Questions: Meditations 1-15

Your Question: When I started doing the "Retrain Your Breathing", in daily life I became aware of tension in my chest throughout the day. I never had this sensation before. Does that mean I am reconditioning the breath wrong?

Stephen Procter:   The purpose of this training in MIDL 1 is twofold:

1. To  correct any deficiencies in diaphragmatic breathing. Diaphragmatic breathing should be autonomously occurring in the lower abdomen throughout the day. Many meditators come to MIDL with stress breathing patterns where they breathe naturally in the upper chest rather then the lower abdomen. Stress breathing makes it much harder to develop mindfulness of breathing due to its affect on the five Hindrances.
2. To develop  a heightened sensitivity tot the relationship between the diaphragm and  defensive states of mind.

The tension could be occurring in your chest for a number of reasons that you should investigate. I will list them in order of most common:

1. I have  had students that have experienced tightness in their chest and stress      symptoms during the day, because they were trying to hard to take big      breaths during the meditation exercise. Be careful that you are not      approaching these exercises in the same way you would a physical exercise.      With diaphragmatic breathing bigger does not mean better. Instead approach      it with meditation thinking: slow, gentle, relaxing, effortless. To find      the right rhythm requires feeling your way through, rather then thinking your way through. When it feels pleasurable, when it feels relaxing and  without strain, when it has a calming effect, then it is considered as  right.
2. The  second most common cause is that you may have been more stressed then you  realised. MIDL 1 will make you very aware of your breathing patterns and      their relationship to your mind and body. This will create a doorway for  deep insight into DO. The main thing is to investigate what it means to give up effort, to relax.
3. The third most common is when meditators begin MIDL and they already have a tendency towards OCD. If you are naturally obsessive towards things then  due to over effort your mind can become obsessed with the breath. When the mind is too attentive to the breath then breathing patterns will change. Whenever you notice this the path out is to observe the tension that comes from the OCD, assigning in the chest,  and relax it. Gradually this pattern will change. 

You asked: One possibility could also be that I have just become aware of it, but I'm not sure if that is the case as I previously had what I think is continuous awareness, though it may be possible that breath sensations were excluded from that awareness. Though I also think I would have been aware of this tension before I started MIDL, if I had it.

My Reply: Yes you are correct. Though having continuous mindfulness of your breathing is different to what you are currently training in MIDL. In mindfulness of breathing you were developing a basis of samatha, this means that your sensitivity to the sensate quality of your whole body will have been calmed, due to the development of samadhi. In MIDL 1, you are developing no samadhi, just mindfulness and deep relaxation. In this case as you relax tension that you were holding in your body will become more clear. Like how you don’t realise how tense you are until you go on a holiday and start to slow down a bit.

You Asked: My other question is about the full breath. When we let go of directing our breathing to go "belly->ribs->chest", should our body automatically be breathing a full breath, or does it not matter how the body is breathing automatically at this point.

My Reply: In the final stage when you let go of the breathing you should allow your body to find its own rhythm and pace. At first the breathing may be erratic and quite big, but you just focus on letting go of effort and control, and the breath will naturally slow down. At the deepest level it becomes a very small movement in the abdomen bellow the belly button, like your hardly breathing. The key here is to create what I call autonomous breathing, that is breathing controlled by the brain, instead of by the mind. So it becomes a physical, rather mental breathing.

You Asked: The follow up to that is in daily life, should we set our intentions to breath a full breath, or to just let go and let breathing happen naturally (my natural breathing right now is breathing into the belly but not bringing it up into the ribs / chest). Should we always be breathing with a full breath cycle?

My Reply: This is a good question. The natural autonomous breathing when we are not stressed should be a slow gentle breath in the lower abdomen. Like a baby breathes. The only time the breath should move higher then the lower abdomen is when you increase the physical demand on your body. When you are resting it will be in your belly. When you are walking fast it may go from your belly to your lower ribs. When you are running in will go from your belly to your upper chest. When you rest it will go back to your lower abdomen. Just like an engine in a care changes its revs depending on how fats it is going.

You Asked: “...my natural breathing right now is breathing into the belly but not bringing it up into the ribs / chest...”

This is the correct sign that diaphragmatic breathing is autonomous for you. You are good to move onto MIDL 2-3 and learn the softening skill. You will find that because of your training in TMI that you will move through some of these trainings quickly, just be sensitive to your own strengths and weaknesses as they appear. I recommend learning the softening skill for dissolving resistance and deconditioning the mind. If you find that what you are experiencing does not resolve itself we can meet on zoom and work our way through it.

Your Question: I’m always trying to escape situations that cause me any physical/mental discomfort that results from anxiety, including meditation, is this normal?

Stephen Procter: Yes, this is what anxiety is designed to do. Anxiety is part of the fight / flight response and motivates behaviour through producing unpleasant feeling. This ‘running away’ that you are experiencing is a normal part of this cycle.

You Asked: The solution will be to make a commitment to persevere with meditation with the same teacher and to stop jumping around and searching for the ‘right path’.

My Reply: Yes, this is what my meditation teacher called “taking one seat”. This means to give yourself the space to be with whatever you are experiencing, without running away from it. This takes courage and I can help you with this.

You Asked: Does your form of meditation involve acceptance and learning to let go of any attempts to control emotions?

My Reply: I teach midl mindfulness meditation. You will learn mindfulness skills in how to observe how you are relating to different experiences within your life and how to soften / relax relationship towards these experiences in order to dissolve resistance. This type of meditation is very good for anxiety and these skills are what I feel you need to learn. I will explain some options after answering your questions.

You Asked: I find the harder I try to get rid of or distract myself from unwanted sensations and thoughts, the more they persist.

My Reply: Yes, this is fight or flight. 

The very act of trying to escape from or fight against what you are experiencing strengthens it as a habit, by making the anxious cycle turn into a feedback loop that gradually becomes stronger. Literally you become anxious about being anxious. This does not come to an end by trying to change or avoid what you are experiencing. It only comes to an end by teaching your mind that right now is safe. 

This is done by neither fighting or running.

You Asked: I figure I can’t control my feelings but I can control my behaviours so I would like to make a commitment to attend your classes on an ongoing basis.

My Reply: Yes, your feelings are being produced by the survival part of your mind as it is trying to protect you from ‘danger’. These feelings cannot be controlled or avoided (fight or flight) because the very act of control or avoidance is fight or flight and so strengthens the pattern.

You Asked: "...but I can control my behaviours...”

My Reply: Your patterns of behaviour also cannot be controlled, because this again is fight or flight. They can however be changed. Your patterns of avoidance will be habitual so it will not be a matter of making a commitment to attend regular classes, though this will be very helpful, it is more matter of creating a targeted strategy to teach the survival part of your mind that it is safe.

My Summary

You are welcome to come to my meditation classes, they will be helpful for you. Classes within themselves however are generic. Although you will learn techniques to lower your experience of anxiety through practicing weekly meditation, I feel that you would benefit from a more targeted approach.

Other then teaching classes I work professionally with people experiencing anxiety and trauma. Many of my clients are referred to me from doctors and psychologists. I help clients lower their experience of anxiety through these three steps:

Week 1: Retrain stress breathing patterns

It is the habitual chest hyperventilation that causes the experience of anxiety. By retraining your breathing patterns from stress breathing to diaphragmatic breathing many of the symptoms will go away. This requires very specific meditation exercises that I can teach you.

Week 2: Interrupt the habitual stress patterns throughout the day

Our stress response over time becomes habitual. This means that you will have become hypersensitive and hyper-vigilant within your life. Your stress response will be easily triggered thereby re-enforcing itself. I will teach you mindfulness skills to interrupt this habitual stress cycle throughout the day so that it will gradually weaken and come to an end.

Week 3: Remove painful emotional charge from past memories.

Once you have learnt correct diaphragm breathing and the ability to soften / relax we can quite quickly remove the emotional charge from your painful past memories by turning off the stress response against the memory in a safe environment. This will remove the past behavioural triggers that keep embedding the anxiety cycle.

Your Question: What does breathing with my diaphragm have to do with Buddhist Satipatthana practice? I can understand this as a way of feeling less stressed but didn't the Buddha say that we should practice mindfulness of breathing?

Stephen Procter: There are many doorways that we can enter when practicing Satipatthana Vipassana (mindfulness meditation). While on a physical level, retraining of our breathing patterns to autonomous diaphragmatic breathing lowers the experience of anxiety, it also opens the doorway to something much more profound if trained as a foundation for mindfulness within daily life.

Intentional retraining of breathing patterns covers all four Satipatthanas. When the meditator begins breathing retraining they develop Kayanupassana: Mindfulness of Body by bringing awareness to the sensations within the movement of the diaphragm within their body. While in the first two stages of breathing retraining the movement of the diaphragm is controlled, during the third stage the meditator holds bare awareness of the movement of breathing as it moves autonomously within their body. Awareness of this movement develops a heightened sensitivity to the experience of breathing as well as their relationship towards it.

This increased sensitivity to breathing naturally transfers into the meditators daily life allowing them to observe their breathing patterns throughout the day creating a foundation from which they can observe their habitual relationship of attraction or aversion. Mindfulness of breathing patterns changing from belly to chest breathing throughout the day, becomes a 'red flag' that signals the meditators relationship towards experiences within their life, allowing them to observe any habitual relationships.

When the meditator enters into the third stage of breathing retraining they immerse awareness into the experience of their body and allow the re-engaged diaphragm to move autonomously, free from control. This is their first training in the skill of mindfulness of breathing and teaches them how to experience the breath, free from control. At this stage they start to notice their habitual desire to control their breathing and develop an understanding of the relationship between their state of mind and the experience of breathing within their body. They are now developing the third foundation of Cittanupassana: Mindfulness of Mind. This sensitivity to changes within their breathing patterns naturally transfers into their daily life, heightening the understanding of how the experience of their body changes to reflect their state of mind.

As breathing retraining progresses the meditator becomes very aware of the correlation between the unpleasantness they experience while chest, stress breathing and the pleasantness they experience through diaphragmatic breathing. Sensitivity to the relationship between the experience of their body, interaction of their mind and the feeling tone that arises, dependant on both, develops. This increased sensitivity to unpleasantness and pleasantness, separate from the experience of the sensate quality of the body, brings the meditator into the development of Vedananupassana: Mindfulness of Feeling.

This increased sensitivity to the experience of their body, the interaction of the mind and feeling tone as a reflection of their mind, within their body becomes very clear to the meditator at this stage taking them into Dhamma-nupassana: Mindfulness of Conditioned Processes. The meditator now starts to see clearly the conditioned relationship between the experience of their body, mind and the feeling tone present. This sensitivity makes habitual defensive patterns of reaction within them very clear and provides the basis from which they can observe and soften their relationship towards these patterns within their daily life. The process of observing and softening into this habitual process becomes clear to them and the Satipatthana path of deconditioning through mindful non-participation opens up thereby cultivating the factors of the Noble Eightfold Path.

Your Question: Why do we normalize the breath, making inhalation and exhalation the same length when practicing MIDL? I felt that counting seconds along the length of the breath made me too aware of that, so I didn’t feel any calmer when breathing more slowly. Should ribs/chest be engaged in daily life or only when Softening into something?

In daily life, I’m never able to notice where my breath is automatically. I actively remember to do diaphragm breathing every now and then during the day - but have no idea of how it was before this. Will this come over time? 

So, I didn’t feel any calmer. When I heard the instruction ‘... breathe out further than ever before...’ I tensed up. I started to put effort in breathing out fully. How can I feel calmer? When I heard your new instructions about ‘... feeling heavier...’: I became even more tense, then started to cry. I can’t relax, but I want so dearly to be able to.

Stephen Procter: The Stress Response changes the way that the diaphragm muscle works by tightening or locking it in the upward position under the lower rib cage, as it prepares the body for fight / flight. If we are exposed to stress / anxiety for a period of time, the diaphragm muscle, through lack of use, tightens and shortens in its range of movement. this can also be affected by lifestyle habits such as incessant talking, free diving (holding your breath), swimming, body obsession (belly in , chest out fashions) etc. Anything that changes our breathing patterns for a period of time.

When working with different people, some have a short movement of the diaphragm on the in-breath, some a short movement on the out-breath and others both movements are short. Short = 1 - 3 sec diaphragm movement on either in or out-breath. This shortness causes the body to mimic the stress response with short, shallow chest breathing, tricking the mind into thinking it is always under stress. This leads to hyperventilation, a lowering of CO2 levels and confusion in the regulation by the brain of respiration giving rise to the experience of anxiety.

