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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Hi Bodhipaksa,
i am having some very bad consequences from meditation and i dont know what to do. I started to meditate in jan. When i meditated, i watched my chest a lot and all the emotions that were there and i pushed them down to my belly and to my genital area. (i have no idea why i have done this)
After less then 2 weeks, I woke up one day with a strange feeling inside of me. I started to get really scared, anxious, and i had a very poor sleep for almost a week. I was feeling like my chest was almost opened and i was feeling quite vulnerable and every sound or emotion would be to big for me.. I started to take some pills and the sleep got better. the anxious feeling are gone now (almoste 2 month after) but i am still having the strange sensation of having the chest vulnerable and everytime i breath, I feel like the breathing is travelling from my chest to my genital organs. also, i started to be very sexual arroused. I have read on the internet some stuff and i have found something very distrubing regarding the awaikaning of kundalini. i really dont think this is the case, as i have just meditated for 30 minutes/ for less than 2 weeks. I was really a positive and happy person before this meditation started and now i am a mess. i have stoped meditation for 2 month and i am still having this open chest sensation and i almost can watch the breathing when it moves in my body from my chest, down. it is really scarry and i really hope it will go away and i could come back to my lfe as it was.
i would really appreciate your advice on this.
thanks so much
Ana
Hi, Ana.
I'd certainly agree it's a good idea for you to stop meditating until you get some proper guidance.
I don't think you can really push emotions down to the genital area. Your emotions manifest as sensations in the heart and solar plexus, for sure (there are major nerves in that area) and you probably tensed up in that area to make those sensations harder to detect, and at the same time took more awareness to the sensations arising lower down in the body. That suppression of emotion is an odd thing to do, as you acknowledge. I'm sure you had what seemed like good reasons for doing this, even if you're not clear at the moment what those were.
Feeling like the chest is opening and having a feeling of vulnerability are both very normal and healthy experiences to have in meditation. There is a major nerve running through the chest, called the vagus, and it can become very active during meditation -- especially during lovingkindness and compassion meditation, but this can happen during any form of practice. This vagal activation can produce a feeling of liquid warmth and openness. Now for some reason you're interpreting those sensations as something threatening, although as I said they're normal and healthy. So I'd suggest just accepting them and seeing them as signs of emotional health.
You're probably also just becoming more aware of the body generally -- hence the sense of physical arousal -- but the vagus also runs down to the uterus and cervix, so again the sensations you're experiencing are probably a sign of vagal health.
A healthy and active vagus is a good thing. People with an active vagus are more friendly and compassionate, and more likely to help others. I do wonder, though, if there are psychological reasons why you might be afraid of having an "open heart." If you have reasons to distrust people, for example, then that could lead to fear arising in response to signs of compassion. Any thoughts?
hello
im doing from 15 months.in start i did rose meditation for month then i start blue light meditation.In start i stated to see images mostly girls face and one or 2 times horror faces.2 months ago i was having strange feeling like someone is sitting in front of me.that thing really scare me and its happened to me all the time when i meditate then i stop meditation and that thing gone sometimes i feel that thing when im alone.then after few week start meditation again and i started to heard.once i just finished my mediation and i was about to sleep.i was half awake and i heard a very loud and clear voice of spark and i woke up start looking around i was just near my ears then i slept.i ofen hear that some one is whispering in my ear.i was so scared and confuse with these things so i stop my meditation now from almost 1 month i m focusing on my breath and nothing happened.
Hi, Aaron.
I confess I've no idea what the "rose meditation" or "blue light meditation" are. You don't say who taught you those practices or whether you've asked that person for advice, or whether in fact you made the practices up yourself.
Anyway, I'm glad to hear that you're focusing on your breath -- at least I know that's a real meditation practice -- and that you've stopped having these mild hallucinations. They almost certainly weren't harmful at all, but were just dream-like thoughts arising in a semi-focused state of mind. But whatever you were doing in these two "meditation" practices probably wasn't benefiting you very much if you were in such a dream-like state, and so it's no doubt a good thing that you've given them up.
Many thanks. I will try this and let you know how I get on.
