In the third stage of this meditation practice we let go of the counting and simply follow the breath as it flows in and out. This is the Mindfulness of Breathing proper, and if I were forced to introduce the Mindfulness of Breathing practice in two minutes then this is what I’d teach — simply paying attention to the sensations of the breath.
However, by saying that I don’t want to devalue the earlier two stages, which are important aids in helping us to practice effectively in this stage of the practice and important practices in their own right.
Here’s an outline of the practice so far:
Set up your posture, as described in the posture guidelines, developing awareness of the body and relaxing as best you can.
Then, becoming aware of the breath as the central experience within the body, begin counting after each out-breath, counting in cycles of ten breaths. When you notice the mind wandering, gently bringing it back to the breath. Notice the gently relaxing quality of the out-breath.
Moving into the second stage of the practice, begin counting just before each in-breath, again counting ten breaths before starting over again at one. Notice the gently stimulating quality of the in-breath.
When you feel ready, move onto the third stage.
In the third stage of the practice, drop the counting, and just follow the breathing coming in and out. Pay particular attention to the transitions from an in-breath to an out-breath, since those are the places where you’re most likely to become distracted.
See if you can notice the breathing as a continuous process — not as a series of in-breaths and out-breaths, but as a never-ending stream of sensation connected with the movements of the body, and the sensations of the air flowing into and out of the body.
You can listen to an MP3 guided meditation that will lead you through the first three stages of the practice by clicking on the player below:
If you’ve been working methodically through this practice you know the score by now. Try doing all three stages for a few days. Practice them every day, if possible, and get to know them well.
Watch out for any tendency to want to skip over one stage (maybe because you don’t like it as much as the others). Each stage has its own special function, so remember to do them in the correct order.
You might want to make your meditation a little longer now, perhaps five minutes per stage, making fifteen minutes.
Shunryu Suzuki, the famous Zen teacher who founded the San Francisco Zen Center and who was a major influence on Western Buddhism, talked about “the gaining idea.” This rather awkward but incredibly useful phrase points to the problem that arises in our practice when we’re hungering for results. We want be enlightened right here and right now. Or we simply want to rush on to learn the whole practice so that we can check that off our list of things to do. The gaining idea is a major hindrance to developing skill in meditation.
As Suzuki Roshi said, “When a gaining idea arises in our practice, it is a sign that our practice is in trouble.” The reason for this is that we’ve actually incorporated our restless, grasping mind into our meditation practice. Our practice has been taken over by the mind that craves, yearns, and tries to appropriate results without following the path that leads to those results.
These attitudes of grasping, craving, and greedy hunger are the very things that cause us suffering in the first place. Because we suffer we want to meditate, because meditation is the antidote to craving and suffering. And then what happens? Our craving takes control of the meditation! It’s as if the antidote to the poison itself accidentally becomes contaminated with poison!
It’s useful if you learn to recognize this gaining idea, this notion that somehow your best interests will be served if you rush through the practice. That notion is false. Meditation is about letting go of grasping so that we can experience freedom. So start doing that now by deciding that you’ll pause where you are right now, and that you’ll explore the stages of the meditation practice and really get to know them before you move on to the next stage.
As part of that exploration come back to this section and read a bit more about the issues that can arise in this stage of the practice.
Perhaps this is a good time to remind you of your body. I’ve emphasized that it’s important to set up your posture at the start of a period of practice. Doing this provides you with better conditions for meditating.
It’s like making sure, when you’re building a fire, that your kindling is stacked just right and that your matches are dry, so that you’ll end up with a good blaze instead of a pile of smoldering wood and a bad temper.
But when you take your attention away from your posture in order to be more aware of your breath, you’ll often find that your posture starts to drift. You might find that some parts of your body start to sag, while others become tense. And these changes lead to mental and emotional changes.
The tension in your shoulders might be related to some anger you’ve started to experience. The sagging in your spine might be related to a feeling of despair that’s crept in. If you relax your shoulders, the anger will start to disappear again. If you straighten your spine, you’ll start to feel more confident again.
As you become more proficient at meditation, you’ll learn that you can periodically take your attention away from your breath for a split second in order to check your posture and make minor corrections. You’ll get so good at doing this that you’ll be able to effectively keep a continuous awareness of your breath.