Intentionally moving the diaphragm slowly down and back up again, strengthens the diaphragm muscle and increases its range of movement. This does not mean that we always breathe a 5 sec breath for example, it means that our brain has the option to use this full range of movement when we are under load such a jogging or exercising without having to resort to chest, hyperventilation (over breathing).

You asked: I felt that counting seconds along the length of the breath made me too aware of that, so I didn’t feel any calmer when breathing more slowly.

My Reply: Then don't count. Guided meditations by their nature are generic; they cannot be adapted to every person that uses them. Learn to be sensitive to yourself, anything that is said in a guided meditation is just a suggestion. Use it as a structure for your meditation, investigate the suggestions. If they don't work for you then drop them like a hot rock and move on. Later revisit them and see if they are useful.

You asked: Should ribs/chest be engaged in daily life or only when Softening into something?

My Reply: During this training we exercise the full range of the breath. When stress breathing, the diaphragm disengages and the chest moves up and down in short shallow breaths. During stress breathing the ribs do not open and the chest does not expand, it just moves up and down. The muscles in the upper chest become fatigues and tightness appears in the upper chest and middle of the back under the shoulder blades. This is all part of anxiety.

The important part of the stress breath is that it is upside-down. The breath habitually moves from the top of the chest downward, when I ask someone with anxiety this is how they breathe - upside down. A normal, non-stress breath is experienced as starting below the belly button, moving up through the ribs and into the top of the chest - the opposite direction.

To retrain correct breathing patterns as a basis for the MIDL Softening skill it is not enough to just breathe in our belly, we also need to learn to bring it through our ribs, expanding in our chest. This also offers the brain, as mentioned above, to use the full range of breathing when it is under physical load, returning to short, gentle breathing in the belly when we are relaxed.

You asked: In daily life, I’m never able to notice where my breath is automatically. I actively remember to do diaphragm breathing every now and then during the day - but have no idea of how it was before this. Will this come over time?

My Reply: If you approach this training in a mindful and gentle way, yes, your breathing patterns throughout the day will become very clear to you and you will notice the slightest change within your breathing, in particular the movement of the diaphragm, in relation to your state of mind. At first you just get glimpses of this, but if practiced daily for 3 - 4 weeks, this will become much more natural and sensitivity will be greatly increased. The noticing and not noticing as exactly the same as when you are in seated meditation; it is the same game that we play.

You asked: So, I didn’t feel any calmer. When I heard the instruction ‘... breathe out further than ever before...’ I tensed up. I started to put effort in breathing out fully. How can I feel calmer?

My Reply: Yes this is right, the meditation is doing exactly what it is meant to do, it is highlighting your desire to control. When you heard the instruction you tensed up, this is giving you a clear insight into the relationship between sound, your mind and your body.

Isn’t this interesting?

Is there a correlation between your effort to breathe out and the tension? What did you do with this effort when you noticed it? The over-efforting, the over-trying to achieve is the problem here, not the meditation. Whenever you notice the desire to strive use it to learn how to relax your effort. Use it to learn how to give up any desire to do anything.

You asked: When I heard your new instructions about ‘... feeling heavier...’: I became even more tense, then started to cry. I can’t relax, but I want so dearly to be able to.

My Reply: Can you see the irony of this statement that arose within your mind? "I can't relax, but I want...." Wanting and relaxing are opposite; the tension you feel is coming out of the effort of your wanting. Heaviness arises only when we relax, relaxation arises when we give up all effort, especially the effort to do anything at all, including the desire to relax.

We are starting to see a pattern within your mind, this is wonderful, and this is showing you the way out. It is not the meditation technique that is the problem here, it is the desire to achieve, the desire to control. Whenever you do any meditation I would like you to make this desire your meditation object, learn to observe and relax into to desire. Also learn to observe that this desire is not you, it is a habitual protection mechanism released by your Survival mind in order to protect you. 

It is not personal.

Your Question: I have noticed sometimes when I breathe into the ribs and particularly up into my chest it feels like there is a tightness there almost like I have run out of breath, is this part of the stress response?

Stephen Procter: From my experience this tightness in the chest arises in four ways:

1. Breathing Downwards from The Chest:

Trying to inflate the belly by breathing from the chest downwards towards the belly. This is still stress breathing, the breathing is up-side-down. It is possible that you can think that you are diaphragm breathing and you are not. In this case the breath in the belly will be experienced as a 'push down' from the chest, you may be trying to push down the diaphragm muscle. This will give a feeling of tightness in the middle of the chest and lower ribs as the inflating lungs push against the locked diaphragm. It is best picturing the diaphragm being pulled down rather then pushed, like you have a handle or rubber band below your belly button pulling it down. This can be tricky at first but one it is experienced the difference is very clear.

2. Over Inflating the Belly:

If you over-inflate your belly before bringing the breath up into your chest you will experience tightness and lack of breath in your chest. This is opposite to above. Your chest can only inflate while your diaphragm muscle is moving downwards. If you fully inflate your belly before bringing the breath up (you can try it now), Your breath will feel stuck at the base of your ribs and will not be able to move up into your chest. It is only necessary start the breath below your belly button with a small breath before bringing it up into your ribs and chest to allow them to inflate.

3. Slumping In Your Body:

If you are slumping forward in your body, this can happen lying down but is more susceptible when sitting up, your lower rib cage will turn inwards and press against the base of your lungs preventing them from inflating properly (try slumping forward now and take in a deep breath). This will give a feeling of tightness in the chest and also an uncomfortable feeling in the solar plexus - its bad posture. This slumping is often the cause of the nervous, sick feeling in people with anxiety and depression because of their body slumping forward as they return to fetal position. You can observe people do this when they feel unwell, trying to go back into the safety of the womb. With posture adjustment = shoulders forward, up, back and then dropped down, the chest will open and this feeling will go away (try a deep breath now with the ribs extended out-wards instead of slumping).

4. Over-inflating The Chest:

If you are putting in too much effort into the inflation of your chest you will develop an uncomfortable tightness within it. It is not necessary to inflate the chest to the point of tension, any opening of the chest will come from relaxing the muscles not from engaging them.

Your Question: I notice the resistance and also some anxiety about not being able to get enough breath.

My Reply: When our stress response is on we over-breathe, this means that our respiration rate is too fast. When doing the MIDL Mindfulness Training we intentionally slow down our respiration rate as well as start breathing through our nose, the breathes become long and slow rather the short and fast. to the mind that is used to a faster rate of breathing it can feel like we are not getting enough breath and suffocating. This will also happen at the final relaxation stage where the breath in the belly becomes so subtle that it feels like we aren't breathing at all.

     To the mind survival instinct this can be fearful and the urge to take extra big breathes will arise. this fear is experienced as an anxiety, which of course changes the breathing rate and brings it into the upper chest. This is the game we are playing. If you observe that even though your mind is saying you are suffocating, if you look, your are still alive, so obviously your are not; instead you are dealing with habit. This of course can be caused by any of the four points above.

Your Question: When doing this meditation my diaphragm returns to breathing and happens naturally in my belly but when I finish the meditation and go back into daily life it disengages and I start breathing in my chest again. How long does it take to change my breathing patterns?

Stephen Procter: Diaphragmatic breathing is a foundation skill in MIDL and retraining your breathing pattern so that diaphragmatic breathing becomes natural is a doorway of self observation in MIDL mindfulness meditation.

     If you practice breathing retraining correctly twice per day it usually takes 3 - 4 weeks to change from habitual chest stress breathing patterns. You are correct that in the last phase of this meditation the diaphragm will re-engage and diaphragmatic breathing will happen autonomously. You will than experience the benefits of correct, natural non-defensive breathing. You are also correct that when you finish the meditation and return to normal life that at some stage your diaphragm will lock and habitual chest chest breathing will start again.

     The change of your breathing pattern to chest breathing is a habitual defensive behaviour that re-engages your stress response. There is nothing wrong with this process, it is doing what it is supposed to do, the problem is that this pattern has become habitual so is not turning off when no danger is present. This is a normal part of working with any habit, something will trigger the habitual behaviour and you will fall back into it again and again.

The task of this breathing retraining has four levels:

1. Strengthen and lengthen the movement of the diaphragm by moving it slowly within the belly. This is aided by placing your finger tips just below your belly button, slightly pushing in, and lifting them away from your body by slowly extending and lowering your lower abdominal muscles. In the beginning the range of move may only be 2 - 3 seconds and the diaphragm will move too fast. With gentle practice this will lengthen to 5 seconds on the in-breath and 5 seconds of movement on the out-breath which is a more comfortable range. Even though we train this movement in this way during the meditation, this does not reflect the breathing rate in daily life. your brain will naturally adjust this dependent on what you are doing it just has a greater range of speed and length to work with.

2. Reverse stress breathing from starting at the top of the chest, moving down towards the base of the ribs to starting from below the belly button and moving up towards the top of the chest. This is also necessary because habitual stress breathing lowers the ability of the ribs to expand and contract with breathing.

3. Lying still and allowing the diaphragm to move autonomously for a period of time, without control to reteach your mind what natural breathing feels like. It is not unusual to deal with the desire to control your breathing during this stage, distract yourself and allow your body to do what it already knows how to do.

4. Observing and re-engaging diaphragm breathing throughout your day, whenever you notice that your habitual stress chest breathing pattern has re-engaged again. This is done by placing your finger tips below your belly button, pressing in slightly and slowly lifting and slowly lowering your fingers with your lower abdominal muscles five times. Slow movement is important. This will cause the diaphragm to re-engage autonomously.

     Your whole task during this process is to create gaps in the habitual cycle. At first these gaps will be small, your breathing will change back again and again. This does not matter. Gradually the period of time that your diaphragm is re-engaged in breathing throughout the day will increase as will your sensitivity to changes within your breathing patterns.

     From this platform you will start to observe and understand the correlation between your resistance towards what you are experiencing in life and changes within your patterns of breathing. This is real mindfulness of breathing from which you will be able to observe and decondition defensive patterns of reaction deeply embedded within your mind.

Your Question: During the 3rd stage when you guide to let go of control over breathing is when I experience the most relaxation. However during this stage l also find myself breathing shallower then usual; it feels like it is mostly in my upper chest may not be belly breathing. Should I practice MIDL Training 1 more?

Stephen Procter: As your mind calms it is natural for your breathing to calm as well, one reflects the other. During the stage of letting go of control, breathing can become very subtle and difficult to perceive. If you are relaxing deeply during the meditation and not feeling restless then it is likely that your diaphragm is still engaged, it is just that the movement has become very small. In this case do not concern yourself with your breathing just allow it to flow naturally and find its own balance.

     If you are still unsure and feel that your breathing is only in your upper chest, then it will not hurt to repeat Meditation Skills 01. 02 and 03 are similar in that they both have a third stage of letting go of control over breathing. It is just that Meditation Skill 01 is focused more on engaging the diaphragm and 3/52 is more focused on the deflation of the whole breath. When you understand this you can change your focus to begin this MIDL Training using the diaphragmatic breathing learnt in Meditation Skill 01 and transition it into Meditation Skill 03 softening when you reach the third stage of the deflation of your whole body.

Your Question: Enjoying the series! wondering about the sigh instructions...don't know if I can distinguish the difference between a sigh and exhale. 

Stephen Procter: A gentle sigh out through the nose is like an extended out-breath, slow, gentle, calm. This is done by slightly increasing the back pressure to make the out-breath slow and gentle. Like air coming slowly out of a valve in a car tire. When you first train this it may make some sound but with practice it becomes incredibly subtle with no discernible sound at all.

     The slow, gentle sighing releases mental tension, this tension is associated with thinking - literally thinking needs mental tension to exist. Through learning to use the gentle sighs to 'mentally deflate', any thought process can be dropped out at will, creating a tool for deeper MIDL practice.

You Asked:  I have a couple more questions on the "sigh" upon exhale. Is this through the nose or through the mouth and is there any audible voice with the sigh? I notice that when I try to slow my sigh that I begin to tighten up which seems counterproductive to the "softening into". When I sigh more naturally the exhale is quicker than the inhale.

My Reply: The breath is always drawn in and out of the nose, we never use our mouth to breathe during MIDL meditation. Initially sound may be produced because we are placing too much effort into the breathing, as our skill refines there is no audible sound with each breath.

     The breathing for gentle sighing is diaphragmatic breathing, not chest breathing and is based on MIDL Mindfulness Training 3/52: Retraining Autonomous Breathing. The ability to do this properly is supported by strengthening and lengthening the natural movement of your diaphragm. If your diaphragm muscle is tight and weak then it will return too quickly creating a fast exhale.