Thanks a lot Bodhipaksa,
It really helps a lot to see that what I am going through is normal and that it's nothing to be afraid of. When I have started to google this, I have found a lot of strange responses and things that increased my anxiety (as kundalini and other odd things). But you know, sometimes if you google a small symptom, some forums will tell you have cancerïÂÅ I stopped meditation and I am trying to focus on my everyday life and my friends as for some reason this whole experience made me very anxious. Perhaps, this is because I have just lost a pregnancy, I don’t know. Anyhow, you have helped a lot and it is really very nice that you are taking time to respond to all the questions. Have a nice day, Ana
My meditation started in the 70's with TM, but then recently I started Christian Meditation in my church (2012), and while the mechanics is the same, the goal became different. I stopped monitoring my "progress" and paid no attention to it. While not regular morning and night, since I haven't been to develop the discipline, I catch myself doing it at odd times, when I'm bored, when waiting for the bus, when waiting for anything, when I try to stay alert - to keep from falling asleep (when my son as a baby had colic all night I used it to stay awake). I have a very keen alert sensation in meditation, and I find I can bring this on at will. Even more recently, I dreamed that I was posing questions (to what I don't know, maybe a computer?) and all I had to do was think the question, as hitting the Enter key on a search engine, and the answer would be there almost simultaneously; all the set of questions that arose as a result of the answer were also instantly submitted and their answers were immediately (simultaneously, almost) retrieved. This went on until the pace slackened, and then started up again; a very weird dream, but amazingly interesting and exciting.
I started meditating for a few months with eyes wide open. I am starting to feel the energy flow in my head during the meditation and goes away when I finish meditating. (Normally I will meditate approx. 45 minutes). Please advise whether I am meditating in the correct manner. Thank you.
Hi, Melvin.
It's simply not possible to tell from this brief description whether you're meditation practice is heading in the right direction. If you have a meditation teacher, then it would be a good idea to talk to him or her. Or perhaps you could find a teacher, or join an online community like the one Wildmind has on Google Plus.
Hi Bodhipaksa,
Thanks for your prompt reply.How do I join the online community? Meanwhile, I have forgotten to tell you the method of my meditation is by focussing on the breathing of in and out where I felt the energy converging in my head during the meditation.
Regards.
Hi, Melvin.
Follow the link and, if necessary, open a Google Plus account. That should take care of it.
All the best,
Bodhipaksa
Hi Bodhipaksa,
Thanks for your reply.
Hello Bodhipaksa,
I need your help regrading my meditation practice.I have learnt saptkosha meditation, which is a practice of observation from outter world to breath, body, thoughts and emotions and then on nothing at last.
I have specific queries regarding posturing and experiences.
1. when i do this practice sitting with back supported, i find my neck very stiff after some 40-50 minutes session. so can i meditate lying down posture.
2. Sometimes things disturbs or take my attention from meditaion like sliva in mouth or heart beats or breathing even after 40 minutes meditation or so.
3.After 40-50 minutes meditation some laughter automatically comes and goes or sometime i kind of become sad but mostly laughter.
4.consciousness comes and go between vivid dreams when i try to ignore them.
5. and some times i feel heavy physical pulling of eyes inside.
I want formal training and good literature regarding meditaion.
I practiced it for some 8-9 months and then left and statrting again now.......
Regrads
pradeep
Hi, Pradeep.
I wish I had time to reply in detail to all the comments posted on this site, but unfortunately that's not always possible, especially when there are multiple questions in one comment, as is the case here. I also find myself wondering why you don't direct these questions to your saptkosha meditation teacher. I'm afraid I've never heard of saptkosha meditation.
But to reply to your first question, it's certainly possible to meditate lying down, but it's not ideal. It would be best to find out what's going on with your meditation posture, and get that sorted out. There's probably some misalignment that's putting strain on your neck muscles. Unfortunately I'm not in a position to diagnose what's going on, so you might want to consult with your meditation teacher, or a reputable yoga teacher or chiropractor.
hello Bodhipaksa,
Thanks for your reply and give your valuable time, I am sorry that i wrongly remember the meditation techique name. Its "panchkosha" meditation and i learnt it in 5 days course during my graduation 2 years back and started practicing later on and i sit in full lotus posture for meditation.
Thanks again for your reply I will try to find a yoga teacher for these queries.
Regards
pradeep
Ah, wrong number of "koshas"! I still haven't heard of that form of meditation, though. Perhaps you can track down your original panchkosha teacher and get more specific advice.