The Sixteen Exercises Of Mindful Breathing
This is a recording of Thich Nhat Hanh's 16 exercises of mindful breathing meditation, taken directly from his book 'Tranformation - healing the innerchild'. It was recorded specifically for attendees of my mindful bookclub but I hope it will be helpful for anyone who would like to go deeper with their practice. It is a beautiful and profound meditation that listeners have told me helps them really relax. I bow with deep gratitude to Thay for this practice.
Transcript
This is the 16 Exercises of Mindful Breathing as written by Thich Nhat Hanh in his book Reconciliation Healing the Inner Child.
The teaching on mindful breathing has come directly from the Buddha.
The 16 Exercises of Mindful Breathing are practices for taking care of our body,
Our feelings,
Our mind,
Mental formations and objects of mind,
Our perceptions.
These teachings are useful for our daily practice and very helpful for dealing with painful feelings.
Anytime we're suffering and we feel we can't bear it and we don't know what to do,
These 16 exercises are available to us.
The first set of 4 exercises,
The body.
The first exercise is to recognize the in-breath as the in-breath and the out-breath as the out-breath.
Breathing in,
I know I am breathing in.
Breathing out,
I know I am breathing out.
It's very simple but the effect can be very deep.
When you pay attention to your in-breath and recognize it,
You naturally release the past and the future and come back to the present.
You begin to generate the energy of mindfulness and concentration and obtain a degree of freedom.
The second exercise is following the in-breath and out-breath all the way through.
Breathing in,
I follow my in-breath from the beginning to the end.
Breathing out,
I follow my out-breath from the beginning to the end.
Following my in-breath,
Following my out-breath.
We preserve our mindfulness and concentration during the whole time of our in-breath and our out-breath.
We don't say breathing in,
Oh I forgot to close the door.
There's no interruption and your concentration increases.
This is called following the in-breath and the out-breath.
Some versions of the exercises mention recognizing the length of our breath.
Breathing in,
I know my in-breath is long or short.
We don't make any effort to make it shorter or longer.
We allow our breathing to be natural.
With awareness of our breath,
It becomes deeper,
More harmonious,
More peaceful,
All by itself.
The quality of our breathing is increased by our attention.
The third exercise brings our mind back to our body.
Breathing in,
I am aware of my whole body.
Breathing out,
I am aware of my whole body.
In our daily life,
Often our body is there but our mind is elsewhere.
Our mind may be caught in the past,
In the future,
In our projects,
Our anger,
Our worries.
You're there but you're not there.
You're not available to yourself or to others.
So the practice is to go back to our breathing.
The breath is a bridge linking body and mind.
The moment we begin to pay attention to our breath,
Our body and mind naturally come together.
We call this the oneness of body and mind.
Our breathing becomes calmer and the body and feelings profit.
This is the practice of peace.
We're established in the here and the now.
Stay present,
Alive and we can touch the wonders of life.
Just this simple exercise can bring a miracle.
The capacity to live deeply in each moment.
We go home to our body to become aware of its existence and to take care of it.
We may have neglected or mistreated our body.
We embrace our body with our mindfulness and become aware of anything in our body that needs attention.
We may discover that we've been living in such a way that tension,
Pain and stress have been accumulating in our body for a long time.
The fourth exercise is to release the tension in the body.
Breathing in,
I calm my body.
Breathing out,
I calm my body.
We can allow the tension to be released when we're sitting,
Walking or lying down.
Breathing in,
I am aware of my whole body.
Breathing out,
I calm my whole body.
We may have learned techniques of deep relaxation and we may have succeeded in relaxing to some extent.
But the basic practice for really releasing the tension is to release the past and the future,
To go back to the present moment and enjoy the fact that we are alive and we already have enough conditions to be happy.
Please do reflect on this.
We have to master these first four exercises.
That is the minimum we need to do.
To be mindful of our breath is to come home to oneself and to generate the energy of our true presence.
With that energy,
We embrace our body and bring relaxation and calm to our body.
Deep relaxation of the body can bring about the relaxation of the mind.
If we cannot succeed with our body,
It will be difficult to succeed with our mind later on.
