Belly Breathing (Ch 3 from the book 'Why we meditate')

TRY THIS FOR A FEW MOMENTS
 

Close your eyes and drop your awareness into the body. Be present with whatever is happening. Merely feel how it is. Are you feeling stressed or relaxed? How does that feel? Can you distinguish physical sensations of the body—warm, cool, pain, pleasure, tightness—from more subtle or energetic feelings, such as buzzy, speedy, anxious, excited, calm, and so on? Whatever is happening, dont resist it or worry about it, just feel it.

The Three Speed Limits – Tsoknyi Rinpoche
 

When I challenged myself that morning in Kathmandu to slow down, the experience of moving at my bodys natural speed helped me understand an important distinction between my body, my thinking mind, and my energy. To my surprise, when I looked for the root of the problem—the stress—I couldnt find it in my body or mind. I realized there are three kinds of speed: the physical, the cognitive, and the feeling or energetic. I could walk and move quickly without stress and tension. My body could move however fast it needed to; the problem wasnt there. My mind could think fast and creatively; that was also fine. It was my feeling world that was off-balance, distorted. So I realized stress accumulates in the energetic world, the feeling world. The more I understood what was happening inside me, the more I saw it outside as well, all over the world. Whatever we call it—speediness, anxiety, restlessness, stress—I think almost all of us can relate.

I call this understanding the three speed limits: the physical speed limit, the mental speed limit, and the feeling or energetic speed limit. The body has its own healthy speed, but the feeling world can be rushed in a distorted way. That feeling—of restless, anxious energy—is not healthy. Its distorted because its not rational; its out of touch with reality. Speedy energy tells us to get there now, even when we cant. Anxiety tells us were going to die when we arent.

To help distinguish the bodys speed limit from the feeling worlds speed limit, imagine you have to clean a large room. You walk in and see what needs to be done. Moving furniture, dusting, wiping, and vacuuming—it will take about an hour. This is the physical speed limit. The feeling world, however, can be either relaxed or banging on us the whole time: Go faster! Finish as soon as possible! I want this to be over! If we do it like this, well feel stressed the whole time and burned-out in twenty minutes. If our energy is relaxed, on the other hand, we can respect our natural speed limit and clean the room the same, without feeling rushed or restless. We might even feel fresh when its done.

If we dont distinguish between these speed limits, its as if we havent diagnosed the problem correctly, and so we cant apply the right remedy. A major misunderstanding is thinking that speedy energy and fast movement are almost the same. Then we either keep trying to slow down our bodies, or slow down our thinking minds. Neither of these works, because the physical and cognitive are not where the problem is, and not where the solution is found either. Not only that but these strategies cause other problems too. If we slow down our bodies and minds, we can start to worry about functioning well in the world. We can also start to be afraid and pull back from the world, as if it were an enemy. But we need to function; life is fast, and we cant slow it down. We have to run in the world. We need to move our bodies, and we need to use our minds.

Thinking fast is fine; its useful! So what is this third part of our being, this murky area of the feeling world? I think its the key to understanding and working with stress.

The Practice
 

There are four gentle breathing techniques that are especially useful for handling this upward-moving energy. These methods retrain the energy to come down below the navel—its natural home—and rest there. They stand alone as beneficial practices and can also be practiced together as a more comprehensive training. They are:

1. Deep belly-breathing, or “baby-breathing.”

2. Scanning the body and feeling our speedy energy.

3. Connecting speedy energy and awareness with the breath and bringing them all down below the navel.

4. An extrasubtle method that mainly uses intention with minimal muscle control.

Method #1: Deep Belly-Breathing, or Baby-Breathing
 

Usually when were startled, emotionally activated, or just stressed, we breath more quickly, shallowly, and more in our chests. This happens subconsciously but over time can become a habit, and our bodies forget our natural, relaxed way of breathing. In my tradition, we believe the natural way is deep.

Find a relaxed position to work with your breath. This can be sitting or lying down. If youre sitting, whether on the floor or in a chair, try to find a posture where your back is straight but not tight, upright but relaxed. The position of your hands and feet is not so important; all our bodies are different. Try postures and see which allows you to feel straight but relaxed. Whichever position you take, the most essential point is to be relaxed.

TIP: If you are sitting in a chair, try either crossing your legs in the chair or sitting in a way that your feet are flat on the floor. If you cant do this, dont worry. If you are lying down, try on your back with a straight spine and, if you can, your legs bent, with your feet flat on the floor.

