Breathing is Easy
Focusing on breathing is the simplest and purest meditation exercise. It gives your mind a few slow-paced activities to concentrate on. Count each breath up to 10 and repeat. Notice the difference between breathing through mouth versus nose. Feel the pulling in of oxygen from deep within your belly, imagine your belly as an inflating balloon drawing in a life force that radiates throughout your extremities.
With breathing exercises, there's just enough concentration to build strong mental habits, but not so much that it becomes a burdensome task. But thinking about just breathing is hard to do for a long time. Usually it involves sitting on a cushion without moving for a long time. One must train for that kind of mind-body control.
Only breathing is hard. But also super easy, after all, it's only breathing.
In daily life this practice can be useful when dealing with other humans. In the midst of being "triggered" by one's nemesis, one could just take a few seconds to breath at least 3 times before saying what's next on your mind.
Easy, right?
Which is why we need to practice.
Focusing on breathing is the simplest and purest meditation exercise. It gives your mind a few slow-paced activities to concentrate on. Count each breath up to 10 and repeat. Notice the difference between breathing through mouth versus nose. Feel the pulling in of oxygen from deep within your belly, imagine your belly as an inflating balloon drawing in a life force that radiates throughout your extremities.
With breathing exercises, there's just enough concentration to build strong mental habits, but not so much that it becomes a burdensome task. But thinking about just breathing is hard to do for a long time. Usually it involves sitting on a cushion without moving for a long time. One must train for that kind of mind-body control.
Only breathing is hard. But also super easy, after all, it's only breathing.
In daily life this practice can be useful when dealing with other humans. In the midst of being "triggered" by one's nemesis, one could just take a few seconds to breath at least 3 times before saying what's next on your mind.
Easy, right?
Which is why we need to practice.