Remember learning to drive? You probably found that at first you’d take your attention off the road to change gears and when you took your attention back to the road (several long seconds later) you’d find that you’d drifted off towards one side or that a red traffic light had mysteriously appeared from nowhere. Later, you’ll have found that you were able to change gears without significantly taking your awareness from what was going on around you.
The same thing happens in meditation – we learn to deal with the seeming complexity of managing our posture and what we’re doing with the focus of our attention – elegantly and even effortlessly. A good way to start practicing this skill of monitoring your posture without disrupting your practice is to check and correct your posture in between stages.
You might want to do this every time you move from one stage to another. Later, you’ll find that you can integrate monitoring your posture into your practice in the way that I’ve described.
While stage one of this meditation practice helps to develop more calm (by emphasizing the qualities of the out breath), and stage two helps to develop more energy and awareness (by emphasizing the qualities of the in breath), the third stage emphasizes both the in breath and the out breath equally. This helps us to blend the calm relaxation of the first stage with the energized awareness of the second stage.
In our meditation practice we are ideally developing a sense of energetic calm awareness, or a calmly energized awareness. While doing stage three you can be aware of the constant oscillation between the calming out breath and the energizing in breath, and allow the qualities of the out breath and of the in breath to permeate each other.
Modifying an analogy the Buddha himself used, you can think about making dough. When you’re making dough, what you’re doing is taking two contrasting substances – a wet one and a dry one – and combining them together in a perfectly balanced blend.
If you have too much water, then you’ll have a sticky mess, while if you have too much flour, you’ll have a dry, cracked ball.
Get the proportions just right, and you’ll have dough that is perfectly pliable and workable. (The Buddha’s analogy involved a “bathman or bathman’s apprentice) blending soap powder and water — presumably the Buddha was more familiar from his earlier life with bathing in luxury spas than he was with baking).
Just as the right balance of flour and water (or soap-powder and water) produces a pliable mixture that can be used appropriately, this stage of the mindfulness of breathing meditation practice helps us to develop pliability of mind; to get our minds into a calm and energetic state where we can work to develop a much greater degree of concentration.
If the first two stages have gone really well, letting go of the numbers can allow us to develop a deeper and more balanced concentration. However, if we haven’t managed to develop enough calmness in the first two stages, then it’s easy to get lost in the third stage.
This often happens because the counting has been acting as an anchor for our awareness: it stops us from drifting too far away from the breath. So if we let go of the counting we can often float off into distraction.
One way to retain an anchor while letting go of the numbers is to use a physical sensation in the body as an anchor. I sometimes use the physical sensations in my hands in the same way as I use the numbers.
Sometimes at the end of every out-breath I take my awareness to my hands in order to keep me grounded. I use the sensations in my hands much as I’d use the numbers.
The physical anchor is a more refined anchor than the counting because it’s non-verbal — it cuts down on the amount of thinking, so that your mind can develop a deeper level of stillness.
Other times I maintain awareness of my hands throughout the cycle of each in-breath and out-breath. When I breathe in there’s a sensation of rising in the body and so I have a general sense of the gap between the hands and the breath widening. In each out-breath there’s a feeling that the body is sinking, and so I get a sense of the connection between the hands and the breath narrowing. So I notice the connection between the hands and the breath, and this helps keep the mind from wandering off.
Partly I think this works because it makes the practice more interesting. But partly I think it’s something to do with introducing a “stretch” into the practice. What I mean is that I’ve noticed that when my mind stretches to accommodate two separate sensations it seems to calm down very quickly. I can’t explain this, but I offer it as a tool that might be useful.
Other “stretches” involve being aware of the space outside my body while focusing on some inner sensation (like the breath), and being aware of sounds outside of myself while following some inner sensation.
You might want to play around with this idea of creating a stretch in your awareness and see what happens. Just notice two very different and geographically separate sensations, and pay attention to both simultaneously. And notice what the result is.
We talk about “trains of thought.” You can think of these as being like real locomotive trains that pull into a busy station and then go rattling off. Most of them don’t go anywhere that we particularly want to go (most of them are to do with worrying, getting angry, running ourselves down, etc). But our mind is like a little kid that’s very restless and curious, and keeps going through the open doors into the carriages.