Next, put your hands on your lower belly. Your thumbs should be roughly at the level of your navel. Relax your shoulders and arms. Start breathing gently from your abdomen, allowing your belly and hands to rise and fall with each breath. You can rest awareness with the rise and fall of your belly and hands. Try to completely relax your neck, shoulders, and chest so they have no tension. Allow the upper body to fully rest, and let the lower abdomen do most of the movement.

TIP: If you have trouble finding the breath in your abdomen or relaxing with it, try lying down on your back with your legs bent and feet flat on the floor. Put a medium-size heavy object like a big book on your belly. Feel it gently rise and fall as you practice belly-breathing. This can help settle your body and awareness in this practice.

When you feel relaxed and are breathing in a regular rhythm, breathe more deeply, letting the belly and hands rise and fall with each breath. Then introduce short pauses when the breath is fully inside and the breath is fully outside. In other words, after exhaling, pause a few seconds before beginning the next inhalation. At the end of the inhalation, hold the breath in for a few seconds before beginning the exhalation.

These pauses, just holding for a few seconds, should be relaxed and comfortable. Dont hold until you feel short of breath or strained. This is not a competition, and more is not necessarily better. This is a gradual training, and we are just exploring a new way of breathing.

TIP: One day you can feel which pause is more helpful, the holding in or holding out. Whichever is for you, do that. Progress comes over time as we feel more and more comfortable holding our breath, and the retention lengthens naturally.

Finally, just keep relaxing and continuing this belly-breathing. Allow your body to enjoy the deep rhythmic abdominal breathing. Allow your whole system to calm down and let go, like a baby resting without a care in the world. Continue for as long as you are comfortable. This method of deep abdominal breathing has many benefits even without the subsequent techniques.
Method #2: Body-Scanning
 

The aim of body-scanning is to find and connect with our speedy energy, with our feelings of anxiety or restlessness. Its important to bring an attitude of gentleness and curiosity here. Otherwise we can start thinking of our speediness as an enemy or a negative disease that needs to be eliminated. Instead we treat it with tenderness, like an overexcited child. This method is a little different from other traditional body-scanning techniques—for example, those that focus on choiceless awareness—because here we are choosing to pay attention to speedy energy. As with the first technique, this body-scanning technique has many benefits on its own but also serves as an important preparation for the third practice, khumbak, or gentle vase breathing.

Begin by finding a comfortable posture, where your spine is straight but your whole body is relaxed. This can be sitting or lying down. Start with a dropping practice for a few breaths, and if you have time, maybe a few minutes of deep breathing.
Then bring awareness to your energetic feeling body and explore to find the speedy energy. There are two ways to scan; by moving awareness through the body or by directly bringing awareness to where its needed. If you already know where the speedy energy is, you can just go directly there. If not, you can move awareness relaxedly through your head, face, neck, shoulders, upper back, and chest. Remember to be curious and gentle. The main focus is just connecting directly to sensations and feelings; there is no other agenda to this step. We are not looking for particular sensations or feelings, or trying to change our experience at this point. We are just exploring the of speediness and restlessness.


The sensations and feelings associated with speedy energy can be quite subtle.
As you explore more you may notice coarser physical sensations like tightness, pain, heat, and dryness, as well as more subtle sensations of tingling, vibrating, and buzzing. Continue this practice, scanning again and again, just being curious and open to whatever you feel.

Method #3: Gentle Vase Breathing with Retention
 

This method is a gentler version of a classic technique called vase breathing.
Although this modified version is suitable for unsupervised practice, please follow the instructions carefully and listen to your body.
Gentle vase breathing is where everything comes together. We build on our skills of belly-breathing and body-scanning, and learn to bring breath, speedy energy, and awareness together and hold them under the navel. This practice needs to be repeated over and over again, because we are retraining an energetichabit. Its very important that the body remain relaxed and the pressure be very gentle; if we tense up and push too hard, the practice can backfire and make our energy more unbalanced. If were too tight, especially in the upper-stomach area around the solar plexus and sternum, the energy can feel like its blocked,
“bouncing” back up into our chest and head. This can actually make us feel temporarily worse.
This is a subtle practice; youll have to play with it to find the right balance.
We can use two main metaphors to help visualize and understand this practice: the French press and the balloon. These two techniques may yield different experiences, so play with them and see which feels more natural and beneficial for you. 

