people like the expression "attending" rather than "attention." Attending has connotations of nurturing or caring for something. I'm struck that for many people, one of the great representations of the beginning of life and the end of life is a person's first breath and last breath. I've been present for both humans and animals at their birth, and it's a remarkable thing to see that first breath. And then the last breath; often that's a way people understand that someone is dying, when they don't breathe anymore.

Because of this poignancy of breath representing life, to attend to breathing is not just attending to breathing; it's also attending to our consciousness, our way in which we are alive at this moment. It is such an amazing event, the fact that we are conscious, living beings. We try not to be lost in thought—no matter how important that thinking is—in such a way that we are not aware of this marvel, this amazing event of being consciously alive. To join this conscious aliveness with our breathing, don't worry that you're leaving your life behind if you do so. If you really give yourself over to the breathing, all the important parts of your life that need to be attended to will come along. They will follow along. Intimacy with breathing.

Take a comfortable, alert posture and slowly, softly close your eyes. Slowly, as if you have all the time in the world. And softly, as if it's an act of great care and tenderness. See if you can make small adjustments in your body to align your body more comfortably and more alertly, so your body is more here. You might sway back and forth, and then take smaller sways as you find yourself at a center point. You might think of your vertebrae near the bottom of your spine as a kind of hinge, and bend at that hinge to see if you can find a place where your spine feels most comfortable.

Perhaps there's some way that your posture can support a chest which is open a little bit. A little bit of a stretch in the skin in front of the front rib cage. Not that you're pushing yourself, but somehow you're allowing there to be a confidence. A feeling, perhaps, that yes, you will sit and take your place here. You're allowed to exist confidently and fully here.

Then, take some long, slow, deep breaths, expanding your rib cage front and back. We often don't feel the back rib cage much; it doesn't move as much as the front rib cage. But it's interesting sometimes to attend to that back rib cage, this more subtle movement. Maybe there's a lifting up of the ribs. Taking these deeper breaths and feeling the belly expand, allowing the belly to expand, and then letting the breathing return to normal.

Continue to relax a bit. Part of what relaxing helps with—in many ways, but one interesting way—is that some of the places of tension in the body are directly related to the strength of our thinking. It's almost like the more we're involved in thinking, that thinking pulls on those muscles. By relaxing, we quiet that thinking mind a little bit, making it easier to let go. Perhaps softening the muscles of your face as you're exhaling. Softening the eyes, the temples, the forehead. As you exhale, soften the shoulders, and maybe there can be a relaxing of the belly too. Noticing if there's any holding in the arms, around the elbows, the hands, and perhaps releasing that. And the same with the legs and knees.

Finally, is there any tension or pressure in the area of your body that you most associate with thinking? For many people, it's the area of the brain, the front of the brain. Maybe the mind itself feels contracted, or the mind feels tired from overworking, overthinking. As you exhale, relax that tension or tiredness, allowing the mind to rest. The kind of rest that lets consciousness float to the surface. Consciousness which is not work; it just is. Awareness that just is here.

Then, with that awareness that just is, become aware of your breathing. Become aware of your body breathing, allowing awareness to attend to breathing, and perhaps breathing attending to awareness. There's certainly a nice relationship between the two, because the oxygen we breathe in is what keeps awareness active, aware, and present. Letting awareness appreciate this very important activity of breathing that is supporting awareness.

The exhale is a time to let go, to release. Releasing the muscles that have been activated so that we can breathe in. In a sense, your body works—the muscles engage in order to pull in the air. But the expelling of the air is not work, but rather a releasing of the work. The diaphragm pushes down so we can breathe in, and the diaphragm releases itself back so that we can exhale. I think sometimes of the exhale like surfing the front of a wave, or sliding down a slide. Let go, release yourself. Allow yourself to slide down the exhale to the end.

Awareness doesn't have to do the work to inhale. Awareness just receives the inhale. Open, receptive, allowing, receiving the sensations of breathing in. Letting the thinking mind become quieter so that you can attend more intimately to the body's experience of breathing. Attending as continuously as you can.

Taking and adding a little bit of a spark to your attention. A little bit more clarity or engagement so that you're less likely to drift off. Attending to the breathing is really to be there with it, for it. A little bit clearer attention. Continuous attention takes a teeny bit of work, but it's work that leads to greater relaxation and peace.

Reflections

Breathing can be a reminder of the close, intimate, cooperative nature of our life with the world around us. Breathing is a process of recycling. We take in oxygen, convert it, and recycle it to carbon dioxide, which the plants around us take in and recycle back to oxygen. The air particles that we take in circulate around. It is part of the great recycling that keeps our life going. Our body is made of recycled elements; the atoms in our body have been part of so many different things over the ages.

The understandings that we use to make our way through our life are acquired from our society, culture, and family. We're also, in some ways, recycled, transformed, and changed. Just about everything we are arises in this wonderful, interconnected world. Almost everything we are and experience ourselves arises in relationship to what is not ourselves. So much so that we can't really separate the two in some hard and fast way.

May this way in which we are co-conspirators—breathing together—be a reminder of how deeply we are connected to each other. At the end of a meditation, we evoke that sense of connection, of mutuality, and our care for ourselves, for all that supports us, and for the world around us. To dedicate the benefits of our practice^[1] is a way to strengthen those benefits for ourselves.

So, at the end of a sitting, dedicate whatever benefits have come from this sitting to the welfare and happiness of others. May it be that this 30-minute meditation is a platform from which we can be kinder to people today, more generous today, more loving and friendly. May it be that this meditation supports us and inspires us to live for the welfare and happiness of all beings.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings everywhere be free.