     The tightness that you are experiencing when you try to slow down your out-breath points towards the tightness and shortness of range of movement of your diaphragm. Your exhale being faster then your inhale when you naturally exhale is also a sign of this. This tightness is created through habitual chest stress breathing usually triggered by periods of stress within our life.

     Sitting down reading this, place your palm on your lower abdomen just below your belly button. Slowly extend your lower abdominal muscles out-wards to lift your palm noticing how this movement draws air in through your nose. Lower your palm to let the breath go back out again. Slowly repeat these breaths. Notice that as this breath draws in from this lower abdominal movement that there is very little discernible movement in your upper belly or chest.

     Next, slowly bring your breath up from your lower abdomen, to your ribs and then into your upper chest. Then allow your whole body to slowly deflate with the out-breath. Notice I said 'slowly' a lot? This is because the skill in diaphragmatic breathing is to learn to move your diaphragm muscle 'slowly'. The slowness of the movement creates the gentle sign out through your nose. This sigh is created by slowing down the exhale through the nose so that it lengthens the breath by allowing the slow return of your diaphragm to extend the out-breath.

     Again this is dependent on your retraining of diaphragmatic breathing in MIDL 3/52. Allowing yourself to physically and mentally relax as you abandon all effort with each slow out-breath.

Your Question: I don't understand the difference between "soften" and "relax". Are they the same thing? Second, how can one relax the frontal cortex? I mean it's not a muscle so I don't get what I am supposed to do! Third, I thought the "softening breath" was the big deep belly/ribs/chest then let all go on the out breath. But then you used this term for the unregulated gentle breath. So I feel confused about that. Lastly, towards the end, when my attention wanders from my feeling of sitting there and breathing naturally, you instruct me to take a deep softening breath to bring me back into my body. We have been using this breath to let go/relax. I'm not sure how to use this breath to do that.

Stephen Procter:

You asked: "I don't understand the difference between "soften" and "relax". Are they the same thing?"

RELAXATION

Relaxation is what we experience when we give up any effort in our body or mind. Relaxation has an aspect of physicality to it, like to relax the effort of the muscles in your body to hold you upright or to relax the effort in your mind to do.

SOFTNESS

The word Softness or Soften is used because it describes the experience of mental resistance and acceptance. When we mentally resist something our mind becomes 'hard', we experience tension. When we 'soften' this hardness through acceptance and surrender our mind becomes 'soft' and pliable. Softness is of the heart / mind and is based on our relationship towards what is being experienced now, namely any attraction or aversion towards pleasant or unpleasant feeling. Softness arises within the mind when we 'soften into' our relationship towards what we are experiencing now, when we abandon our participation with it. As softness grows in the mind it also appears within the body, softening from the outside inwards.

RELAXATION & SOFTNESS During the instructions you will find an interchange of the words 'relax' and 'soften'. This is because softness is always preceded by relaxation. While relaxation within itself does not always contain softness of mind, softness of mind always is preceded by relaxation. This comes from the relationship between mind and body, as our body relaxes then our mind can take on that relaxation, as the mind softens through a change in relationship towards experience this softness also appears within the body.

You asked: "....how can one relax the frontal cortex? I mean it's not a muscle so I don't get what I am supposed to do!.."

My Reply: The first thing to understand is that meditation is always discussed in terms of 'personal' experience, when deciphering meditation instructions they are always based on the experienced world rather then the physical world. For example, when we talk about the breath in meditation we are not referring to the process of respiration but rather the experience of respiration which we call breathing. Physical respiration is located between the nose and the lungs, breathing can be experienced in your belly, toes, hands and head, it is common in yoga to 'breathe into' a muscle to help it relax. In the physical world this is nonsense but in the experienced world people experience this as being real every day. The experiential world is not defined by physicality.

     When using the word 'frontal lobes' I am pointing towards the 'experience' of tension in the area in the front of the head that arises when we mentally engage in any activity. While the frontal lobes in the physical world may not be able to relax as they are not a muscle, experienced through the eyes of meditation they can definitely be experienced as tense and can very clearly be experienced as relaxing.

You said: "...I don't get what I am supposed to do!.."

My Reply: Your not supposed to do anything, this is a giving up of doing, a relaxing of doing, an abandoning of doing. Any attempt to do anything will have the opposite effect and cause more mental tension. Doing = tension. The softening of this effort within the mind first comes about by learning to 'borrow' the natural relaxation of the deflation of your body that occurs with each out-breath. This means aligning your awareness with the deflation of the out-breath and giving up all effort in-line with that breath.

    This sits on a basis of diaphragmatic breathing as trained in Meditation Skill 01 and will not work if stress breathing, breathing in the upper chest, is normal. While stress breathing tightens the body with each out-breath, diaphragmatic breathing inflates and deflates the body like a balloon creating natural relaxation. In Meditation Skill 02 we borrow that natural relaxation through abandoning in our body with each out-breath. In Meditation Skill 03 we bring this relaxation into the mind to give rise to softness through aligning awareness on the slow exhale of the out-breath through the nose while allowing the area of the frontal lobes to relax and eventually soften.

     When relaxation appears within the mind the frontal lobes feel heavy, when softness arises in the mind all cognitive mental activity ceases, including thinking, and experience of content peace arises within the mind.

You asked: "I thought the "softening breath" was the big deep belly/ribs/chest then let all go on the out breath. But then you used this term for the unregulated gentle breath. So I feel confused about that."

My Reply: The 'Softening Breath' is not just a big breath in and out, it is developed from gross to subtle.

1. Learning to breathe with the diaphragm.

2. Learning to 'borrow' the relaxation of the deflation of the out-breath to relax the body.

3. Learning to 'borrow' the relaxation of the deflation of the out-breath through the nose to relax the mind.

4. Learning to soften the mind.

You asked: "...when my attention wanders from my feeling of sitting there and breathing naturally, you instruct me to take a deep softening breath to bring me back into my body. We have been using this breath to let go/relax. Im not sure how to use this breath to do that...."

My Reply: When your attention wanders from the experience of sitting towards thinking, this is a habitual movement within your mind. This habit of thinking contains a relationship of interest towards the story within the thoughts. By taking an intentional, gentle softening breath at this stage and relaxing mentally the relationship towards the thoughts is dissolved and you can then bring your awareness to the experience of 'sitting' or whatever meditation object you are using at this time.

The skill of Softening is not separate from our meditation practice, we use softening in many ways:

1. When you notice you are distracted, acknowledge it and soften.

2. When you notice that you are stress breathing, acknowledge it and soften.

3. When you notice that you are attracted or averse towards an experience, notice it and soften.

4. When you want to strengthen positive qualities such as loving kindness, then soften into the feeling.

Your Question: How will this exercise help me? Could you explain the purpose and thinking of this meditation?

Stephen Procter: Mindfulness meditation is a mental training. To deepen our meditation practice we need to train certain aspects of mind. The first three mental factors that we are training are a sense of Investigation, Mindfulness and Concentration.

     During this first MIDL exercise Mindfulness is strengthened by being aware of the sensate quality within our body. This may be the heaviness, the experience of touch or any other sensation within your body. By holding these sensations in mind gently and observing every time your attention moves away from them, you are cultivating Mindfulness. Mindfulness is a translation of the Pali word Sati which literally memory or to remember. 

     But it is not remembering the past, its remembering the present. To train Mindfulness, to make it become strong, we need a meditation object that can be only experienced – right now. Sensations within our body, such as heaviness and touch, fulfill that purpose. The sensations within your body can only be experienced – now. Hardness, softness, heaviness, can’t be experienced in the past, and they can’t be experienced in the future. To experience them you have to pay attention to them right now.

     The habitual mind has a tendency to move between the past, present and future. When it moves towards the past or future, it loses touch with reality, loses touch with the body, and loses touch with right now. So through using the sensate quality of your body, the sensations within your body as a reference point – a grounding point, you can start to train your attention. This is done by remembering those sensations. Remembering the heaviness, remembering the touch, and putting your effort into noticing every time your attention moves away from them. In particular noticing every time your attention moves off to a thought, to a fantasy, to a daydream. 

     Placing your effort into observing these points of change, in noticing literally, when you forget your meditation object, cultivates and strengthens Investigation and Mindfulness. And the very act of continuously remembering and coming back to your meditation object, cultivates and strengthens concentration.

Your Question:  Hi Steven. Thank you and is the object to “lock on” to the various physical states to see how long we can keep the attention trained thereby or is it a more casual attention with just noticing the amount of times the attention wonders?

Stephen Procter:  This practice has two stages to it.

1. Ground your awareness within bodily sensations. 

To ground awareness within your body you need to apply two things during meditation: 

a) Gentle effort towards continuously remembering the sensations (mindfulness), and noticing anytime that you forget to do it. During this stage you will encounter two things: forgetting what you are doing, and various thoughts and fantasies. Your main task here is to overcome the forgetting, by developing continuity in the remembering. Various thoughts arising are not a problem as long as they don't engulf your attention. 

b) Gentle softening/relaxing of effort, allowing awareness to sink into and ground in these sensations. This is a matter of monitoring your effort, are you straining to hard and therefore feeding thinking and restlessness? Are you relaxing too much and loosing the clarity of your bodily sensations? 

2. Relax your mental grip on your grounding point. 

Once your awareness rests within your body by itself, you then intentionally relax the effort to be aware of your body sensations. This is a releasing of the grip of concentration to your bodily sensations. When this grip is released your mind will return back to its habitual attention structure, and wander. You now develop the skill of staying with the wandering of your attention, not by stopping it, but by learning to notice it. At first you will keep becoming lost within this wandering, and even forgetting that you are meditating. But as mindfulness grows you will be able to stay with the wandering itself. In this way you use habitual wandering to develop insight, in particular into anatta: its not-self,  autonomous nature.  

Your Question: How do I experience warmth and coolness during meditation and what is meant by 'within the body'?

Stephen Procter: 'Within the body' refers to the experience of your whole body internally and externally as it sits in meditation. To experience warmth and coolness within your body means to just generally be aware of the experience of any warmth or coolness within your body that you can feel, regardless of where it is. Location is not important and if you can or can't experience both warmth or coolness is also not important. Just tune into what it feels like to sit in meditation, into any sensations that you can feel as you sit. These sensations are being used as a gentle 'grounding point' for awareness,  a reference point from which to observe habitual movements of your attention.

You Asked: How do I experience the feeling of heaviness during meditation?

My Reply: Heaviness is an experience that will arise within your body when it totally relaxes and your muscles no longer hold your body weight. We can only experience heaviness when we are totally relaxed.

To feel it now:

1. Hold your arm out in front of you.

2. Relax your effort to hold your arm up without dropping it.

3. The downwards 'pull' in your arm is the experience of heaviness.

In your meditation posture:

1. Align your posture so that your body is balanced within itself, balancing on your spine.

2. Gradually relax the muscles in your body and tune into the experience of heaviness.

You Asked: Question about posture adjustments during meditation, should these be carried out? For instance, I found my spine curving into a C and consciously sat erect to fix it. Is there a specific way to carry out such adjustments?

My Reply: Yes, in the beginning it is beneficial to play with your posture to reteach your body how to balance within itself. During my intensive practice days my posture was continuously collapsing, the strength of my samadhi continued (concentration) and the collapse did not bother me but my body was suffering from this continued abuse - this is not the middle way.

     One of my teachers changed my meditation object from mindfulness of breathing to mindfulness of posture for the next 3 weeks. I made the collapse of my posture my meditation object. In this way I noticed the collapsing earlier until I could notice the very moment the alignment of my posture started to change. In observing this it is helpful to observe the relationship between the deflation of the out-breath and the compacting (or collapsing) of the body within itself, importantly the stacking of the vertebrae and alignment of the bowling ball (head) on the bow of the neck.

     This is a wonderful mindfulness practice if done slowly with curiosity, also always be aware of and delay the intention to make the adjustment or movement, before following it so that the intention becomes clear to you.

Your Question: In this meditation, you say ‘... the pressure of your body as it rests on the floor, grounded...’ What does it mean to be grounded?

Stephen Procter: The purpose of 'grounding' is to create a reference point to our present experience as a counter to the minds habitual tendency to turn towards the past or future. All meditation objects in this way are 'grounding' points. This 'grounding' point gives us the ability to observe habitual movements of our attention away from it and the coming and going of that attention.