Begin by taking a posture with the spine straight but the whole body relaxed, either sitting or lying down. Start by doing a few minutes of breathing to prepare the body.
Then scan for the speedy energy—signs of restlessness, anxiety, or buzz. When you feel you have connected to the energy, move on to the next step.

THE FRENCH PRESS: Remaining relaxed and grounded, breathe out completely.
While breathing in through your nostrils, imagine the breath is mingling with the speedy, restless energy and gently pressing it down, like a French press gently pushing the coffee grounds down to the bottom of the vessel. The speedy energy is being urged from the upper body down through the stomach, to its natural home below the navel. Then hold the breath down there for a few seconds. The energy needs to be held in the “vase,” so we press very gently downward with the muscles we use to poop, to hold it all down there. You dont need to push hard. Exhale completely, then inhale and repeat over and over again.

THE BALLOON: This is essentially the same practice physically, but some people find the French press image too forceful and they push too hard. So instead of a French press, imagine there is a balloon in your lower belly, under your navel. In this version, we dont imagine pushing anything down from above. Each breath in fills the balloon, and each breath out empties the balloon.

Remaining relaxed and grounded, breathe out completely, emptying the balloon. As you breathe in, imagine the empty balloon sucking down the breath and speedy energy and filling up below the navel. When its full, gently “pinch” the top of the balloon to prevent the energy from escaping, by pressing down very gently the muscles we use to poop. Hold the breath for a few seconds. Exhale fully and repeat, over and over.

When holding your breath in like this, its important not to hold it until you feel strain and gasp for breath. Just start with a few seconds, and gradually build up the duration over days and weeks. If you keep practicing regularly, your capacity will naturally increase, without forcing it. If you start with two to three seconds, for example, you can build it up to ten seconds, and then fifteen to twenty seconds over time.
This is very beneficial, because the increased retention is often a sign of more relaxation in the subtle body, and of more control of the energies.
If you feel tightness in your head or chest, light-headed, or dizzy, you may be tensing up, pushing too hard, or holding the breath too long. Stop the practice and relax for a while. Try practicing gentle belly-breathing and body-scanning to see where the tension is building up. Try to relax that.

Method #4: The Extra-Gentle Way
 

This final method is for when we have gained some proficiency in the other techniques. When we have become comfortable with belly-breathing, can connect to our speedy energy with awareness, and can regularly bring our speedy energy down to rest in its natural home below the navel, we can try this fourth technique. We have created a link between energy and awareness, and can now use that link to bring speedy energy down with almost no effort. We may notice that the previous techniques are really helpful, but when we get up and have to do other things, our speedy energy pops back up and becomes activated. After all, we cant talk and engage normally if were holding our breath! This technique helps to bridge these practices with daily life. It allows us to maintain some benefits while talking, moving around, working, and engaging in our lives.
Start by just mentally connecting to the energy in the body and exhaling. While inhaling, imagine bringing breath, energy, and awareness down under the navel. Once you have applied a slight amount of muscular engagement, almost a reminder to the body, keep about 10 percent of your energy and breath down in the “vase,” and breathe naturally in and out on top, keeping the chest and shoulders relaxed and natural. Just be as natural and normal as possible. This practice is so subtle no one needs to know youre doing it.
At first, we will be constantly distracted by life and lose this subtle practice. So whenever we lose it, we just need one breath to connect again. Just repeat over and over. Gradually we are forming a new habit, and it becomes easier and easier. We will feel more grounded throughout the day. We will notice many situations that were stressful before become easier to manage. This is really helpful for long meetings! 