The second set of four exercises,
Feelings.
With these four exercises,
We come to the realm of feelings.
Once we have succeeded in bringing calm and relaxation to our body,
We can go back to our feelings and help.
The fifth exercise is to generate the energy of joy.
Breathing in,
I feel joy.
Breathing out,
I feel joy.
As a practitioner,
You have the capacity to bring a feeling of joy into yourself in the here and now.
The more mindful and concentrated you become,
The more joy and happiness will increase.
The first practice that brings joy is releasing.
For joy to be possible,
There are things we should be able to let go of.
Usually we think that joy is something out there that we need to go after and obtain.
But if we know how to identify the obstacles in us and let them go,
Then joy naturally comes to us.
The sixth exercise is to bring in a feeling of happiness.
Breathing in,
I feel happy.
Breathing out,
I feel happy.
Practising these exercises can in itself bring happiness into us.
Mindfulness and releasing tension are sources of happiness.
Mindfulness helps us recognise the many conditions of happiness we already have.
So to bring in a feeling of joy,
Of happiness is easy.
We can do it anytime,
Anywhere.
In the Zen tradition,
Meditation is considered to be nourishment.
In Zen literature,
There is the expression,
The joy and happiness of meditation as daily food.
You can heal and nourish yourself with meditation.
The seventh exercise is to deal with the painful feelings and emotions that have manifested in us.
Breathing in,
I am aware of my mental formations.
Breathing out,
I am aware of my mental formations.
This exercise helps us learn how to handle the energies of pain,
Sorrow,
Fear and anger inside us.
We practise mindful breathing,
Mindful walking in order to generate the energy of mindfulness and concentration.
It's exactly with that energy of mindfulness and concentration that we recognise and embrace our painful feeling that is there.
We should not cover up the pain,
We take care of it.
To ignore or suppress the pain,
We'll be doing violence to ourselves.
Mindfulness is us,
But the painful feeling is also us.
There's no fighting,
This is the view of non-duality.
When we avoid going home to ourselves,
We allow our pain to grow.
The method proposed by the Buddha is to go home and take care.
We need some mindfulness and concentration.
We should be able to generate mindfulness and concentration so we're strong enough to not be overwhelmed by our pain and sorrow.
And with that energy of mindfulness and concentration,
We can go home with confidence and recognise the painful feelings.
Breathing in,
I recognise the painful feeling in me.
And out,
I embrace the painful feeling in me.
This is a real practice.
A practitioner should be able to recognise her pain and embrace it tenderly,
Like a baby.
Sometimes it may be a little bit difficult,
Especially when we're beginning.
The collective energy of the Sangha can help.
The eighth exercise is to release the tension and calm the feeling.
Breathing in,
I calm my mental formations.
Breathing out,
I calm my mental formations.
In the seventh and eighth exercises,
We use mindfulness to embrace our pain and get relief.
It's exactly like the practice concerning the body.
We go home to our feeling,
Recognise the feeling and embrace the feeling with tenderness.
Breathing in,
I am aware of the painful feeling in me.
And out,
I calm my painful feeling.
With continued mindful breathing and walking,
We can lullaby and embrace our painful feeling.
Later on,
With the practice of looking deeply,
We can discover the nature of our afflictions and get the insight that will liberate us from them.
But for the time being,
By just embracing our feeling mindfully,
Tenderly,
We can already get some relief.
The third set of four exercises,
The mind.
Like the ninth exercise,
We come to the other mental formations.
Feelings are just one category of mental formation.
Formation,
Samskara,
Is a term meaning that many conditions have come together in order for something to manifest.
There are the good mental formations and the not so good ones.
The ninth exercise is to be aware of our mind and recognise the state of our mind.
Just as the third exercise is awareness of the body and the seventh is awareness of the feelings.
Breathing in,
I am aware of my mind.
Breathing out,
I am aware of my mind.
We become aware of any mental formation that has manifested.
Aware of mental formations,
I breathe in.
The mind is a river in which every mental formation is a drop of water.
We sit on the bank of the river and observe the manifestation and fading of each mental formation.
We don't need to fight,
Grasp or push the mental formations away.