Before we know it we’re miles away from where we wanted to be (in dangerous territory, often!), and it takes us forever to get home.
By learning meditation you can learn just to watch the trains pulling up and pulling away, being aware of them and choosing not to get into them.
Are there any trains we want to get into? Yes. Some thoughts can be useful, if they are thoughts that guide us toward our immediate experience. For example, we can say to ourselves things like “Staying in the moment … there’s just this moment.” Thoughts like that take us deeper into our meditation.
One difference between useful thought trains and those that take us into distractions, is that when we’re reflecting (as opposed to being distracted), we know what we’re thinking and why, and what effect those thoughts are having). By contrast distracted thoughts are like dreams — we don’t know we’re in them until we “wake up.”
But it can take a while to recognize which thoughts are useful and at first it’s not a bad idea simply to treat all thoughts as distractions and to let them all depart from the station of the mind while you “just sit” on the platform.
There’s another way that the third stage of the mindfulness of breathing meditation, in which we drop the counting of the first two stages and simply follow the breath flowing in and out, is a progression from those two stages.
The progression consists in sensing the continuity of the breathing process, through having an unbroken awareness of the breathing rather than in having an awareness of individual breaths.
When we’re counting out-breaths (as in the first stage of the meditation practice) or counting in-breaths (as in the second stage) there’s an inevitable tendency to experience the process of the breathing as being chopped into bits. There’s an in-breath. Then an out-breath. Then another in-breath. Then another out-breath. We may acknowledge pauses between the in and out phases, so that we mentally chop the breathing into four parts: in / pause / out / pause.
Now actually the breathing process isn’t quite like that. It’s not really divided into discrete parts. When you watch the breathing closely in meditation you’ll see that the in-breath shades into a feeling of fullness, which then shades into the release of the out-breath. Then the increasing sense of emptiness at the end of the exhalation shades into the beginning of the next in-breath. There are no distinct beginnings or ends. There’s just one continuous process that changes its character over time. It’s much like looking at a rainbow. There are different colors, but when you look at where one color shades into another you’ll see there are no distinct transitions.
We’re practicing mindfulness of breathing, not mindfulness of breaths.
When we experience the breath as chopped up then there’s a tendency for our awareness itself to become discontinuous. We actively experience the in-breath, then the mind goes a bit floppy for a moment, then we pay attention to the out-breath, then the mind goes a bit squidgy again. Somewhere during the times when the mind is taking a little vacation from vividly noticing the breath it decides instead to get absorbed in some thought or fantasy, and we don’t have the mental sharpness to stop it from going on a little (or perhaps a long) wander.
When we get to the end of the second stage and stop counting we have the opportunity to experience the wholeness of the breathing rather than the chopped-up-ness of in-out-in-out. And so our awareness itself becomes more continuous. We’re less likely to get distracted. The mind becomes more attuned to the subtler sensations where the breath is changing from an inhalation to an exhalation, and vice versa. And we develop a very pleasant sense that we have a continuous thread of awareness running through our experience.
So practically, what this means is that we follow the sensations of the breath as it flows in, noticing the sensations of movement becoming subtler as the sensations of fullness are becoming stronger, noticing the “cresting” of the inhaling as it releases from fullness into the emptying of exhaling, noticing the sensations of exhaling becoming stronger as the body moves faster and as the exhaling happens more slowly, bottoming out into an increasing sense of emptiness, until the emptiness gives way to a sense of filling. And so on, and so on. It’s actually hard to put this in writing because for the sake of clarity in writing I have to use commas and periods, which suggests a succession of discrete experiences rather than an ever-evolving transition within one single experience, which is the process of breathing.
Another approach would be, next time you’re following the breathing (and maybe that’s right now) seeing if you can notice any absolute boundaries and discontinuities within the process of the breathing. I think you’ll find there are none, and that as your sense of the breathing becomes more continuous, so too does your sense of the continuity of your mindfulness.
The great hypnotherapist, Milton Erickson, told a story about how one day, when he was a boy, a riderless horse wandered into the farmyard outside his home. Milton had never seen this horse before, and had no idea where it lived, but very soon he had the horse back where it belonged. How did he do this?
