This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Mindfulness of Breathing (3 of 7) Freedom with Breathing

The topic for this series of talks is mindfulness of breathing^[1]. Partly, I am doing this series as an expression of my own appreciation of attention to breathing, and the tremendous value that I've had from learning how to be at home with my own body's experience of breathing. It is kind of second nature for me to attend to my breathing, notice what's happening with my breathing, and come home. I find it phenomenally helpful as I go through the day.

A representative example of that is when I used to take yoga classes. One of the common expressions of my yoga teachers was, "Don't hold your breath." I think it's fairly common for some people, when they're in a difficult yoga posture, to hold their breath as they're trying so hard to do the posture. The idea is not to hold your breath, but to keep the breathing fluid, relaxed, and flowing.

So, don't hold your breath in daily life. How not to hold your breath in different situations is not to go around anxious that you're going to hold it and try to avoid it. Rather, have a gentle and inclusive attention that includes your breathing. Notice what happens to your breathing when it's held, tight, or maybe even stopped for whatever is going on. Just that awareness of it can be enough to release it and let the breath return to natural breathing.

Finding an Easeful Breath

This ability to breathe in an easy, natural way is not easy to find. It took me a long time to be able to find that kind of ease of breathing, but it's one of the great gifts, and it's worth taking the time to learn. One of the ways to do that is to do it in small steps. Don't make a big, ambitious effort at it. Look and see where in your body it feels like breathing is being done in an easeful, relaxed way.

Often, the sensations of breathing are strongest in the front of the torso—the diaphragm, the belly, the chest. But the side ribcage, the back ribcage, and the shoulders move too. All these places have movement connected to breathing. They don't really involve the diaphragm or things associated with the diaphragm that are actively involved with the process of breathing. These other places just kind of come along; they move because we're breathing. There, I can feel the ease and relaxation, because they are just following along.

It might be that you tune into these more subtle places: the subtle lifting and falling of the shoulders, or the subtle expansion and relaxation of the back ribcage. Something that I did for a while was, as I breathed, I paid attention to the front ribcage. I would feel, ever so slightly, the increased space between the ribs as the chest expanded outwards. That little sense of open space as I breathed—that little space between the ribs—was not something that I controlled or was working at. So there was a feeling of ease there, of relaxation, just a little bit of freedom. Ah, look at that, it feels kind of nice.

For some people, it's the sensations of air going in and out through the nostrils. We're not controlling that exactly; it's just a byproduct of the breathing that we do in our diaphragm. Because there's less control or less doing in the sensations themselves—just the air that's doing it—some people will find a little more ease and freedom there. It helps remove us from the place of control, so things there can also relax a little bit.

Breathing Through Difficulties

To begin discovering how to have an easeful breath and return to it—and an easeful breath here is maybe a matter of degrees, not all or nothing; it could be that it's just more easeful than it was before, and you can just be content and happy with that. The advantage of this easeful breath is that if we stay close to it, we learn to stay free. We learn not to get caught by things, preoccupied by things, or involved mentally with things in a way that takes us away from our ease, our calm, and our freedom.

But we do get stuck. We do have these strong emotions, strong feelings, strong patterns of thinking, and even the breathing sometimes gets stuck because of that. Then I find it helpful to sometimes just breathe with it, to accompany the emotions and the strong mental states that might be going on—to breathe through them.

This idea of breathing through is maybe a little bit of an active imagination. Sometimes I'll imagine that rather than the air going in and out through the nostrils, it's going in and out through wherever I'm paying attention. If I'm feeling tension in my shoulders, I just imagine that the air is going in and out through there. There's something in that simple, innocent active imagination that keeps me in the rhythm of breathing and keeps me fluid, but also attends to the tensions in my shoulders or the emotions I have. That way, I'm less likely to get tripped up by them, caught by them, attached to them, or resist them.

If there are strong emotions—like sadness, for example—find where the sadness is in the body. Find where the anger is in the body, the fear, the happiness, the joy. And breathe through it. Imagine that you're in that place in the body where those emotions are most strongly living. Just breathe through it, and that can create more space. They call it "breathing room"—more space for the emotions to be there, more room for them to unfold as they wish. But more importantly, it might help keep us from getting stuck in them, reactive to them, resisting them, making a big deal of them, or even being bothered by them.

Decoupling Awareness from Intensity

One of the things that helps us not get bothered or troubled can be because it's so precious, so valuable, maybe even enjoyable to be with that rhythm of breathing as we breathe through what's difficult. There's something about that freedom, that ease, that fluidity of breathing. If we're able to have it, that is very enjoyable.

What's even more enjoyable, or more valuable—not automatically, but over the time of practicing—is the attention, the awareness that is able to stay fluid and relaxed as the breathing is. The ability for the mind to be at ease, even with the most difficult emotional states there might be, or in the most difficult mental states, or even physical pain.

This is the idea of appropriately decoupling the freedom, peace, and calm of awareness from the intensity of what else is going on. I learned this many years ago when I was a new Zen student. We were doing lots of physical work, and some of that work involved physical pain. For example, I remember lifting a very heavy wooden object with another person and carrying it from one part of the farm to another. I remember feeling how painfully this object was digging into my hands as I carried it. It wasn't dangerous, so it was okay, but it was intense.

I took it in and said, "This is interesting. Now, what would it be like to be with that pain—feel that pain in my hands and my arms—and have my mind just be aware in a free, relaxed, open way, and not react to it?" To not react with my fears, my thoughts, my stories that I make, but keep the mind at ease. I was able to learn a little bit of it, get some sense of it. Not much, but I thought, Oh, that's very interesting. It's possible to do that.

Over time, I had other occasions to do this—to be with difficulties in physical pain and emotional pain. What is it like to be respectfully present for it, and also have the mind not be bothered by it? To have awareness be fluid, relaxed, and free, so there's no holding in the awareness itself, or loss of mindful awareness?

What I found is that the breathing is such a great support for this. Just come back and trust the breathing. Find out how the breathing is. Is the breathing held? Is the breathing being restricted? Sometimes when it is, the breathing itself can help the freedom of mindfulness. If we can relax the breathing and open the breathing, it's easier. Held or frozen breathing is kind of like the glue or the bond that's keeping the mind attached to these different things. As the breathing relaxes, that glue softens, and it's easier to decouple the freedom of the mind from whatever experiences we're having.

Conclusion

Those are my thoughts for today. I think one of the things I want to try to convey is that it's a wonderful adventure and a very valuable project to gently, lovingly become more and more familiar with your breathing.

For those of you who might find breathing difficult, certainly, you don't have to focus on breathing. Other ways of practicing can be just as successful. But even so, it is worth it, in small steps—coming from behind, coming from the edges, beginning to explore and get familiar with the world of breathing—to see where you can find some ease with it. Let the ease grow with the breathing and release some of the challenges that have developed over a lifetime around breathing.

Have your breathing help accompany whatever is going on. Find that the breathing can be the boat that can carry you through the rapids of life. May you enjoy your breathing, and I look forward to our time tomorrow.