     'Grounding' is the continuous bringing of awareness to the present experience until awareness immerses within that experience and is 'grounded' within it. In meditation this is called the applying and sustaining of attention and is the effort we apply during meditation. We bring awareness to our object of meditation and keep reapplying that awareness until it sustains by itself.
    When creating a 'grounding' point in midl mindfulness meditation we bring awareness to the sensate quality of an experience. For example the ‘warmth’ of our body can be a 'grounding' point, the ‘pressure’ of the touch of our hands, the ‘hardness’ of our body as it rests on the floor or the ‘heaviness’ of our body as it relaxes.
    In the beginning we are just aware of sensations; with practice awareness immerses into the sensate quality of the body and dwells within it without effort. 'Grounding' of awareness within the sensate quality of our body can protect us during difficult experiences. The Buddha called this Kaya-gata-sati: mindfulness immersed within the body.

Your Question: I found it difficult to stay with my body during this meditation, my mind kept thinking. How do I make it stop?

Stephen Procter: One of our first lessons in midl mindfulness meditation is that it is not easy to stop wandering off and becoming lost within thinking during the meditation session - and that this is perfectly ok. One of the key points to understand is that your mind wandering is not a problem - this is what it does. Your heart beats, your lungs breathe and your mind thinks; it wanders between all your senses. This is is job.. There are parts of your mind that are habitual and the wandering of your attention is part of that.

     Your task during midl mindfulness meditation is not to stop your mind from wandering but rather to develop the skill of being able to observe when it does wander; to develop understanding about it. By taking interest in the points of change between being fully aware that you are sitting in meditation and noticing whenever you forget that awareness, the clarity of your mindfulness will increase and the periods in which you become lost within thinking will naturally become shorter. You will then start to notice your attention move without becoming lost within it. You will be able to notice these as subtle shifts of your attention away from awareness of your body. 

      As mindfulness develops these habitual movements of attention will become clearer to you. At this stage in your meditation skill you will start to understand, there are times when you can observe thinking, there are other times when you become lost within it; and both are ok. Both teach you about the true nature of your mind, both teach you about the impersonal nature of thinking. It is the Wisdom that arises from the understanding that develops from mindfully observing your mind that frees you from thinking. Wisdom develops at its own pace, as a meditator you just need to develop the curiosity to look.

Your Question: From what you've said, I understand that sensations in my body are reflections of the mind, can you explain this?

Stephen Procter: One of the main roles of the body is as a sense organ. Your eye is a sense organ sensitive to light, your ear to sound, nose to smell, tongue to taste and your body is a sense organs sensitive to touch. Your mind uses sensory input through these five senses to understand the world around it.

      As a sense organ the bodies job is to reflect touch. Some sensations arise in the body to reflect the touch of the world it. Some sensations arise in the body to reflect the touch of the mind. As midl meditators we learn to tell the difference between sensations within our body that are reflections of the world and sensations within our body that are reflections of our state of mind.

You asked: “So if I just notice and feel the sensations and emotions in my body, does that then clear and release them from both the body and the mind?”

My Reply:  It is not a matter of releasing them; while this is popular thinking it is coming from aversion; as if these sensations and emotional signatures shouldn't be there. Your body is just doing what it is meant to do, it is reflecting your state of mind. Some of these reflections are given names such as pleasant or unpleasant feeling; such as emotions. These are not something to be released from your body but instead something to be understood. They are reflections of your state of mind within your body,  true reflections of your relationship towards what you are experiencing now. It is the relationship that is important not the reflection.

      It is this relationship of attraction or aversion that should be observed and understood. The habitual  "I like this", I don't like that", it is at this point that all suffering arises within the mind, your body just reflects this, it is of no use trying to change a reflection. It is always a matter of observing and softening relationship, of relaxing your relationship towards what you are experiencing. this creates the path.

You asked: “Is my busy mind focusing on thoughts giving them fuel?”

My Reply: Where awareness sits energy goes. Wherever your attention is focused that is where mental energy will go. I this is habitually towards thinking about something that that focus will feed the mental fire.If this is grounded within the sensations within your body then the mental energy will also be grounded.

You asked: So if I can put my awareness in my body and have that distance from my mind, it stops giving the mind fuel?

My Reply: Thinking needs participation to continue, it needs awareness to immerse within it. Like a fire that is no longer being fed it will consume the fuel and go out by itself. Immersing awareness within the experience of the body removes the fuel. The problem is that being attentive to thinking and identifying with it as ‘my thoughts’ is habitual, this is part of delusion. Wisdom brings this identification to an end.

 Your Question: Could you clarify how to do this MIDL 5/52 and its purpose? I feel that I don't quite understand what I am doing and found it difficult to be openly aware.

Stephen Procter: Meditation Skill 05 is the fifth mindfulness training concerned with the 'grounding of awareness. While Meditation Skill 04 grounds awareness within the sensate quality of our body, Meditation Skill 05 is concerned with grounding within the observing awareness itself. Simply we are moving from observing sensations within our body to observing the awareness of them. As we do this we will start to notice that awareness itself has the ability to focus, it can focus closely in on one thing or be open to all our senses.

     Within this range of focus in most meditators a deficiency can be observed in the tendency of the mind to prefer one type of focus of awareness over another. Since the MIDL meditator is concerned with developing flexibility of attention it is beneficial to train the ability to freely adjust the focus of awareness from wide to narrow so that the full range is comfortable. This is trained in a very simple way by first being aware of being aware of all our senses and grounding within them, then bringing awareness to our body as it sits and grounding within it, then bringing awareness to the touch of two fingers and grounding awareness within it. We then slowly cycle through these three levels of focus to decondition any habituation within the mind towards one tendency or another.

You Asked: Moving awareness was a challenge between these three points, it is hard to let go of my fingers touching to focus more broadly. Mind seems to prefer the smaller things, so my attention kept moving around to each of them in turn. It was hard to zoom out and take it all in at once and easier to observe one point.

My Reply: Wonderful, there is much to learn here. Notice the habituation of your attention, take interest in it. Your mind habitually wants to zoom in on one thing and has trouble being aware of many things - fantastic - now you are learning about yourself; about the mind that you view the world through. The nature of this attention will also explain the nature of your personality. This can manifest in daily life as obsessive attention. On the other hand inability to focus on one thing and always wide in awareness tends to lead to an inability to stay with one thing in daily life and continuous doubt.

Awareness is like sight.

Imagine if you moved around through the world and your sight would only zoom in on individual things; you had no peripheral vision, no ability to see the bigger picture. If this was the case you would not be able to move through the world within banging into things, you would crash if you were driving a car or your mind would endlessly be agitated as it rapidly moved from one individual object to another. Do you crash into things in your relationship to life?

     This range of focus of awareness is different for all of us, for some people wide awareness is easy and one-pointed awareness is difficult, for others one-pointed is easy and wide is difficult, others side somewhere in the middle. We will see this clearly as the community shares their experience (I hope you all will as it is beneficial to seeing patterns).

     We all have strengths and weaknesses in this area, this is part of the problem. 

In Meditation Skill 05/52 we are learning the skill of smooth focus of awareness, not becoming habitual or stuck within this range from narrow to wide. As we do this we also start to develop understanding of the impersonal and habitual nature of our mind, of the factors that make up attention, how they are balanced and their relationship towards resistances within our heart.

Your Question: I can't stop my mind from wandering, how can I make it stop?

Stephen Procter: Your minds wandering is none of your business, why are you trying to make it do something else other then what it is doing. If your sense of peace is based on what your mind is or is not doing then this peace will be fragile because your mind is not under your control. It will let you down.

     Instead allow your mind to wander if it wants to, but observe this wandering and observe its habitual and impersonal nature until this is very clear to you. Do this until you deeply understand "this thinking is not me". When you realize through observation that you are not your thoughts, then its antics will not bother you, you will understand that your mind is none of your business. Ironically when you give up the fight your mind will stop fighting itself and feel safe and the immune system of your mind will turn off by itself, everything will settle down including the obsessive thinking.

Your Question: What do you mean by attention and moving attention during meditation? What is the difference between attention and being distracted?

Stephen Procter: The word 'attention' is being used as a meditation language to describe your ability to be intentionally aware of something during meditation by moving it from one thing to another in a similar way you may use a beam of light from a torch to bring clarity to a dark room.

Meditative attention in MIDL is made up of four things:

1. Curiosity / investigation.

2. Mindfulness.

3. Concentration.

4. Awareness.

These four factors make up your attention during mindfulness meditation and allow you to be clearly aware of your meditation object. All work together and each has a particular function. Curiosity for example, the intentionally being aware of your object of meditation, stimulates mindfulness. Mindfulness, literally remembering what you are experiencing now, develops concentration, the focusing of awareness. When awareness concentrates this brings about steadiness and clarity of the awareness allowing you to experience things more clearly in order to develop Wisdom.

     Habitual movement of your attention happens when your forget to be mindful, literally forgetting what you are doing /. experiencing now,  causing curiosity to collapse. the habitual mind then takes over your attention and moves it towards your habitual dwelling place, in this case thinking.

Habitual distracted attention is made up of two things:

1. Concentration.

2. Awareness.

When you become distracted, that is your attention habitually moves and you do not notice it, then curiosity and mindfulness have collapsed. When distracted your attention is made up of two things, concentration and awareness. Since there is no mindfulness present in distraction you will not know you are distracted until you come out of it. And because there is no mindfulness present there will be no curiosity / investigation and no understanding cultivated. Your mind borrows this concentration and awareness and uses it to absorb into distraction such as thinking. 

When I say 'move your attention' or 'your attention moves' it means:

1. To deliberately focus your awareness to one point on one meditation object.

2. To deliberately move your awareness from one meditation object to another.

3. The habitual movement of your awareness from one object to another when mindfulness collapses.

To get the most out of this exercise focus on:

1. intentionally moving and placing your awareness on one point within your body and holding it there for the desired time.

2. Mentally 'feeling' any sensations at that point.

3. Observing every time your awareness shifts from the chosen point within your body, acknowledge this movement of attention and bringing it back. Your description of experiencing many sensations is a sign that this aspect of your attention is being trained.

     Do not be too concerned if you can not feel the breathing or sensations in a particular area, guided meditations need to be generic. Whatever you experience is correct, there is no need to try to experience something that is not yet present to you.

Your Question:  Stephen, I do have a question about forgetting. If I was successful in never forgetting, wouldn't that mean that I have uprooted all the hindrances? 

Stephen Procter:  Forgetting is the habitual tendency of the mind to drop objects from short term memory.

Continuous remembering (not forgetting) therefore refers to continuous mindfulness. And since mindfulness is passive, all the other patterns/hindrances in your mind still have the potential to arise as objects within your mind. And if mindfulness collapses, you still have the potential to identify with and become lost within them.
    An example of this would be, thinking will still arise, and you will notice that there is thinking about the future present in your mind, but instead of becoming lost within it, you will just know it as "the mind is thinking". When mindfulness is continuous, all the hindrances will still be there (unless they have been deconditioned or uprooted), it will just mean that you will be able to observe them more clearly because you will not slip into the not-knowing, of habitual delusion. 

Your Question: Ok this is becoming clearer. I often notice thoughts and other times I notice that I was lost in thought. So you are saying that I have not forgotten in the first case but have forgotten in the second? For some reason, I assumed that even having a thought meant that I was forgetting my meditation object. 

Stephen Procter:   There is a difference between thinking, and forgetting. Also not all thinking is a distraction. 

This can be observed in three levels when practicing mindfulness of breathing:

1. You are aware of your meditation object, and also aware that your mind is thinking.
2. You are aware of your meditation object, and are also thinking about something.
3. You have lost awareness of your meditation object, and have become lost within thinking.

The only time that you have forgotten your meditation object is in scenario number 3. As long as you have your meditation object somewhere in your awareness, then you are not yet distracted and mindfulness is developing, this is because awareness has layers.
    When you sit to meditate, your meditation object is brought to the foreground of your attention, your body and sounds etc. are held in the background peripheral awareness. Your mind then produces a though and you are aware of it in the background. At some stage you find the thought interesting, and it becomes thinking, which shifts to the foreground of your attention, and your meditation object shifts to the background. At this stage while attention has shifted, you have not yet forgotten your meditation object. If you do not notice it, at some stage your mind will deem the meditation object in the background, as being of no use, it will therefore discard it. All your attention now absorbs into the thinking and you have forgotten you are even meditating.
    Now you are distracted. So overcoming forgetting does not stop thinking from arising, it just stops you from becoming absorbed and lost within it. 

