Practice: One-Breath Meditation

During the group meditation I lead on Wednesday evenings, we frequently discuss and practice breath awareness. Breath awareness is common in meditation, and it has many different iterations. This past Wednesday, we practiced dipping into the “breath stream.”

There were periods of specific, spoken guidance in which my words encouraged practitioners to track the bodily sensation of breathing, from the tip of the nose into different parts of the body. Then there were periods of quiet in which… well, who knows exactly what was happening? It’s impossible for me to know the internal experience of my fellow meditators, and that is as it should be. Though we come together to sit and support each other’s contemplative practice, to share personal insights or concerns, I certainly am grateful that no one else need witness the many-headed monsters that crop up in my own mind during the process.

Perhaps you know what I’m talking about, if you have ever attempted a focused-awareness meditation practice. Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, a Buddhist monk from just down the road in West Virginia, writes beautifully about the mindfulness of breathing, including a glorious (and honest) description of the disconcerting self-realization it can foster:

"Somewhere in this process, you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy. Your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill, utterly out of control and hopeless. No problem. You are not crazier than you were yesterday. It has always been this way, and you just never noticed. You are no crazier than everybody else around you. The only real difference is that you have confronted the situation…. So don’t let this realization unsettle you. It is a milestone actually, a sign of real progress."

While that kind of progress is hard-won, I can attest to the fact that many meditators who attend my Wednesday group are palpably relieved to discover (or be reminded) that they are not required to “stop thinking” during meditation. Our intention may be to stay singularly focused on the breath, but there is a natural, unceasing vacillation away from that focus—so, our practice is to return again and again, patiently and calmly, to the focal point (always with varied results, of course, which themselves become fodder for meditation). For example, we may work within a 25-minute window for the meditation session, knowing that sustained focus will exist within that window for brief periods, maybe for only a breath or two before our mental monsters sprout new heads in place of those we believed we had (patiently and calmly) lopped off.

This is why a one-breath meditation practice is useful. Focus for one breath is relatively achievable. One-breath practice is doable any time of day, standing or sitting, in a crowd or alone. You can do the practice once or many times in a row, though it always has an accessible and obvious ending point. And when one-breath is practiced with some regularity, it can have a welcome, re-balancing effect on the body. Here’s how to do it:

1. Don’t try to hold your attention on the breath.

2. Instead, breathe out just once, steadily and without strain.

3. At the natural end of the exhalation, let your body breathe however it wants to.

4. Look around for a moment or two. If you wish, adjust your posture and move your body a little.

5. That’s it. If you wish, do it again.

Longer practices are not necessarily better. In fact, efficacy often comes through frequency: the more often we dip into to the breath stream, whether we stay for the duration of one exhale or a thousand, the more easily we are able enter and the more natural it feels to stay there.

What happens in this so-called breath stream? It’s impossible for anyone to answer the question except yourself, and that is as it should be. I don’t mean to create a mystique around meditation, but in the same way that we can’t know each other’s inner battles, we can’t know each other’s inner bliss. Yet ineffability doesn’t stop people from wanting to talk about interiority. In fact, subtlety may draw us into a meditative lifestyle: like a puzzle waiting for its next piece, we wait with awe and reverence for what will happen next.

This April, I’ll be once again using poetry to accompany my classes. You don’t have to be a poet to join us! Like a one-breath meditation, perhaps there is just one line of Rumi’s 13th century poem “Gone to the Unseen” that touches you, body and soul. May its touch draw you forward into a poetry of your own making:

"O heart, what a wonderful bird you are.

Seeking divine heights,

Flapping your wings,

you smashed the pointed spears of your enemy.

The flowers flee from Autumn, but not you—

You are the fearless rose

that grows amidst the freezing wind.

Pouring down like the rain of heaven

you fell upon the rooftop of this world.

Then you ran in every direction

and escaped through the drain spout.

Now the words are over

and the pain they bring is gone.

Now you have gone to rest

in the arms of the Beloved."

Rain on Rooftop