Skill in Allowing

In MIDL when practicing Mindfulness of Breathing, we don’t fix or locate our breathing in any particular area. Wherever the breathing appears to you, is correct. 

This is how it should be. Instead of fixing the breathing in any place, we allow the mind to actually attract to the breathing at whatever point is clearest to it. 

The way we do this is by coming into our foundation: You start off by sitting, feeling the sensate quality of your body, relaxing deeply into your body, immersing awareness within your body. 

If there is any agitation, restlessness, you can use a few softening breaths - just deeply in….and deeply out. 

If you are really stressed, you can do the diaphragm breathing and just re-engage autonomous breathing. 

Once awareness is fully immersed within your body, you feel very grounded, very anchored - then you relax your chest and your belly. Relaxing the chest and the belly is the first aspect of giving up control of breathing. 

When you do this, your natural breathing will appear to you. You just gently be aware of it as is moves in through the tip of your nose, through your chest, deep into your belly, and as it moves back out again. If some parts of the breathing are not clear to you, that’s ok. 

It is how it is. Allow it to be.

Just become gently aware of that movement of the breath, of the sensations as your breath moves through your body. 

We watch this breath as if from a distance. We watch it like we are standing on a mountain watching the villagers walking around. There is no need to look closely at the breath at this stage.

While feeling the breath moving through the centre of your body, always keep the awareness of the sensate quality of your body in mind. 

Keep full awareness of your whole body just sitting here and see the breath as a column of sensations moving within that centre, within that foundation.

While doing this, you may start to notice some tightness within the breathing, or awkwardness. The breathing doesn’t seem to flow naturally.

This brings us to this training. 

As mentioned in earlier trainings, our breathing can happen naturally, autonomously, by itself. If it does, then it is light, it is wispy, it is smooth, it is deep.  

The breathing can also be controlled by the mind, and the mind often doesn’t want to leave the breathing alone. 

So, when we are approaching mindfulness of breathing, the first thing that we are actually going to find is that the mind loves control, experience.  

So, during our first mindfulness of breathing training, the aspect we are working with is control. We need to start deconditioning the desire to control that which doesn’t need to be controlled.

We use the breathing to teach us how to do this. Breathing can happen naturally, or we can control the breathing. We use this aspect to observe our mind controlling it.  

The training is done by first observing the breathing as it moves up and down within our body. Observing any tightness, any tension, any altering of the breath.
 

To check control, or to work with control in your meditation, do one thing: Let a slow breath out through your nose and relax and wait. 

When you relax and wait at the end of that out-breath, autonomous breathing will switch on and the breath will draw in by itself.

Now during one of my classes, I had a student who breathed out, relaxed and waited…and after the exercise they told me:

“Stephen, I don’t like this exercise - I nearly suffocated!”

And I started to question why? What’s going on? And they said they breathed out, they relaxed and waited, but they were holding their breath.

So, don’t hold your breath at this point. This is not about control - if you hold your breath, you will pass out!

This is about allowing your breathing to happen naturally, about getting out of the way. So you breath out, relax and wait, and get out of the way. 

Allow the breathing to come in by itself. Don’t worry - it will. Just allow it to be. You are working with control.

At this point of relaxing and waiting at the end of the out-breath - and you can try it now:

Just slowly breathe out through your nose, relax and wait. You can get out of the way by just immersing your awareness within your body, so you are not watching the breath directly. And notice that at some point the breath draws in by itself.

Notice the breath feels different when it draws in by itself. It may be light and wispy and smooth. And the diaphragm will naturally engage in this breath. We just observe that breath now, naturally, and stay out of its way.

As you observe it, you may notice tightening or tensioning of the breath. That tightness or tension that is appearing is your mind starting to control the breath, your mind not leaving the breath alone. Whenever you are noticing this tightening, this change in the breath - slowly breathe out through your nose, relax and wait. Wait for the breath to come in again by itself.

So, do it now. Breathe out…relax….and wait.

The breath comes in, it draws in. It is long, it is smooth, it is beautiful. The beauty of the breath can appear to you at this point.

See how long you can observe this breath before your mind starts to control it. If you find that your mind keeps controlling the breath at this point - it controls it very quickly - don’t get upset. Getting upset, complaining, that is just more control of the mind. It is not you.

Your mind wants to control everything. If you observe complaining “Oh, I am no good! I can’t do this!” - observe that complaining, notice where it appears in your body as tension, use a softening breath to relax that complaining, relax that control. 

Re-ground your awareness within your body, feeling the breath moving up and down. Take a slow breath out, relax and wait. And begin again.

When the breath comes in, be with the breath as long as you can with our controlling it. Learn what it means to observe control. Notice that as the breath tightens, it is just a reflection of the mind itself tightening as well. The mind trying to constrict everything around it.

We learn to observe the natural breath. We learn to observe the breath moving throughout out body, the breath free from control, the breath in its natural reality.

And we also learn to work with control from the mind. If we can’t observe something like breathing - that we don’t need to control - without controlling it, how can we abandon any control within our daily life? 

How can we abandon our control over ourselves? Over our partner? Over our children? Over our workplace? 

How can we remove ourselves from this cause of much suffering in our life?

We observe the control of the breathing; we allow the breath to be a barometer to teach us about control. 

And we decondition control within the mind through the breath. And it creates our foundation for mindfulness of breathing in our seated MIDL practice, and also dissolves control in daily life. 

Allowing is the meditative skill of being aware of the natural flow of breathing within your body, free from the habitual control of your mind in order to decondition any tendency towards habitual control from your mind.

Breathing has a wonderful characteristic that makes it the perfect tool for deconditioning habitual tendencies towards control from the mind:

1. Breathing can happen autonomously controlled by the brain.
2. Breathing can also override this by taking an intentional breath in & out.
3. Your mind can also change how you breathe as part of feeling stressed.

This meditation of allowing is the skill of changing stress breathing based on control (3) into autonomous breathing (1) by using intentional slow softening breaths out through the nose (2).

• Meditation Object: Natural breathing free from control. 
• Developing Insight: Observe the subtle tendencies within your mind to control what does not need to be controlled by sensing changes within your breathing.

• Hindrance Weakened: MH 16: Fear: Fear of giving up all control.
• Length: 30 min.

Step 1:  With hands in your lap, thumbs lightly touching, begin your meditation with mindfulness of your body. Use slow, softening breaths to relax into the experience of your body until you feel very present within it.

Meditation Additions:

Step 2: 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. 

You are ready to progress to when:

• You are able to experience your breathing for a few minutes free from control and can reset your breathing with a slow breath out through the nose if you notice control.

• SoundCloud: Guided Meditation: Weaken Habitual Control.
• Insight Timer App: Guided Meditation Experiencing the Natural Breath.

From your foundation of GOSS, you can begin to train attention skills learnt in seated meditation, into your daily life.

Meditation 08 in Daily Life:

1. Gently soften awareness into your body until it feels grounded, present, now. 
2. Relax your effort to be aware of your body, allow it to shift to the background.
3. Observe any tendency of your mind to want to control situations.
4. Notice any changes within the sensations in your body as it reflects your mind and any feeling of pleasantness or unpleasantness.
5. Soften and relax into the effort beneath any attraction or aversion you feel.
6. Smile into the pleasure of each letting go that occurs.