Your Question: I have been practicing Meditation 6/52 and am really enjoying it. However, I definitely notice tension that you say is a result of effort and doing as opposed to just letting the breath happen naturally. I try “softening” into that control, but I don’t know if I am doing it effectively. I essentially just take a deep, slow belly breath, and on the out breath I try quietly sighing while intending to relax. Should I be doing something differently? How will I know if I am practicing softening correctly?

Stephen Procter:
You said “...I definitely notice tension that you say is a result of effort and doing as opposed to just letting the breath happen naturally...”

Wonderful, this training is designed to allow you to observe the habitual tendency towards control within your mind. We are using the breath to observe the mind. Breathing can happen autonomously, regulated by the brain or it can be over-ridden by an intention within the mind. For example you can allow your breathing to happen naturally or you can intentionally take a deep breath in and out now. We are using this characteristic of breathing as a way of observing and deconditioning the tendency of habitual control within the mind.

You said “...I try “softening” into that control, but I don’t know if I am doing it effectively. I essentially just take a deep, slow belly breath, and on the out breath I try quietly sighing while intending to relax....”

When we learn the softening skill we initially take deep, slow belly breaths, this is like the training wheels on our bicycle. As we refine our softening skill in MIDL 5/52 this skill becomes much more subtle until the breath control is hardly perceivable at all.

     All you have to do in this training is to slowly breathe out through your nose then relax and wait, whenever you notice your mind interfering with the breathing. You do not need to take deep breath in and out, just a gentle breath out, relax and wait for the brain to produce a signal to breathe in again. The breath will then draw in by itself, its experience will be different to the controlled breath. If you experience fear at the end of the out-breath then this is where you soften that fear. You do this by learning to give up the effort of the fear, the effort of the fight.

     What is also interesting is that when the natural breath occurs, controlled by the brain, the diaphragm engages in that breath. This is what we see in stress breathing, the mind out of fear has taken over control of the breath, disengages the diaphragm causing anxiety to arise.

Your Question: I couldn't work out during this meditation whether I was controlling the breath or not. Can you please make more clear how to do this meditation?

Stephen Procter: The habitual control over breathing can be very subtle and difficult to discern at first. Anytime you think you may be controlling your breathing try this:

1. Breathe in gently then breathe out slowly through your nose.

2. Do not breathe in again but relax and wait - (Do not hold your breath).

3. Wait and relax and the breath will come in naturally.

4. Gently 'mentally feel' the breathing as if from a distance. The breathing will now be light, smooth, and beautiful.

5. Notice any tightening that appears within the breathing - this is your mind habitually trying to control it - relax the control.

6. If your breathing tightens then repeat this process to develop your skill.

Your Question: I'm just having trouble with relaxing enough to let go of controlling my breath. I find that when I try to let go, my breaths are very shallow and unsatisfying. I usually meditate lying down, could this be the problem? What is a natural breath like, is it like the way we breathe when we're asleep?

Stephen Procter: Breathing has a particular quality that no other meditation object has: It can be controlled intentionally - you can breathe in and out now - controlling it or when you are not controlling it, it will naturally come in and out - without your help. This is one of the reasons breathing is used as a meditation object, it is perfect for observing your desire to control things within your life that do not need to be controlled.

     Your breathing - or the tightness within it - is trying to teach you how to 'let things be', how to put down control. The hard part about this is that much of the control that we apply to life - and also to the breathing - is conditioned; it is a habitual pattern of reaction. This means that it will happen without any obvious participation on your part.

     In this MIDL practice we are working with these habitual patterns and deconditioning them - that is where the freedom can be found. This is not 'just about the breath' this is about observing the habitual functions of your mind as they 'reflect' within your breathing.

You asked what the 'natural breath' is like - by natural I do not mean 'how it is now' but rather how breathing is experienced when it is free from control - free from mental interference. "The 'natural breath' is slow, deep, soft and wispy like a cloud". It is beautiful, enchanting and endlessly interesting.

     To work with 'control' I would like you for now to stop using guided meditations, instead sit in a quiet place and be aware of the feeling of your whole body - 'heaviness and touch'. Notice that you can feel the breath moving in and out of your body. Can you feel any tension within the breathing? Is your breathing shallow or deep?

     If there is tension present or your breathing is shallow then there is some sort of control within the breathing. Each time you notice this I would like you to gently breathe out though your nose and 'relax and wait' for the breath to come in naturally - 'by itself' (don't hold your breath). The breath will then draw in by itself, observe the difference of a breath without control - without resistance. Notice that during this breath your diaphragm engages. Then observe your breathing and notice every time it becomes shallow or there is tightness and 'rinse and repeat' - This is your training.

Your Question: When this week meditation instruction tells us to breath freely with no control, I have a conflicting feeling that my natural breathing is not “right” and that it should involve full movement of my diaphragm, but that involves controlling my breath, in this way I am confused. Can you help me understand?

Stephen Procter: Firstly, intentional, controlled diaphragm breathing and natural diaphragm breathing controlled by the brain are two different things. While we make the movement of the diaphragm longer when training it in order to strengthen and lengthen the movement, when the breath is controlled by the brain it will adjust the breathing rate to suit the oxygen demands. This means when you are seated in meditation, doing nothing, that the movement of your diaphragm will be short and shallow. If you were walking or running this movement will become bigger, this is how it is. If you are doing nothing it will idle, if you are active it will increase in revs like in a car. When you relax it will go to idle again.

     The feeling that your natural breathing is not right and your natural breathing are two separate things. As mindfulness meditators we observe our breathing as it is now. If your breathing is short, tight and shallow, then that is how it is. If it is slow, short and gentle then this is how it is. If it is long and deep then this is how it is. This is why we meditate, to find out what is going on. This then gives you information that will allow you to make a decision to improve it.

      But the feeling that your natural breathing is not right has nothing to do with the breathing, this is a fear judgement produced by your mind, a judgement based on the fear of giving up control, the fear of letting things be. MIDL 8/52 is designed to allow you to observe your minds fear of letting go of control, your fear has arisen as judgement of the breath. Ironically it could be this very judgement of the breath not being right, your habitual desire for things to be perfect, that creates the tension in the breathing in the first place.

This is the fun games we play with the mind.

You Asked: “...Hence , I don’t know what to do in this situation. I just give up and allow my natural breathing to continue....”

My Reply: Yes this is the correct thing to do when practicing MIDL 6/52, just allow your natural breathing to continue. However as mentioned above there are two skillful areas that you can investigate as a meditator:

1. Allocate a period of time to intentionally retrain your breathing patterns.

2. Observe your resistance towards your breathing not being a certain way.

You Asked: “...Also, no matter how hard I try to fully relax and give up control , breathing with my stomach always leaves me with some sort of turbulence and unrest....”

My Reply: Yes this is the anxiety arises when the mind is exposed to something that is new and out of its control. ‘Trying’ and ‘relaxing’ are two different things, we cannot try to relax, they are different directions and we also can not try to give up control for this is control. These are the paradoxes of the mind and why we become stuck within them.

    In Meditation Skill 08 when I say “breathe out, relax and wait” what I mean is to get out of the way, to allow whatever is going to happen to happen. This then exposes resistance and fear within the mind of abandoning control.

When we notice this resistance / control then we soften. To soften means to relax all effort, to give up the effort it takes to resist. If you feel you don't understand softening yet I recommend revisiting and refining your skill in softening, your skill in abandoning as practiced in MIDL 1 -3/52. These create a foundation for this particular training. 

You Asked: “...However , when I switch to just observing my breath at the nose area I immediately feel relaxed and peaceful. Quite an extraordinary difference just by switching the area of observation....”

My Reply: Isn’t this interesting, you are able to observe the habituation of your mind. You have been observing what happens within your mind when you go against or with its habitual patterns. When you do what it wants it becomes your best friend and gives you pleasure, when you go against it tendencies it throws a tantrum and gives you unpleasant feeling to try to make you do what it wants. This is habit, this is addiction. It is so wonderful that you are observing this, this is the meditation path.

     Also, what you are seeing is not confined to seated meditation, this is a snapshot of your mind in daily life. After all we aren’t doing anything special, we are just closing out eyes, breathing out and waiting for the breath to come in by itself, it isn’t complicated yet the mind makes it so out of fear.

Your Question: 

Question 1. Why should we go through experiential markers in sequences?
Why not directly going to breath sensations in the nose? 

Question 2. When I focus on nose there is sensation of warm and cold breath and also there is sensation of touch. my focus will change between these 2 sensation (1-warm/cold 2-touch) automatically and this distract me. Should I make more effort to focus on touch only?
Question 3. Is there any state of mind (like just sitting here) that be the same in 2 person? If yes , is there two state of mind depend of each other? or there is just one state of mind in 2 place? is the awareness the same in all persons? For example my awareness and stephen's awareness is the same thing. 

Stephen Procter:  

Question 1. The purpose of this stage of mindfulness of breathing is to take un-unified attention, and develop stable, unified attention (samadhi). A sign that samadhi is mature, is when you reach access concentration (stable, unified attention, free from the meditive hindrances).
    If you can reach access concentration by developing attention on breath sensation from the beginning of your meditation, without becoming lost within the 16 meditative hindrances, then you can do this. For many meditators, the effort to stabilise attention, on one point of breath sensation in daily life, when the hindrances arn't already calmed, leads to increase of the meditative hindrances, not a decrease.
    For most meditators meditating in daily life, the 12 experiential markers offer a map of gradual development of attention (from gross to subtle), that allows for gradual calming/overcoming of the meditative hindrances, and accurate tracking of attention development.

Question 2. Your attention moving between breath sensation and touch sensation shows that your attention is not stabilised enough yet, to rest solely on such a refined meditation object. I recommend that you try a gradual development of attention from gross to subtle instead of trying to make your attention rest on a subtle object. 

     This means using the 12 experiential markers, and stabilising your attention on each marker before moving to the next. In this way when you reach breath sensation your samadhi will be developed enough to rest solely on breath sensation, and points of touch will be too gross for the subtlety of your perception.

Question 3. You and your friend can see that the sky is blue, but how do you know you are actually seeing the same colour. You can point to the colour and say blue, but it is the words that are matching, not the experience. Words are a way of agreeing that an experience matches, but we can not know anything beyond that.
     I use meditative language to discuss students practice, in this I can see patterns within these words that relate to my own experience. But I can never know if the experience that those words point to, is the same. Regardless the result of the practice is the same, and this result is beyond language,, even if the experiences that lead to it do not. 

Your Question: I am still having a hard time following the breath without the need to control it, what should I do?

Stephen Procter: You noticing that you are controlling your breathing seemingly unintentionally is a good thing, it is a sign that your meditation practice is progressing. This desire to control breathing is not to be gotten rid of but to be understood, it is at this point that you can train yourself to be able to observe the breath without this habitual interference.

     When you notice habitual interference within the breathing process, simply breathe out slowly through your nose to relax your participation. After this softening out-breath, wait for the breath to come back in naturally, by itself, triggered by your brain. At first some fear may arise that you will not breathe in. This is also ok; it is just fear of giving up control. Relax / soften into the fear by breathing out slowly through your nose, and wait again for the breath to draw back in by itself. This is the game you play when retraining defensive patterns within your mind. 

     After breathing out, always make sure that you are not trying to control iy by holding your out-breath; just relax and wait. When the breath comes in by itself, it will appear as what I call the natural breath. It will be long, smooth, light and wispy - beautiful. This beautiful breath may continue for a number of breaths or it may tighten after the first, this does not matter. The breathing is doing its job; it is reflecting the state of your mind. Repeat this exercise and learn what it means to soften / relax your desire to control. Relax, relax, relax, this is your current path.

Your Question: A thought stream that presented in today's sit is "what is up with this mind of mine? I have the most inane and banal thoughts. I can't focus on anything for more than a few seconds before my mind goes off on some stupid tangent. I have been meditating fairly consistently for over three years I can't believe I'm not further along" and on and on. I guess if there is progress it is the knowledge that my mind is doing what it does. I don't have to identify with the narrative but still my mind really wants me to believe that I am it and it makes a pretty convincing case. I feel very "beat up" right now.

Stephen Procter: There is a difference between meditating for tranquility and meditating for Insight. When meditating for tranquility the mind will gradually become structured and orderly because of the structuring of attention. When meditating for Insight however, we observe our mind in its natural state as it interacts with our six senses. The mind in its natural state, not controlled by the structure of attention, is quite messy. 

