the difference between breathing and thinking about breathing

A teacher of shamatha meditation, after instructing a newcomer in the proper sitting posture, proceeds to the second instruction. The abbreviated form of this instruction goes something like this: "Having assumed the proper posture, now place your attention on the breath." Or, "Begin to notice the breath." The gist of the second instruction is to bring greater awareness to the breath, the vital fluid whose passage through your tissues, for the most part, escapes your attention, fading into the background unnoticed.


The instruction seems straightforward enough -- breathing naturally, place the mind upon the breath -- but the essence of the message is easily miscommunicated. Because this is such a fundamental point, it's important to convey the instruction with clarity, early, even on day one. It's that important. Ground floor, really.

There's a difference between breathing and thinking about breathing.

When you breathe, your muscles move. You embody your breath. Breath isn't some abstract notion floating around in your head, wherever that is. Put your hands on your chest. Feel those muscles moving? Feel that ribcage expanding and contracting? That's breath. Breath can be sensed directly.

You can sense your body's movements, subtle though they may be, and you can bring your awareness to that movement. If you listen closely, you can hear your breath. And sensors in the skin above your lips can register small changes in temperature. When a teacher of shamatha instructs a newcomer to place the mind upon the breath, this is where the mind should be brought, to this flesh-and-bones level, to the breath in the body of the person on the cushion.

An instruction to "visualize the breath" is exactly the wrong instruction. Breath is invisible, so if you're visualizing breath, you're conceptualizing it. You're thinking about the breath instead of bringing awareness to the breath as it happens in the body. If you're forming a picture of your breath in your head and placing your mind there, you're doing the wrong thing.

On a Saturday evening at the end of a full day of meditation and introductory meditation instruction at the Shambhala Mountain Center in northern Colorado in September of 2012, our instructor, Holly Gayley, had us place our hands on our bodies, on the spot where we felt our breath the most. "Maybe for one person it's the chest," she suggested. "If so, place your hand on your chest. For another person it might be the belly where the breath is felt the most. If so, place your hand on your belly. For another person, it might be the rush of air exiting the nostrils. If so, place your hand beneath your nostrils. This is the breath."

The place-your-hand-on-where-you-feel-your-breath-the-most technique worked. Several students expressed a sense of revelation. They'd been thinking about the breath instead of bringing awareness to the breath.

Breath is in the body and of the body. You can feel it with your senses -- the sound it makes moving through you, the fluctuating temperature it produces, the way the body expands and contracts. In shamatha meditation, this is where you place the mind, on this embodied breath being breathed by the person sitting on the cushion, right here, right now, not on whatever picture is being imagined in the person's head, wherever that is.

With this point clarified, the third instruction -- when the mind wanders, bring it back to the breath -- can be properly executed. You return your mind not to an abstract notion of the breath, but to the embodied breath. If you don't know where you started, how can you ever find your way back?

If you can't locate your breath with your hand, it's doubtful you'll be able to find it with your mind. You can spend a lot of time skating back and forth between concepts, between thinking and thinking about breathing, between thinking and thinking about breathing, which misses the point of shamatha entirely.

So put your hand on your body where you feel your breath the most, and when you practice shamatha, understand that this is where you'll practice bringing your mind over and over and over.