Well, he sat on the horse’s back, got it to start walking, and then every time they came to a turn in the road, he paid attention to the almost imperceptible movements of the horse’s body that told him where it wanted to go. And once young Milton had sensed in which direction the horse wanted to head in, he encouraged it to do so. It turned out that the horse knew its own way home, and all Milton had to do was give it a little gentle guidance — or encouragement to trust its own instincts.
It’s similar with our breathing. I’ve said that in the mindfulness of breathing practice we’re not controlling our breath. On the other hand I’ve also suggested that you can use deep breathing, or breathing into the belly, or breathing into the upper chest, etc., as ways of altering your state of mind. This might sound contradictory, but it’s not really. When we change the pattern of our breathing, we don’t have to exert any control. We can gently guide the breath without controlling it, as Milton did.
Had Milton tried to tell the horse where to go, he’d never have got it home. Horses, after all, are trained to follow orders. Instead he used a more subtle technique of being aware of where the horse wanted to go, and then reinforced that desire with some gentle guidance. The horse soon got the idea.
We all are riders of horses, in a way. Our breathing is generally under the control of subconscious processes, and it has to be said that our subconscious, by and large, does a pretty good job of keeping breathing. The subconscious rarely fails to carry out its tasks, which is more than can be said for our conscious minds (how often do we go upstairs to get something and then forget by the time we get there what it was we wanted?). So let your subconscious do what it’s good at.
When you want to change your breathing, say by breathing into your belly more deeply, then all you really have to do is to take your awareness into your belly to give your subconscious a gentle hint, and then let it do the work. In this way, we gently guide our breath rather than control it.
The fourth stage of this meditation practice helps us to have greater focused attention. You can learn about that here.
You can also learn more about this meditation practice in my book, Wildmind: A Step-by-Step Guide to Meditation.
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Wow. You are so right. I didn’t know it back then but I was very angry with God about being physically and verbally abused by my father. Back in my twenties when the intrusive thoughts came up I was very afraid of them because I thought that they were coming from outside of me by some blasphemous spirit. I didn’t know I was angry with God. The past few years I have come to know that I am very angry with Him. Now that you’ve answered my question I now not only know it but I own and accept it, if that makes any sense, and now maybe I can move forward. I never accepted being angry with Him because I felt it was wrong but whether it’s wrong or not the anger IS there. Thank you so much. I don’t know if you realize how much I needed to “know” this.
You're welcome. You don't necessarily have to "do" anything with these thoughts when they arise. It can be enough simply to "hear" them without judgment, recognizing that they come from a part of you that is hurting.
Hi. I've been meditating for some time now, but I'm still unsure I'm on the right path.
I try to just watch my breath, and all I end up doing is trying to stop that chattering in my head. I feel like I'm only developing concentration. I don't feel like I'm going into deeper concentration/ another state of being, nor do I have any unusual experiences (I'm not seeking them, but take their absence as a sign). I'm still very much aware of myself, so there's no feeling of being selfless. I try to be non-striving, non-judgmental etc, but these are goals in themselves, so I end up striving even more. All in all, I enjoy meditating, but I don't see much change in my practice or myself over time. I know, expectations are part of the problem, but simply letting go isn't easy.
Am I doing something wrong? Also, should this practice be even remotely trance-like? When I feel like I'm sliding into pleasant daze, I pull myself back into impartial observation, so maybe that's my problem. Thank you!
Hi, Lorelei.
Most of what people do when they trying to stopp the chattering in the head is a waste of time. You can't forcibly stop the thoughts from arising, and in fact an aversion to having those thoughts arising is unhelpful. Aversion is one of the things we're trying to let go of in meditation. So just accept the thoughts, as best you can. Let go of them when you notice you've become caught up in them, and just come back to your breathing, or to whatever meditation practice you're doing.
Here's a thing to try, though. Most people, I find, simply plunge straight into paying attention to the breathing, without any preparation. I'd suggest that you start your meditation with four or five minutes of simply paying attention, with the eyes closed, to the space and light and sounds around you. Especially the sounds. And notice that there's nothing you can do to control those sounds. The most sane thing you can do is to just let them be. And really notice the space that the sounds are arising in. Notice the space in front, behind, to the sides -- even above and below you.
