Guided Meditation: Guided Tour of Breathing

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The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 13, 2021. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Guided Tour of Breathing

Warm greetings. Here we are as a community to meditate together and sit and breathe together, to wake up in a certain way, to wake up to the present moment, to be really here in our experience. It's a rare thing that people sit quietly and allow themselves the possibility of being present in a full way, or to even want to be present enough to let go of their distracting thoughts and to really return here.

Mindfulness of breathing also involves a deep intimacy with breathing—a familiarity with breathing—to really trust entering into the world of the body breathing in a deep way. It's not just a simple mechanical function to breathe in; in some ways, it involves the whole body, or much of the body. For most people who are practicing mindfulness of the body, there's often more of the body that can be included as part of the breathing.

So what I'd like to do for this morning, to expand your familiarity with breathing, is to do a guided tour of breathing through the body, to guide you to experiencing the physical impact of breathing in more areas of your body than maybe the primary spot you attend to.

I often instruct people to have a home spot—a place that they come home to with their breathing where it's easy, predominant, and most comforting or useful to attend to. It can be the belly, the movements of the chest, or the air going in and out through the nostrils. But it's also valuable to get a sense of the whole breath body and all the different ways in which the body responds to breathing.

Welcome your body into a meditation posture—a posture that is right for you, to be both alert and relaxed. Gently close your eyes and begin this process of familiarity with breathing.

Gently, maybe slowly, take a few long, slow, deep breaths, expanding the lungs as fully as you can without it being a strain. Have a longer exhale than usual; maybe slower so it gets extended much longer than you usually exhale. But again, not to cause any strain. Breathing in deeply, and as you do these deep breaths, feel the back ribcage, the shoulders, down into your hip joints, all along your spine. Feel what happens there that changes the movements.

Then, let your breathing return to normal. Now, with a normal breath, how do you feel this through your body now? Are there areas that you're normally not aware of breathing that you now notice? There are maybe very small movements, pressures.

With normal breathing, scan through your body and see what you can relax and soften. Relaxing the muscles of the face, softening around any tension in the back of your head down your neck. Feeling your shoulders as you inhale and relaxing as you exhale. Releasing as you exhale, and maybe feeling the chest. Is there any holding of breath there, or resistance to the inhales, or holding back from exhaling all the way? Relax and soften the belly.

To begin the guided tour of breathing, I'll direct your attention to different parts of your body, and you can feel what impact breathing has on that part: movement, pressure, release of pressure, anything at all. And if you feel nothing, that's okay; just gently be aware of that part of your body. If it's easy enough without making it a project to relax or soften that part of your body as you exhale, you may do so. It doesn't make sense everywhere to do that, but do so if it makes sense.

So to begin this guided tour of breathing, soften your belly and experience any movement in your belly as you breathe. Any pressure and release of pressure, anything that's pleasant or unpleasant. There's no need to judge it or have preferences in the guided tour practice; it's just to discover how it actually is. As you feel the movements of your belly, feel it in the middle of your belly, maybe just below the belly button. Feel it on the sides of your belly. Maybe notice what happens on the sides of your waist.

Then, bring your attention up a little bit to the area a couple of inches above the belly button, and feel the movements there. Are the movements smooth, or are they choppy? Are the breaths long or short, deep or shallow? Whatever it is, is okay.

A little bit higher, become aware of the area of the diaphragm, just below the solar plexus, spreading out to the bottom ribcage, including the sides of the body. Feeling the movements, expansion, and contraction.

From the sides of your ribcage, moving up the sides higher up towards the armpits. Maybe there's a subtle feeling of lifting as you breathe in, and falling as you exhale.

Then coming to the front of the chest, the middle of the chest. Feeling the sensations that are there as you are breathing—sensations of movement. As you exhale, also remember to let go of your thoughts, your judgments, your commentary. Whatever way you're experiencing your body breathing, assume that's the perfect way, that there's nothing wrong whatsoever. It's just how it is, and you are discovering it.

Then move up to the top of the chest, maybe just below and around the collarbones. Maybe you feel lifting there and falling. And the collarbones out to the shoulders, perhaps small movements of lifting, falling, or subtle pressure and release of pressure.

Then up towards your nostrils. Perhaps you can sense the air going in and out through your nostrils—tingling, vibration, warmth, and coolness. How far back into the nose can you feel the sensations of breathing? Maybe even to the back of the throat. Do your nostrils move ever so slightly as you breathe?

If you get quiet and soften your jaws, do you feel any variation in the jaws as you breathe in and breathe out?

Moving your attention to the back of the neck, the vertebrae of the neck, and where the neck meets the skull. As you breathe, is there any movement? What may be a wave-like movement in the vertebrae of the neck, and even moving up into the skull. The skull ever so slightly moves as you breathe.

Then down your neck, the area of your shoulder blades and the spine between your shoulder blades, in the back ribcage. Any lifting and falling, expansion and contraction in the back ribcage. What happens at the bottom of your back ribcage, between the bottom of the ribcage and the soft tissue below it? Then down to the small of your back, and then all the way down to your tailbone and sitting bones. Is there any alteration of pressure or hardness, release of pressure, softness, any movement as you breathe?

Now see if you can notice some spot in your body where the inhale first shows itself: the first movement, the first sensations that indicate that you're starting to inhale. From that space, let your awareness travel with your inhale, so the awareness spreads throughout this breath body as you inhale. All these different parts that you experienced, in a relaxed, open, panoramic way, let your awareness travel with the inhale throughout the body. And with the exhale, let the awareness travel back to the place where the last sensations of exhale occur. Ride the inhale down towards the whole breath body, and the exhale, ride that whole breath body back to the beginning. Letting the thinking mind become quieter, so you can really feel the sensations of the whole breath body here.

Reflections

As we come to the end of this sitting, take a few moments to appreciate your breathing. When we do a breath meditation, you can just assume that you're breathing just right. There are no problems; it's just the breathing that we're using to develop our steadiness, our openness, and our sensitivity of mindfulness. But as we practice, we might find that slowly over time, the breathing becomes freer, more relaxed, less held in check or limited. It might not seem so special while we're doing it, but then it becomes more clear when we enter into the world of people and relationships, how we begin to hold our breath, to keep our breath in check.

If you want to have goodwill and have love and warmth, have a certain capacity of even intimacy with strangers, just a kind of presence with them, returning to relaxed, open breathing is a great support. We are less guarded when the breathing is relaxed and open. We are less resistant or anxious.

May it be that your familiarity with breathing supports you in staying present with others, with your goodwill, with generosity of heart, with kindness, and receptivity, that you're better able to really listen and attend to people with your breathing relaxed and fluid and open. May it be that we learn from our breath meditation how to offer better attention, better listening, a better connectivity to the people in our lives that we meet personally, through electronics, or even through our thoughts. And may it be that this breath meditation of ours supports us in staying close to that wish to bring a better world to others.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be healthy. May all beings be safe. And may all beings everywhere be free.