     Actually, it is really messy, drifting here, floating there, discussing this, judging that. This natural messiness of the mind is also fearsome to the mind; it does not like to see its own nature, to see that it can not control itself. This is what you are experiencing in your meditation, it is a sign of development of your Satipatthana Vipassana meditation, not that you are going backwards.

What Should You Do?

What you are experiencing is not important, what is important is clear comprehension; how clearly you can be aware of what you are experiencing now? Your focus should be on increasing the clarity of your awareness, not to settle your mind.

• If your mind is a mess, can you be clearly aware that “the mind is messy”?
• If your mind is sleepy, can you be clearly aware that “the mind is sleepy”?
• If your mind is restless.....?
• If your mind is obsessed....?
• If your awareness comes and goes...?
• If your awareness is really unclear can you be clearly aware that “awareness is really unclear”? Be very clear about being unclear.

This is what it is all about, not what is happening within your mind, but rather cultivating the continuity of mindfulness of it.

Clear Comprehension

As you cultivate clear comprehension of what you are experiencing 'now', you will start to see three characteristics in what you are experiencing. You will start to notice that all experience is impermanent, that if you try to control or fight against it suffering will arise, and that you do not own any experience.

• Are the experiences within your mind permanent or impermanent?
• If you try to control the experiences that arise within your mind do you suffer?
• Is your mind under your control or is it just habitually doing what it is doing?

The Buddha called this Anicca, Dukkha and Anatta; impermanence, suffering and not-self, he said that this is the characteristic of all experience within the realm of the six senses.

Was he correct?

Your Question: A thought stream that presented in today's sit is "what is up with this mind of mine? I have the most inane and banal thoughts. I can't focus on anything for more than a few seconds before my mind goes off on some stupid tangent. I have been meditating fairly consistently for over three years I can't believe I'm not further along" and on and on. I guess if there is progress it is the knowledge that my mind is doing what it does. I don't have to identify with the narrative but still my mind really wants me to believe that I am it and it makes a pretty convincing case. I feel very "beat up" right now.

Stephen Procter:   

“...I wonder if l could get your guidance on which of your new online course pathways in MIDL. l should take as a starting point..as l am confused as to which l am best suited too...”

The two paths are simply a suggestion on how you can structure your meditation practice in order to make progress when meditating in daily life. One path is not better then the other, they are just two different approaches. When meditating in daily life one of the most difficult things is developing concentration in order to settle our mind. The ability to develop deep concentration is affected by how stimulated we are throughout the day.

     Which path you choose is dependent on how stimulated your life is. This means whether you are working, have children, and a overall busy life.

      If you life is really busy, and you do not have much time for long periods of seated meditation, then you are better off developing understanding (insight) in regards to your restless mind, rather then trying to develop deep concentration on the breath. Because this busyness will make your ability to develop deep concentration unreliable. However, you will be able to weaken these disturbances of mind, by being mindful of them, and softening into them. 

So simply:

• Path 1 is best if you have a quiet life.
• Path 2 is best if you have a stimulated life. 

Neither is better then the other, it really has to do with your ability to meditate for long periods of time in order to develop deep concentration.

"... I have studied under Tibetan Nun (Venerable Chris Roberts for 5 years) in my past and that was very helpful but l am at a different stage of my understanding and other insights are appearing and disturbing my emotions and taking me off course or l can't remain on course as l get scared by them...”

These difficult emotions and feelings that come up during meditation, while they seem like disturbances to the meditation practice, are actually the path of the meditation practice. It is part of the cleansing process of the mind, as the development of mindfulness and concentration allow all these unresolved issues to come to the surface.

     The important part is to learn how to be with these experiences, without reacting to them. If you react to them, then you will make them stronger, if you deeply relax into them, then the mind no longer feels fear towards these experiences and they gradually fade.

This is the purpose of learning the meditative skill of softening, in MIDL. Your first introduction to softening (deeply relaxing) is Meditation Skills 01-03.

“...ie experiencing what seemed like telepathy being one experience.ie, seeing a person energies body enter a room being another. Feeling more energy but not able to control or distance from that energy as another....”

While many experiences such as these can arise due to the development of concentration, they should be considered unimportant, and just another experience that arises. You need to develop meditative skill in two areas to settle all of this down.

1. You need to develop more continuous mindfulness to balance the concentration.
2. You need to develop your ability to soften/relax in the face of these experiences.

If you focus more on mindfulness and softening, all these experiences will settle down.

Your Question:  I’ve a question regarding the application of the softening skill. When I’m working on my Mindfulness of Breathing and a distraction/hindrance shows up I know I have to soften. So my question is: Where should attention be/rest while I’m softening?  

      Should I stay at the breath with the distraction/hindrance in the background and SOFTEN INTO THE BREATH? Or should focus on the distraction/hindrance and hold the breath in the background and SOFTEN INTO THE DISTRACTION/HINDRANCE?
    I tried both options and I think I should stay at the breath (with the distraction/hindrance in the background) and soften into the breath but I would like your opinion on it if you don’t mind. 

Stephen Procter:

1. There are three applications of softening in mindfulness of breathing.
   Distracted by a hindrance: When you are distracted during mindfulness of breathing, you acknowledge the distraction, notice your relationship towards it, and soften that relationship.
2. Partially distracted by a hindrance: When you notice that there is a distraction present but it has not drawn your attention away from the breath, you acknowledge it, and soften into it's subtle pull, then return to the breath.
3. If you are at Tier 3, and deconditioning the hindrances, you acknowledge the hindrance that is present, and observe how you are experiencing it in your body and mind. You then separate out the feeling tone (pleasant/unpleasant), and soften your relationship towards it until it fades. Repeat this every time the hindrance arises until interest in the hindrance, and the hindrance, have completely faded. 

Your Question: I don't understand the connection between the training in the Satipatthana Sutta in regards to the breath length, and this MIDL Training. In the Satipatthana Sutta it says to be mindful if the breath is long or short, but it doesn't say anything about the beginning, middle and end of each breath. Can you help me understand?

Stephen Procter:

From the Satipatthana Sutta

1. "Always mindful they breathe in; mindful they breathe out".

2. "Breathing in long, they know 'I am breathing in long' or breathing out long, they know 'I am breathing out long'. Breathing in short, they know 'I am breathing in short' etc."

Explanation:

The transition towards knowing the length of each breath, from in and out breathing, is the second stage in developing samadhi in order to temporarily suppress the grip of the five hindrances within the mind. This has two functions to it:

     a) The length of the breath reflects the present state of the mind. If the mind is stressed, the breathing will be 'short' and shallow. If the mind is relaxed, the breathing will be 'long' and deep. The length of the breath changes as the state of mind changes. The meditator in this way, can be aware of what calming is needed by observing the breaths length.

     b. To observe the length of each breath, we also need to be able to observe it over a perceived period of time. We move from observing one in-breath and one out-breath as in Meditation Skill 09, to observing the full length of the in-breath and the full length of the out-breath in Meditation Skill 10. This refers to no. 1 and no. 2 in the above section from the Satipatthana Sutta.

   To make this transition in our attention, we move awareness from observing the middle of each breath as it draws in and out, to observing the very beginning of each breath as it arises. When we are aware of the beginning of each breath, we then naturally become aware of its middle and its end; we become aware of the full length of each breath. In this way we move from having one ‘noticing’ per breath, to many ‘noticing's’ along the length of each breath. Literally we now rub awareness along the length of each breath. This is necessary to develop the accuracy and depth of samadhi (unification).

Your Question:  I have been dealing with dullness on and off the cushion for quite some time now and it is especially pronounced when I am doing attention practices such as MIDL skills 09-14. The spacious feeling and basically lowered mental "presence" also creeps its way into my perception, into daily life and in my interactions with other people. 

Stephen Procter: It is first important to understand that states of mind arise because the conditions are right for them to do so. Change these conditions, and the state of mind will also change.

Gross Dullness

Gross Dullness in MIDL refers to a state of mind that arises due to an over-calming of the knowing function of awareness. This generally occurs during mindfulness of breathing at the stage of being aware of the full length of each breath: Meditation Skill 10 – Experiential Marker 7 as a direct reflection of an imbalance of effort in the development of samadhi (unification of attention). https://midlmeditation.com/midl-skill-07-12#65eb5ac2-fd45-4a1e-a8ea-2e53c5992373

This imbalance comes about due to two aspects, that as a meditator you can develop skill in adjusting:

1. Habitual Forgetting.
2. An unclear perception.

Habitual Forgetting

Habitual forgetting is the tendency of the mind to drop objects from short term memory, in order to enter into habitual patterns. This can be observed as short periods of forgetting the meditation object, or forgetting that we are even meditating. It is important to note that habitual forgetting is not personal, it is simply a normal function of the mind as it interacts with the sensory world.

     Habitual forgetting occurs when there is a discontinuity in the stream of mindfulness, in this case the remembering to remember the object of meditation. This in turn directly affects the ability to develop a clear perception of present experience. Since the near cause of mindfulness is a clear perception of an object, mindfulness gradually weakens and the knowing function of awareness fades. The mind then brings another object to the foreground and drops the object of meditation from awareness.

An Unclear Perception

An Unclear Perception occurs due to weakness in the mental factor of investigation. This arises due to weak intention in regards to meditation purpose, and absence of the mental quality of curiosity. Without clear purpose and curiosity perception gradually weakness. With the weakening of a clear perception mindfulness fades, and with the fading of mindfulness the knowing function of awareness becomes dull and heavy.

Diagnosing Gross Dullness

Gross Dullness in Meditative Hindrance 9, and arises as a direct reflection of an imbalance in the development of the mental factors of samadhi. Being samadhi based, it is a manufactured state, in that it arises due to the structure of attention at that time. It is easy to mistake Gross Dullness for tiredness and also the mental dullness that comes from stress/anxiety hyperventilation. An easy check during meditation is that when Gross Dullness arises, open your eyes. Since Gross Dullness is due to an imbalance in the structure of samadhi, when you open your eyes, the mental dullness will go away. Yet when you enter back into the meditation it will come back again.

     If you continue to experience dullness and lethargy after opening your eyes, there is a good chance that it is either mental tiredness, or dullness caused by stress/anxiety hyperventilation. In regards to mental tiredness it is a matter of training the mind to associate periods of stillness and relaxation with clarity and alertness, rather then with sluggishness and a good time to sleep. In regards to dullness caused by stress/anxiety hyperventilation; this can be cleared through a period of retraining natural breathing patterns to diaphragmatic breathing.

Working with Gross Dullness

If you have diagnosed the imbalance as being Gross Dullness, then here are ways that it is worked with in MIDL.

Temporary Measures

If you find yourself immersed within Gross Dullness for periods of time, you can apply temporary measure to bring back energy balance. These are temporary because they do not address the habitual tendency embedded within the mind, and do not lead to the unrooting of this tendency.

Touch Points: Whenever you feel meditation sleepiness (mental sluggishness) coming on during mindfulness meditation you can cycle through some points of touch. To do this bring awareness first to your whole body as it sits in meditation and silently say “sitting, sitting” while mentally 'feeling' your whole body. Then bring your awareness to a point of touch, such as your buttocks on the floor and silently say “touching, touching” while mentally 'feeling' that point of touch. Cycle gently between these two points of touch: "sitting, sitting" (feel the body), "touching, touching" (feel your buttocks touch).

     If you want to create more energy or interest you can add points of touch to this cycle. Example: "sitting, sitting" (whole body), "touching, touching" (left buttock), "touching, touching" (right buttock), "touching, touching" (left ankle), "touching, touching" (right ankle), "touching, touching" (hands), "touching, touching" (lips), "sitting, sitting" (whole body) and so on cycling through.

     In this way you will generate alertness and the sleepiness will start to fade. Once faded you can then go back to your original meditation object or continue with your touch point meditation practice depending on the outcome you are after.

Investigating the Cause

It is more skillful to understand Gross Dullness, and to work with it in a way that will lead to its uprooting and never arising again. This mean training out the tendency of the mind towards becoming dull, and teaching it that to relax means to become stable, alert and clear.

Overcoming the Cause of Habitual Forgetting

This tendency is trained out of the mind by developing mindfulness of the touch of one thumb resting on the other. The touch of the thumbs is a very mundane and simple object, it require a gentle, continuous effort to keep it in mind. The important part when training mindfulness in this way, is not to focus on the touch of the thumbs, but rather to learn what it means to ‘keep or hold’ an object in mind, continuously without dropping it. What is being held within the mind during this training, is the remembering that the thumbs are touching. Start out for short periods like 10 minutes, and then gradually increase the time. In my own training I remember the touch of the thumbs for 1 hour, any time I want to buff up the continuity of my mindfulness.