And then start to notice the breathing.
Give that a go, and see what happens to your level of inner chatter.
Hello, I started meditate on breathing yesterday. It's not working yet, somehow its hard to get rid of thoughts. But my sister did it easily and achieved that state on her first meditation. The problem is that she feels 'dull', less interested in anyhing in life, after meditation. This worries me. I was looking to find an answer - is it 'normal to have emotions almost dissapear? Thank you!
Hi, Elena.
The comment "I started meditating yesterday -- it's not working yet" is a bit odd. It's like saying "I started exercising yesterday -- it's not working yet." Meditation is a training. It's a process. And much of what happens is taking place below the threshold of consciousness. Did you know that when you meditate your brain actually rewires itself? Since you can't actually feel your brain rewiring itself, you're not going to notice this kind of change.
Just keep on practicing!
Your sister's experience does not sound at all healthy. It sounds dissociative and alienated. I don't know what she's doing, or whether she has a teacher, but I'd suggest she stop whatever she's doing and talk to someone with some experience.
Hi, thank you very much for your reply!
i myself was worried about my sisters experience, i felt something must be wrong, i will talk to her
as for me, i didnd' go through the stages you described here, because i just found your blod yesterday. What i do is this: i sit and catch the calm, i close my eyes and i watch my breathing, my body movements, how i feel my body inside during the breathing and i try put my thought away, but they are coming intermittently. Yesterday, i meditated two times and the last one was the worse - thought were just coming and coming, i got tired of them and went to bed. But in my dreams i was flying all night long! i didn't fly in my dreams for long time with all that stress in life. i guess, my brain did rewire itself!
Well, your brain rewiring itself is not like flicking a switch. It's more like building muscles. You have to repeatedly do the work. But as you've seen, some changes can take place quite quickly.
Thank you for your excellent website. I'm very interested in your comments on thought trains as there is a question I've been wondering about for a while. I very much appreciate the benefits of mindfulness in reducing harmful thought trains - the anxious, ruminating type. However I find that some thought trains - what you might call 'daydreaming' - can be enjoyable and delightful. They certainly meet your definition of 'distracted thoughts' however. Is daydreaming something we should try to avoid or can it be a positive experience?
Hi Catriona.
It all depends on whether daydreaming is appropriate or not. If you're in the middle of a conversation or driving in busy traffic then perhaps daydreaming isn't so useful. If you're resting, then often it is useful. If you're meditating -- well, if your intention is to be mindful, then just notice the daydreaming and let go of it. That'll help you have the ability to daydream with it's appropriate and not daydream when it's not!
Hi! Bodhipaksa,
I have been meditating for one month, but with Deepak, where there is background noise. I have been told silent meditation is better. Then, I found your website. I am so greatful, because I really like it. I am at stage 3 of the breathing techniques and seem to think, I am doing fine as I feel I am able to focus on my breathing and body and become relaxed. During the meditation, I feel tingling in my hands and feet. Is this normal? Also, I suffer from anxiety and depression, but it is not severe. Do you think think I am on the right track with Mindful meditation and do you think if I continue doing it, I will begin to see positive changes in my thoughts and my well being?
Thank you
Hi, Anne-Marie.
It sounds like things are going well. That tingling is what we call pīti, or prīti in Sanskrit, and it's a good sign. When that appears in the hands, try relaxing your focus a little so that you're aware of the whole body, and notice how the sensations in the body change with the energy of the in-breathing and the relaxation of the out-breathing.
Hi,
I was wondering if you could offer some advice, whenever I start to relax and meditate, even trying to get to sleep, as soon as I close my eyes I get these grotesque faces flash in my mind's eyes. It's like they rush at me, mouths open, biting, laughing, eyes wide open and their everywhere I turn.
I have to bring myself out of it, and try again and again, usually if it's just relaxation I give up but getting to sleep can be a nightmare.
It's been happening for about 6 months now.
Hi, Shannon.
