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Mindfulness of Breathing (9) Breathing with the Body

We are continuing with the third step of the sixteen steps of breathing that the Buddha taught. These sixteen steps are divided into what are called tetrads, groups of four. There are four of them in this first tetrad, and we're now on the third one.

This one says that one trains oneself to experience the whole body breathing in. And while breathing out, experiencing the whole body.

One of the ways to interpret this is to in fact have a global awareness of the body. The body—the kāya^[1]—is very important in Buddhism. The body that we have is not quite the right language for Buddhism, but rather the body we experience. The kāya is the body we experience, and it's a little bit distinct from our physical body.

In ordinary life, the two are completely connected, of course. But the body that we experience, we experience in dependence on how the mind operates: the selection process of the mind, the concerns of the mind, the states of mind we have, the level of concentration, and the level of mindfulness we have. It's possible to have some kind of concern about one's body, and attention keeps going to that part of the body, just focusing on that. It's a selection process. Some of that might be that maybe not that part of the body ails us, but it might have to do with our physical appearance—that somehow our forehead is too high, our nose is too big or too small, or all kinds of things we do. We experience our body through the filter of our concerns about appearance. So there is a kind of body consciousness.

If we get afraid of our body, we get anxiety about it. The very fear that the mind has, the projections, the fantasies about the future—the body ever so slightly shifts and changes in response to that. It tightens up. If we're full of desires and want something, our moods, our emotions, our desires, and our motivations all have tentacles or threads that reach out into our muscles, and the muscles respond and react in all kinds of ways depending on what's going on in the mind.

We start becoming aware of this. When we sit and meditate, we're working with this at the interface between the mind and the body. As we start settling into meditation, we start encountering the body more and more fully. But it's not, as I said, the physical body. It's this interface between the physical body and the mind, or how the mind influences the body—the effect the mind has on the body.

For example, I used to have very high shoulders when I was quite young. I had anxiety and fear, and I held it in my shoulders. That tension in the shoulders has a mind source. The fear in the mind, in the heart, impacts the body. As I sat and meditated, I became acutely aware of these shoulders of mine. There were times I would sit in meditation with a lot of pain in my shoulders, not because anything was wrong, but because I was encountering the chronic tension there. It was beginning to work itself out, relax, and let go, and it took a while to do that.

Same thing with my belly. I held my belly in for a long time—tight and contracted. That was born from what was going on in my mind, my emotional life, my inner life. As I started feeling more trust and more ease in life, that belly started to relax. Or as I started to relax the belly, that affected my mind. My mind started to relax more as well.

So there is this interface between the two. What we're encountering in meditation is the mind's impact on the body. That is a little bit of what's being worked on and why it's so interesting, fascinating, and deepening to begin including the body in meditation. While initially it might feel like we're just encountering the physical body, physical pain, and all that, we are really also encountering this meeting place of mind and body.

Fascinatingly, another word the Buddha uses to refer to this body of ours is the word loka^[2]. This is a common word in Pali, the Buddhist language, used for the world. The world is loka. Kāmaloka^[3] is the sensory world in which we live. But the Buddha also used the word loka to refer to this fathom-long body^[4], this psychophysical body that we have. He said that the experience of liberation, the experience of practice, is all occurring within this loka, within this body loka.

The fact that the same word is used for the world and for our body points to this interface between the world around us and our physical body, just as there is an interface between the mind and the body. So there is a kind of interrelatedness there as well. If we are able to sit in the body, it puts us on this wonderful bridge to the mind and to the world around us. Exactly what the relationship is between this physical world of ours and the world around us is maybe best to be discovered, but certainly, the physical body picks up a lot of what goes on in the world. We learn to be present for it in mindfulness.

You find a lot of emphasis on mindfulness of the body in Buddhism and on becoming embodied. The body is not just a physical lump of stuff. It is intimately connected to the depths of who we are and how we live our lives, and it can open to that depth as well. It's a fantastic partner for us on the path to liberation, freedom from suffering.

The body is really a way to become attuned. The more we tune into our body, the more we pick up the subtlety. Subtlety doesn't mean inconsequential; some of the deepest, subtle stuff is more easily accessed through the body than only through the mind.

One way we see this emphasis and importance of the body is here in this first tetrad, with the third exercise being: breathing in, experiencing the whole body; breathing out, experiencing the whole body. We'll see when we get to the fourth one that it also includes the body.

This first tetrad, these first four steps, all appear in the three major teachings the Buddha gave on mindfulness. There is the Four Foundations of Mindfulness (Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta), the discourse on breathing mindfully in and out (the Ānāpānasati Sutta), and the discourse on mindfulness directed to the body (Kāyagatāsati Sutta). These contain the most complete instructions that the Buddha gave on mindfulness. All of them begin with this first tetrad, where the third and fourth parts have to do with the body.

So this is a big plug for the value of staying with the body. And then there is this wonderful art and skill of breathing with, of accompanying.

One of the skills they sometimes teach in hospice is when a person is dying, and maybe you can't communicate too much with them, to breathe with them. Tune into their rhythm of breathing and breathe with them. Sometimes there's a sense of a communion that goes on that way. Exactly the nature of that communion is open to some question, but it can be quite a profound thing to be breathing with someone, accompanying someone in their breathing.

It is also a very profound thing to accompany ourselves with our breathing. It's very valuable to use our breathing to accompany ourselves in other ways as well. To breathe with our body, to breathe with the whole body, to breathe with the challenges of our body.

When there is physical pain, I've done this many times: I stay with my breathing but also pay careful attention to the place where there's pain in my body. By doing so, I'm doing the important work of mindfulness of the pain, of the discomfort. I'm not denying it, resisting it, or pushing away from it. But I'm also not getting stuck, frozen around it, or reactive to it as easily, because the rhythm, the massage of breathing in and breathing out, keeps the mind more fluid and relaxed. It keeps it from tightening up and getting stuck.

This is the art of breathing with experience. Sometimes I have the sense—maybe partly my imagination—that I'm breathing through different parts of my body. That imagination is quite nice for me. But sometimes it's just breathing with.

You might try this: to breathe with your life, to breathe with the different things going on. As you go about activities in daily life, maybe simple ones that are not that complicated, see what happens if you breathe with the activity. Be really aware of your breathing as you're doing whatever activity you do.

One of the fascinating places to do this is if you're on the computer. Really track your breathing as you're on the computer. Maybe sit and meditate for two minutes before you start using your computer. Tune into your breath, have a relaxed breath, and then stay with that relaxed breath. Stay attuned to your breathing as you're with your computer, and see if you can keep it accompanying the computer work with mindfulness of breathing.

If you do that, you'll probably start learning all kinds of things about yourself—all kinds of ways in which you hold your breath or speed up your breath. You'll see this interface. You'll begin to understand how much this mindfulness of breathing, and accompanying our life with breathing, can inform us and teach us about life. Maybe more importantly, it can help us stay more relaxed, at ease, and not caught up in things.

Mindfulness of breathing: Breathing in, experiencing the whole body. Breathing out, experiencing the whole body.

Great. Thank you very much.