Overcoming an Unclear Perception

To increase the clarity of perception in order to overcome Gross Dullness, to need to clarify perception from the very moment you sit in meditation. This is done in MIDL by using 12 Experiential Markers that naturally arise as a reflection of the development of samadhi.

1. The touch of your thumbs.
2. The experience of sitting in the room.
3. Your whole body as it sits.
4. Bodily sensations and points of touch.
5. The natural flow of breath in your body.
6. Knowing in and out breaths (nose or abdomen).
7. Knowing the full length of each breath (nose or abdomen).
8. Knowing breath sensation (nose or abdomen).
9. Knowing fine breath sensation until breath becomes very subtle.
10. Opening peripheral awareness to whole body breathing, while maintaining breath sensation in the centre of attention.
11. Stabilising attention, making it firm within breath sensation.
12. Calming any 'going out' of attention with each out-breath, until attention sustains (vicara) and subtle body piti arises (pleasant bodily sensations).

Instructions:

When you sit down from mindfulness of breathing establish your attention of each of these Markers, starting from Marker 1-12. Take your time with each Marker, stabilise your attention on each, soften relax into each Marker until your attention becomes steady and firm. After establishing your attention on the touch of the thumbs, allow each progressive Marker to arise naturally.

     While doing this observe any dullness of awareness that may be occurring, when this does increase the detail in your observation of your current Marker. Once you have reached Marker 9, you have passed the stage in which Gross Dullness can occur.

If the dullness continues to increase, turn your awareness to the dullness itself. Investigate it, get to know it really well. See if there is any correlation between your meditation posture (slumping) and the increasing dullness. Adjust your head and posture mindfully. See if there is any correlation between changes of breathing patterns and the dullness. If so, take so slow diaphragmatic breathes to re-engage the diaphragm.

     Be alert for any dulling of your current meditation object, always seek to tune into and separate out the different sensation within your meditation object, to avoid a dulling of perception.

If You End up In Gross Dullness

Meditating within Gross Dull ness is difficult but possible. First you need to develop a clear perception. Notice how you can clearly know how mentally unclear you are. Hold within awareness a stream of knowing how difficult it is to know. Tune into the unpleasantness (or sometimes pleasantness) of the Gross Dullness. Soften/relax any attraction or aversion you feel towards this state. Mentally label all the different sensations that you experience as dullness in both your mind and your body. Pull the Gross Dullness to pieces, be very active in your investigation.

Summary

It is important to understand that Gross Dullness is just another habitual pattern embedded within the mind. When overcoming Gross Dullness, do so with the intention to teach the mind how you want it to behave – clear, still, alert. Have a very clear intention in training this, avoid ambiguity because if you are giving your mind mixed signals, it will not change behaviour. But if you have a very clear intention and determination in regards to what you are doing during the meditation session, the tendency towards Gross Dullness will be trained out of the mind.

Your Question: Why is it that some days, ie: today, that I just cannot settle the mind.... it is all over the shop?

Stephen Procter: This is a natural part of meditating in daily life. Samadhi requires very specific conditions to develop. The main one being the meditator must give up all interest in extracting pleasure from the sensory world. While this condition can be met, it is very difficult for people living a household life. This is the purpose of meditation retreats and monasteries, they create the conditions necessary for the development of samadhi (unification). If you have a life with work, children, drama, then these conditions are inappropriate and you will go through periods of samadhi developing, and samadhi collapsing. When meditating in daily life we need to learn to ride these waves.

How to Practice: 

When your attention is stable, then focus on developing samatha to access concentration by following the guidance in Meditation Skills 09-13. The samatha path will help to weaken habitual tendencies within your mind, and train your mind to not longer incline towards sensory simulation. When your attention collapses, which it will, use these as opportunities to develop insight. Observe the hindrances as they arise within your mind, observe how they block the development of samadhi, and decondition them by gently softening your relationship towards them.

     Because it is the nature of the mind to be disturbed by the stimulation of daily life, it is better to perceive it as being a flow of changing events, just like the weather. The mind responds to present conditions, and it does this through deeply entrenched habitual patterns. It is these habitual patterns that you are working with as a meditator, so when they arise you should rejoice. Understanding this you can change these conditions, by a lowering the stimulation within your life. This means from drama, and being sensitive to the morality of how you live. These are opportunities for you to develop wisdom, and also to decondition these patterns. 

     As an insight meditator it is important to see these collapses of attention as opportunities. Your mind is trying to teach you "I am a flow of nature and follow my own patterns", "you cannot control me and do not own me", "if you try to control me or think that you own me you will suffer". Your mind is trying to tell you this all the time. Will you listen?

Your Question: I have been meditating for Jhana for many years and was recommended to follow with your MIDL group on Insight Timer this year as a way of enhancing my investigation skills. It has been interesting so far but some questions have come up. Does it matter that I practice a different type of meditation? 

    In MIDL do you meditate for jhana at all? I have seen you giving different meditation instructions to different people, this seems to be a bit confusing to me, could you explain? I also want to thank you for softening, it has been helpful for my meditation practice.

Stephen Procter:
Your Question: "...Does it matter that I practice a different type of meditation?.."

My Reply: The first thing to understand is that it is not necessary to change from your original meditation technique to practice MIDL. While MIDL contains its own structure that can be used it is not limited to one base technique. MIDL is a way of self observation based on three pillars of attention, softening and stillness, these in themselves have no shape or form and can together be absorbed into any technique. MIDL is formless and smoothly integrates with and enhances any Wisdom based method of meditation.

Your Question: "...I have seen you giving different meditation instructions to different people, this seems to be a bit confusing to me, could you explain?..."

My Reply: MIDL is based on the Satipatthana Sutta, and in its essence is formless in its structure. Because MIDL is concerned with meditating within daily life, it contains different paths of entry based on the natural tendencies and life situation of each individual meditator. It is part of my role to offer the path that will give most benefit. Below I will explain two different options in regards to meditative paths depending on your life situation.

Meditators with Natural Samadhi and Quiet Life

Samatha first, Insight second 

For MIDL meditators with little disturbance within their life, the ability to meditate for long periods (3+ hours per day), and natural tendency towards samadhi, the path of developing Samatha first, Insight second, is available.

      Once they have mastered the fourth sukha-vedana jhana: Meditation Skills 01-14, on emerging, they use the equanimity still present to observe the dissolution of the jhana factors, and the rearising of the interaction of the mind with the six sense fields. From this basis,  very specific investigations for insight can be used, with instructions found in Meditation Skills 17-27. 

     Once insight has been developed and habitual tendencies revealed, the meditator should then develop skills to intentionally decondition unwholesome/unskillful tendencies, by developing higher level skill in softening: Meditation Skills 28-38. The meditator then can sit in meditation, and intentionally turn their mind towards these tendencies, such as painful memories or longing, and decondition these patterns from their mind. This includes exposing themselves to situations in daily life that they are uncomfortable with (within the boundaries of morality) to trigger defensive tendencies so that they too can be removed.

   The meditator should then bring these defensive tendencies to an end, by cultivating wholesome/skillful tendencies that they have revealed as being weak in them: Meditation Skills 39-43. This also includes embedding wholesome/skillful tendencies, by following intentions towards the wholesome/skillful, within their daily life. This is part of the final unrooting process, and a necessary to instill the harmonising function of sila.

    Once the tendencies are weak within them, then they should focus of nirvikalpa samadhi as their main practice, in regards to disentangling awareness from the six sensory fields: Meditation Skills 44-52. Developing higher levels of nirvikalap samadhi, until at will, they can disentangle awareness from itself, to bring cessation to all sensory fields. This whole process is done through gradual relaxing of all sensory engagement, until this tendency for awareness to engage, ceases. 

Meditators with Busy Lives that Cannot be Avoided

Insight first, Samatha second 

For MIDL meditators with busy lives, such as work, children, and activities, with an inability to sit for long periods of meditation (3hrs+), the development of samadhi is difficult. Generally, for the householder entangled in life, seated meditation periods are short, (1hr or less), which is not enough time to completely settle the hindrances. This in itself creates an erratic development of samadhi, due to the hindrances being pre-stirred up throughout the day. The meditator leading a busy life, therefore will experience periods when samadhi develops progressively, and other periods when there is a complete collapse of their attention for up to 1-2 weeks. For them, the path of Insight first, Samatha second, is available. The structure for this is found in: Meditation Skills 1-13, introducing mindfulness of breathing and the development of samatha to access concentration. The emphasis on this path however, is not mastering access concentration and developing jhana, it is on working with the hindrances as they arise, and deconditioning them from the mind.

How to meditate with the hindrances

On this daily life path, since the hindrances are dominant, and samadhi goes through cycles of progression and collapse, the hindrances and their arising creates a path of meditation for insight.  This path is possible because of the predictable nature of the hindrances and their arising, when developing access concentration. 

     Each time we sit in meditation with the intention to develop access concentration, the potential for all hindrances within our mind that have not yet been uprooted to arise, is always there. If the conditions are right, they will arise. Understanding the path based on the arising of hindrances, to no hindrances, is the key. These hindrances arise, and are calmed/suppressed, dependent on the level of samadhi present. 

     Since the development of unification of attention suppresses the hindrances, in sequential order from gross to subtle, it can be tracked accurately to reflect the samadhi present. And because each stage of samadhi has its own hindrances, tracking the hindrances present allows accurate tracking of both the level of unification, and the depth of insight. The reason it reflects the depth of insight, is because as insight is developed, these hindrances from gross to subtle, are uprooted from the mind.

    Once the hindrances have been weakened, and the meditator can reach access concentration, they then go onto intentionally developing insight in: Meditation Skills 17-27, in the same way as the meditators practicing jhana. Instead, they develop and stabilise attention to the level of access concentration, before turning to developing insight.

     Once insight has been developed and habitual tendencies revealed, the meditator should then develop skills to intentionally decondition unwholesome/unskillful tendencies, by developing higher level skill in softening: Meditation Skills 28-38. The meditator then can sit in meditation, and intentionally turn their mind towards these tendencies, such as painful memories or longing, and decondition these patterns from their mind. This includes exposing themselves to situations in daily life that they are uncomfortable with (within the boundaries of morality) to trigger defensive tendencies so that they too can be removed.

     At this stage the hindrances are so weak in the meditator, that they can return to developing the four sukha-vedana jhana, as in the first meditative path offered. Once they have mastered the fourth sukha-vedana jhana: Meditation Skill 14, on emerging, they use the equanimity still present to observe the dissolution of the jhana factors, and the rearising of the interaction of the mind with the six sense fields.

    The meditator should then bring any remaining defensive tendencies to an end, by cultivating wholesome/skillful tendencies that they have revealed as being weak in them: Meditation Skills 39-43. This also includes embedding wholesome/skillful tendencies, by following intentions towards the wholesome/skillful, within their daily life. This is part of the final unrooting process, and a necessary to instill the harmonising function of sila.

    Once the tendencies are weak within them, then they should focus of nirvikalpa samadhi as their main practice, in regards to disentangling awareness from the six sensory fields: Meditation Skills 44-52. Developing higher levels of nirvikalap samadhi, until at will, they can disentangle awareness from itself, to bring cessation to all sensory fields. This whole process is done through gradual relaxing of all sensory engagement, until this tendency for awareness to engage, ceases.

Your Question:  What is the appropriate approach in MIDL while deconditioning hinderances for developing access concentration: (i) letting go off the experiential markers and working with hinderances as the primary objects or (ii) keeping the experiential marker that is available in awareness as an anchor and working with hinderances in the background?

Stephen Procter:   

Both.

First it is important to understand that when meditating in daily life, that life chooses whether you are meditating for tranquility (samatha) or for insight (vipassana).

1. If when you sit in meditation a particular hindrance is dominant, so much so that it affects your ability to develop samadhi, then you make that hindrance your primary object. In this case the hindrance should be investigated with the aim of deconditioning it, using the above formula.
2. If however when you sit in meditation, the meditative hindrances are relatively weak, then it is more appropriate to develop samadhi with the goal of access concentration/jhana, by following the 12 Experiential Markers. In this case any hindrances present should be calmed, not investigated. 

Your Question:  Can we view working with the hinderances as an insight practice that go hand in hand with our Shamatha practice? 