This is just part of your mind playing tricks on you. Sometimes as people (usually relative beginners) are starting to become more relaxed and calmer, the mind gets "creative" and produces unusual images or sensations in the body. These are nothing to be worried about. I'd suggest that you first just smile at them and accept their presence. They're just thoughts, like any other, and we don't want to get caught up in them. Getting anxious about them is a way of getting caught up in them, so we just smile to remind ourselves that this is OK.
And then just keep going back to the breathing. Try being aware of several different sensations of the breathing, and not just one. My guess is that you're only observing a very small part of the breathing, and so there's "mental bandwidth" going unused -- until your mind finds a way to fill the vacuum by creating these images. They'll pass.
Smiling can also help you feel happier, and the sensations of happiness are something else that can fill your inner bandwidth. As you feel happier, the images will subside.
Hello,
I have begun to attempt to practice meditation. I find that it is way easier for me to focus on my breaths and nothing else then it supposedly should be from everything I am reading. My mind does not "wander" very often at all... I just count the entire time, counting each breath. All i think about is the counting, and how I want to stop counting but I cannot, my mind just counts and counts and counts. When researching on how to stop this, all I am finding is advice that is telling people to count their breaths to begin meditating, then that when they notice they stop counting and focus on something else, to begin counting again. This is a problem for me because the counting itself is what my mind only focuses on, and I can't stop counting. For me counting seems to be a problem, but everything I am finding online treats it as a solution. I can sit there and count my breaths for seemingly eternity with my only thoughts on the fact that I can't stop counting. I try to stop counting, and its like a sub-concious part below the surface continues the count in the background of nothingness. It feels like a self sabotage to me. Like I will just relentlessly count no matter how bad I wan't to stop.
Pls help
Please don't think of this as "self-sabotage." Part of your mind has found that counting your breathing helps you, and hasn't been able to let go. After all, why stop doing something that help you? It's just a habit you've latched onto.
It's probably caught up with a bunch of other habits you have with regard to your meditation practice, so I'd suggest shaking things up a bit. Try being aware of the breathing more fully, noticing more of the sensations than you currently do. I wrote a blog post about how people tend to have a very narrow idea of what they should be paying attention to, and you might find that useful. I suspect that if you do pay attention to more of the breathing you'll find that you eventually "forget" to count.
Hi!
I used to meditate regularly a few years ago, but stopped as I just didnt have enough time, and then forgot...I have now started to make a real effort to reintroduce it into my daily routine, and am spending a good 20 minutes a day doing it. On the very first session a week or so ago, I had this sensation that the top of my head was opening up into this sort of expanse of space. I felt so calm and truely joyful when this happened, and as though I was at complete peace inside. This feeling lingered for about 2 hours afterwards. I have not experienced anything like this since. I just wondered what this is? Is it a state I should be aiming to be in? Is this normal?
Hi, Rach.
Yes, this is normal. And it is something that you can, sort of, aim at. The thing is, how do you aim? You didn't get there by trying to get there. If you try to get there you'll be doing something entirely different from what you did last time and so you'll end up in an entirely different place! So it's not a good idea to strive to attain this state. It may recur spontaneously, or you may not experience it again for years. Just do the practice!
Hi,
I want to know this,
** Can I do few meditation methods daily??
can I collect all benefits from those all ??
(for example 2 hours mindfulness and 1 hour mantra meditation and 1 hour imagination meditation)
please tell me answer to this.
** What happen if I am not able to do meditation for some days?? All the benefits lost what I have done already??
** Is it normal to pushing sensation in head while meditating and even after doing it ?? (not painful)
Im.sorry if the section is wrong, but i want to know those ..please tell me...very important to me. please.
You can certainly do several different kinds of meditation in one day and experience benefits from them all. Four hours of meditation is a lot, though, especially if you're just starting out.
If you don't meditate for a few days you won't lose all the benefits, but it really depends on how long you've been meditating and how often you take breaks. When you meditate you rewire your brain. Quite literally you are developing new pathways, just like you build muscles when you exercise. When you stop meditating, you'll lose some of this, but find that you get back "in the groove" fairly quickly afterwards. If you keep stopping and starting you'll only see a fraction of the benefits of regular practice.
The pushing sensation may be a sign you're trying too hard. But it may be something else. Lots of people have reported similar sensations, and it's normal.