DANIEL GOLEMAN: THE SCIENCE
 

My wife and I were in a taxi with Tsoknyi Rinpoche on the way to the Delhi train station. It was March 2000, and we had reservations on a train that would take us up toward Dharamshala, where I would moderate a meeting with the Dalai Lama and a handful of psychologists on the topic of “Destructive Emotions.”
We had left with plenty of time to spare, but gridlocked traffic was eating away at the time buffer. I was, frankly, getting uptight, increasingly worried about missing the train—a destructive emotion had taken control.
My anxiety boiled over when our taxi stopped for a red light at the intersection of two huge avenues, which looked less like streets and more like parking lots packed with cars (and the occasional oxcart, bicycle rickshaw, and cow). The red light stopped us for what seemed like an endless amount of minutes.
A silver-colored word in the middle of that red light—relax—made no difference in my state. I could not relax, but got more and more tense. My head spun with the swarming colors, sounds, and smells whirling around us like a hurricane. Though our lanes werent moving anywhere, drivers all around us were showing their impatience in a rising cacophony of honking. I felt a mounting sense of urgency at the traffic jam, an impossible pretzel that had no rhyme nor reason and seemed would never untangle.
“Oh man!” I said to Rinpoche. “This traffic is really snarled. Im starting to worry about getting to the train.”
Rinpoche said, in a soft, calm voice, “Can you feel the speediness? Can you find where it is?”
I closed my eyes and scanned my body, noticing a buzz of sensations and a growing tightness in my belly. I nodded.
Rinpoche continued, “Find it. Feel it. Its not you. Its not your mind, not your body. Its your energy.”

Rinpoche added, “First just sense that you are speedy—what that feels like in your body. Then understand that you are tuning into the feeling world. Find where in your body you feel your energys speediness. Then breathe in and hold the breath down under your navel for as long as is comfortable for you. Exhale slowly, holding back about ten percent of the air.”

Getting what he was saying, I took a deep breath and let the air out slowly. Rinpoche led me through several breaths this way. And, almost miraculously, my tension eased. The light changed, traffic moved again, and I felt more relaxed. Right on the spot, Rinpoche was guiding me to use the body scan and the gentle vase breathing method. As weve just learned, that gentle vase breathing is one of several ways to work with our breath to calm our nervous energy. These breath-control practices are ancient in India, and made their way from there, along with Buddhism, to Tibet in the ninth to eleventh centuries. Several such breath-control practices have been preserved and are still taught in various corners of Tibetan Buddhism to this day.

Their purpose: calming the mind for meditation. Science agrees.
It turns out there is sound research showing the power of these breath methods. In recent decades scientists have turned their attention to such breath-control methods, realizing that using them has powerful impacts on our mental state. In short, managing our breath helps us manage our mind.

Key parts of the brains emotional circuitry get triggered by the amygdala, our neural radar for threat. In todays stressful life our amygdala fires far more often than needed, and the speediness we are caught up in adds to our stress.
That pitches us into “sympathetic nervous system” activity, where our body prepares for an emergency: our heart rate jumps, as does blood pressure; our bronchial passages enlarge, and we breathe faster; our digestion shuts down; blood shifts from our organs to our arms and legs (the better to fight or run); and we sweat.
Such emergency responses are triggered by hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, which mobilize all these systems to prepare for emergency. This biological reaction gets set off all too often these days (That irksome too-slow driver! That scary fast driver! Difficulty with the kids! That horrible boss!).
Once stress hormones surge through us, were more readily triggered for a further stress reaction. And, as weve discussed, these days this threat reaction triggers in response to symbolic threats too—like the feeling that someone is treating us unfairly—not just the physical survival emergency the reaction was designed for. Being treated unfairly feels bad, of course. But its not the threat to our very life that our fight-or-flight response was designed to handle. Even so, that biological machinery for physical survival also takes over when we undergo a psychological threat like unfair treatment.
We can undergo this fight-or-flight response many times in a single day, all too often without having time to end it. And such a prolonged, ongoing fight- or-flight reaction overtaxes our biology with long-term costs, such as heightened inflammation, lowered immune system defenses, and becoming more susceptible to a range of stress-worsened illnesses.
During the emergency mode our attention shifts to focus on the presumed threat—even when were trying to get something else more important done, we stay preoccupied by what upsets us. The response is so strong that we might find ourselves thinking about that threat and how to handle it even when we at two a.m. As we read in chapter 2 this kind of anxious worry serves no useful purpose.

Some of us might get sad or angry, while others panic. Theres no set response, but none of the likely reactions help us.

Contrast that with a “parasympathetic response,” the physiological state where the body rests and recovers from such stress. Our heart rate and blood pressure subside and our breath slows, as do the other biological upshifts of the emergency reaction. Our digestion resumes its usual workings. This is the biological state where the body rests, restores itself, and relaxes. We can eat, have sex, sleep.
The bodys emergency response has a beginning—when were triggered—a peak in the middle, and an end, if we have the chance to calm down again.
Thats what the controlled breathing method Rinpoche offers here does for us: it ends the stress cycle were caught up by.

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