My Reply:   Yes of course, samatha and vipassana are never separate. In MIDL we practice samatha for insight. This means using the samatha model, which is naturally disturbed by day to day living, as a basis for developing insight. Insight is arises in two ways: by understanding the development of samatha, and by deconditioning habitual grasping. To do this we allow allow life's ability to disturb the development of samadhi, and its relationship to the hindrances, as our field of observation. 

Your Question:   It has been my experience while working with hinderances in background during the times I work on Shamatha that the hinderances also appear in the background in a sequence. 

My Reply:   Yes they do, there is a very clear correlation between the meditative hindrance present, and the strength of samadhi in the meditators mind. Meditation can be tracked just as clearly by mapping the meditative hindrances, as it can by observing the mental factors present in the development of samadhi. 

Your Question:  But, when Shamatha is weak, many of them can appear in complicated patterns. Is it a valid insight practice to investigate this changing landscape? 

My Reply:  Yes, you should investigate this landscape, teasing out the individual hindrances present. You will find in this case however, when samadhi is weak, that it will be a mess of gross hindrances, not subtle ones. This is because the more subtle hindrances need some samadhi to create the correct conditions for them to arise. In regards to working with these hindrances when samadhi is weak, always work with the grosser one, in the hindrance list, first. The correct place for working with this hindrance is always at the experiential marker that aligns with it. 

Your Question:  In regards to Meditation Skills 17-52, these are practiced once you have developed stable unified attention in the development of access concentration. 

My Reply:  Yes this is correct, much of the initial practice is spent cycling through mindfulness of breathing and the meditative hindrances. Just doing this, through developing skill in samatha while living a normal lay life, you will develop a lot of insight as well as 'fade' the meditative hindrances if you approach them in a skillful way. Meditation Skills 17-52 are then concerned with developing complete insight into anatta and uprooting whatever unwholesome/unskillful tendencies are left. 

Your Question:  In my first round with MIDL, I had worked with MIDL Skills from 17-52 without having not even near to access concentration. 

My Reply:  This can be done, but without the development and establishment of Right Unification in the Eightfold Path, you will not penetrate as deeply within the mind. 

Your Question:  Do you recommend that these skills should be practiced only after access concentration is established? 

My Reply:  There is no reason to move onto these deeper observations until the 16 Meditative Hindrances have significantly faded. Otherwise you will not have the accuracy and tranquility needed to completely disentangle the habitual mind. Everything that is needed is found within daily mindfulness of breathing, because of the relationship between day to day living, and it disturbance on samadhi. This gives you all the conditions you need to bring the 16 Meditative Hindrances to the surface, and to decondition them from the mind. 

Your Question:  I want to do many of them in parallel to my development of access concentration: especially insight practices at the six sense doors 

My Reply: The purpose of the insight practices into the six sense fields is to bring about final disentangling of awareness from these fields. This is why this is best done with a foundation of samadhi and with the hindrances already deconditioned from the mind. The Buddha talks about this practice as Indrya Samvara. https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/SN/SN35_153.html

This is often presented as a beginners practice but it is an advanced practice. As a MIDL meditator you are probably already doing this and not realising it, it should be done in daily life in correlation with your daily mindfulness of breathing.

Instructions

1. In daily life choose one sense door.
2. Relax your attention on that sense door.
3. Observe when your attention is drawn out-wards.
4. Notice any response within your body to that habitual engagement.
5. Soften/relax the effort behind that habitual engagement.

This is the normal formula for MIDL, seated meditation is the training for self-observation in daily life. It is daily life where the deepest insights arise. With practice you will be able to keep your awareness wide in daily life, and follow the above formula when awareness habitually engages with any of the six sense fields. Gradually deconditioning this habitual engagement.

Your Question:   and stillness/ nirvikalpa samadhi practice by abandoning participation 

My Reply: This has its time and place. Many of the Meditation Skills in 17-52 are antidotes for the meditative hindrances and are good support practices for samatha when practiced appropriately. An important part to pay attention to when you are training the mind, is not to give mixed signals in regards to what you want it to learn to do, right now. This means to be very aware that mixing different types of attention can cause confusion within the mind in regards to what you are trying to condition it to do. Just within these different samadhi types you have different attention structures for different purposes:

1. Appana Samadhi: Unified samadhi, for tranquility, by developing fixed, stable attention free from the meditative hindrances, free from habitual interaction with the six sense fields.
2. Khanika Samadhi: Momentary samadhi, for insight, by unifying flexible attention on the minds habitual interaction with the six sense fields and observing and understanding the conditions for the arising and ceasing of the meditative hindrances.
3. Nirvikalpa Samadhi: Objectless samadhi, for disentanglement of awareness, by developing disenchantment on experiences that arise within the six sense fields.

Your Question: "For general insight into conditional processes and to observe the Three Characteristics, samadhi needs to be enough to penetrate habitual delusion".  Is this about deconditioning our negative habitual patterns and difficult memories that cause us immediate suffering in daily life? For example, the fears and anxieties associated with certain situations or contexts, certain addictions and negative habits?

Stephen Procter: No, it is not about deconditioning; it is about observation. How much samadhi do you need to develop insight?  The process is simply this:  Self-observe --> soften --> disentangle  or  Flexible attention --> softening --> deconditioning  We can talk about this in terms of the process or in terms of MIDL structure.

     In understanding this we first need to understand a new meditator, someone who comes to meditation to escape from dukkha, whose mind is embedded in delusion. When a new meditator comes to meditation, they come with a mind that habitually lives in delusion. This means that delusive attention is dominant over mindful attention. The new meditator sits down in meditation and is confronted with a complete mess: anxiousness, wandering, forgetting, thinking, sleepiness, dullness, images, sounds, sensations; all mixed together in one solid blob. Their mind is habitually applying and sustaining attention to all these states, to them this is normal, but actually it is a direct reflection of their lack of samadhi. It is not possible for the new meditator to separate all the processes into separate parts; there is no space around any experience that arises within the six sense fields, so they become completely lost within this sensoury mess.

"For general insight into conditional processes and to observe the Three Characteristics, samadhi needs to be enough to penetrate habitual delusion".  

This refers to the initial samadhi developed by the meditator to penetrate habitual delusion. This is done in order to separate experience into separate parts, in a way that allows for the observing of the characteristics of anicca (impermanence), dukkha (suffering) and anatta (not-self). Anatta being dominant in the case of meditating in daily life using the MIDL structure.

You asked: If yes, what is the level of samadhi needed for this work based upon the experiential markers in MIDL?

My reply: The 12 Experiential Markers arise as a direct reflection of the amount of samadhi present within the meditators mind. So the amount of samadhi for the first maker is just enough to create a temporary gap in habitual delusion. The amount of samadhi needed for each Marker after that is the amount needed to calm/suppress its corresponding hindrance. The amount needed for the 12th Marker is enough for stable, unified attention free from the meditative hindrances.

You asked: Is having continuous mindfulness and lack of forgetting is the prerequisite for this work?

My reply: No, habituating mindfulness and overcome forgetting is part of the work, and directly reflects the development of the Experiential Makers. The only prerequisite is a clear desire to do daily meditation and a disenchantment with seeking pleasure and fulfillment from daily life.

You asked: If I have understood this correctly, I was able to do much of this work because it doesn’t require access concentration.

My reply: Yes, you do not require access concentration to practice mindfulness of breathing and train your attention. You also do not require access concentration to develop insight into and decondition the meditative hindrance's. Access concentration is a result of samadhi maturity, not a cause.  For general insight into conditional processes and to observe the Three Characteristics, samadhi needs to be enough to penetrate habitual delusion.  For penetrating the Three Characteristics so that they become the primary perception of the mind, samadhi needs to be stable to the level of access concentration.  For maturity of equanimity and insight that penetrates anatta that leads to Sotapanna (Stream Entry), samadhi needs be developed to the level of fourth jhana.

You asked: It was like a low-hanging fruit of the practice, easy to reach but very beneficial for overall well-being.

My reply: The initial calming of the heart and mind is easy to access and not all that difficult. It is the penetration through developing the perception of the Three Characteristics that is more subtle and difficult. This is why it requires greater tranquility.

Your Question: I struggled physically with standing for so long and had to bend forward a few times to relieve my back. I think I will try some shorter sessions of standing meditation, because I do agree that there are benefits to practicing mindfulness everywhere.

Stephen Procter: Be gentle with yourself and start with short periods of time at first. The trick is to learn to fold your body so that it becomes like a spring and then to relax into that spring so that gravity does the balancing for you rather then effort.

Your Question: I feel lot of resistance that's coming out doing this exercise being unable to find a relaxing point for my body. I'm totally ok with the top part of my body but my legs are always in a sort of "contracted" place that brings a sort of tremor in my legs...which makes my mind restless most of the time that makes me quite uncomfortable. Lots of stuff coming out from here...I never thought this exercise could become so challenging!

Stephen Procter: The tightening of your legs comes from the protection mechanism of your mind, the fear that if it totally gives up control of the body it we become injured. You can see this habitual protection if you hurt your lower back and all the muscles tighten around the injury.

     When finding this balance point within our body where we can internally relax while standing it is helpful to understand that we can balance our body in two ways: through strength and through alignment with gravity. During standing meditation we balance through alignment with gravity. Gravity is predictable, it pulls straight down, this is to our advantage for when we align with gravity we can disengage our muscles allowing them to relax. The key is to align our body like we are folding it, the first fold is at the ankles, the next opposite fold is at the knees and the last at the hips. Our body is now is like folding a sheet in three parts, we align these folds so that the weight goes straight down.

     Once you do this you will still have the instinctual protection of tightening, once this relaxes there will be some stretching of muscles and tendons as they adapt to the muscles not being engaged within balancing. There is some body conditioning within this but it is necessary for setting the foundation of mindfulness of body and effortlessness of movement within daily life.

Your Question: I had a similar practice but while keeping feet shoulder width apart. In this practice with my feet together there was a big problem with balance. To be able to relax I did have to put an inch between my feet, though. Perhaps with practice my balance will improve.

Stephen Procter: I am not sure if there is a misunderstanding in the instruction, but for this meditation we do not have our feet together but rather have them parallel, shoulder or hip width apart; whichever is widest. We then relax our hips and knees so that our legs become like springs rather than posts. We can then find our central balance and relax the energy into the springs.

Your Question: Apparently I've forgotten how to stand. Also, breathing was more laboured until I began breathing with the entire torso instead of mainly with the belly. But it seems like this would be a very critical skill to master, allowing me to take my practice out into the world, but I am not sure how to do it properly.

Stephen Procter: Learning to stand in an effortless way means being mindful of how your body is aligned over your feet. If the alignment is out then gravity will pull you forward, back, left or right and all the muscles in your body will tense making this practice difficult. When your body is aligned properly you then use gravity (which appears as the experience of heaviness) to pull you straight down.

     In this posture you can relax all muscles throughout your body and will not get tired. This alignment is found by making the feet parallel, shoulder width apart. Then bend at the ankles joint forward, knees joint back and hip joint forward so that you are 'folding' your body. Play with this and 'listen' with full awareness, can you align your body so that you are fully balanced, with no tension?

Your Question: In the standing meditation I get distracted by my hands because I'm not sure how to hold them together without feeling tension or pressure. Sometimes I'm not sure if the mouth should be closed all the time, or open, or both, and if we're meant to breathe in and out through the nose all the time. I feel like I have to open my mouth sometimes to let the breathe out, is that ok? 

Stephen Procter:  "...In the standing meditation I get distracted by my hands because I'm not sure how to hold them together without feeling tension or pressure..."

Place one hand below your belly button in the middle of your body, then place the other hand on top of it, folding in your fingers to hold it loosely. You can also if you prefer have your arms hanging loosely by your side.

"...Sometimes I'm not sure if the mouth should be closed all the time, or open, or both, and if we're meant to breathe in and out through the nose all the time..."

We are always means to allow the breath to be drawn in and out through the nose. The nose plays a role preparing the air for the lungs: On the in-breath the nose filters the air, adjusts its temperate, and moisturizes it. On the out-breath the air filter is cleaned. back pressure is created with the diaphragm for a slower out-breath and there is a distinct calming affect on the functions of the mind. Breathing through the mouth has none of these benefits. the only reason to breathe through the mouth is if you are under high physical load or stressed.

"...I feel like I have to open my mouth sometimes to let the breathe out, is that ok?..."

This feeling comes because of confusion that happens within the brain due to habituated stress chest / mouth breathing. A focus on retraining of stress breathing patterns in Meditation Skill 01, with the goal of strengthening and slowing down the movement of the diaphragm so that diaphragmatic breathing becomes normal, removes this urge.