We just calmly recognise them and smile to them,
Whether they are pleasant or unpleasant.
When anger is there,
We say,
Breathing in,
I know the mental formation anger is in me.
When the mental formation of doubt is there,
We breathe in and recognise the presence of doubt in us.
The practitioner is an observer.
He needs mindfulness and concentration to recognise the mental formation.
Then later on,
He can look deeply into the nature of the mental formation.
The tenth exercise is to gladden the mind.
Breathing in,
I make my mind happy.
Breathing out,
I make my mind happy.
We make the mind glad in order to strengthen,
Encourage and give vitality to it.
When we help the mind to be more joyful and energetic,
It gives us the strength to embrace and look deeply into our difficulties later on.
If we know how our mind functions,
It will be easier for us to practice the tenth exercise.
The four practices of true diligence,
Right effort,
Help us to be aware of our mind while giving the negative seeds a chance to rest.
The first practice of right effort is to allow the negative seeds to sleep in our store consciousness and not give them a chance to manifest.
If they manifest too often,
Their base will be strengthened.
The second practice is that when a negative seed manifests,
We help it go back as quickly as possible.
If it stays too long,
We will suffer and its base will also be strengthened.
The third practice of right diligence is to replace a negative mental formation with a positive one.
We shift our attention.
We call this changing the peg.
When a peg joining two pieces of wood has become rotten,
The carpenter drives a new peg into the hole,
Driving out the old peg at the same time.
The fourth practice is that when a good mental formation has manifested,
We try to keep it there as long as we can.
This is when a good friend comes to visit and the whole house is joyful.
So we try to keep him with us a few more days.
We can also help another person to change the mental formation.
If a dark thought,
Anger or fear manifests in her,
We can practice watering a good seed in her that will manifest and replace the other mental formation.
We call this practice selective watering.
We can organize our life in such a way that the good seeds can be touched and watered several times a day.
The eleventh exercise is to bring the mind into concentration in order to get insight.
Breathing in,
I concentrate my mind.
Breathing out,
I concentrate my mind.
Concentration has the power to burn away the afflictions.
It's like a lens focusing the sunlight to burn a piece of paper.
When concentration can burn away the afflictions,
Then there is insight.
The Buddha gave us many teachings that can help us to cultivate concentration.
Impermanence,
No self and emptiness are concentrations we can practice in our daily life.
For example,
Whenever,
Whatever we're in touch with during the day,
Whether it's a friend,
A flower,
A cloud,
We can practice to see its nature of impermanence,
Interbeing and so on.
The twelfth exercise is to liberate the mind.
Breathing in,
I liberate my mind.
Breathing out,
I liberate my mind.
We need the strength of concentration to cut through the afflictions.
Sorrow,
Fear,
Anger,
Discrimination,
The tie up and blind our mind.
The teaching on impermanence is still a notion,
But it can be used as an instrument that helps bring about the insight of impermanence.
The match can bring about the flame.
And when we have the flame,
The flame will consume the match.
What we need for our liberation is the insight of impermanence.
When the insight is there,
It burns the notion.
We practice the concentration on impermanence to bring about the insight of impermanence.
While sitting,
Walking,
Breathing,
Doing things,
We're concentrated on the nature of impermanence.
Concentration Samadhi means to maintain that awareness alive one moment after the other as long as possible.
Only concentration can bring insight and liberate us.
Suppose we're about to have a fight with someone.
Suffering is in us.
Our mind is not free.
The concentration on impermanence can free us both from anger.
Breathing in,
I visualize my beloved one 300 years from now.
It may take only one in-breath to touch the reality of impermanence.
Breathing in,
I know I am still alive and he is still alive.
And when we open our eyes,
The only thing we want to do is take him into our arms.
Breathing in,
You're still alive.
I'm so happy.
That is liberation with insight,
The insight of impermanence.
If we're inhabited by the insight of impermanence,
We'll deal with him very wisely.
Whatever we can do to make him happy today,
We will do it.
We won't wait for tomorrow because tomorrow it may be too late.
Some people cry so much when the other person dies.
Just because they knew that during the time the other person was alive,
They didn't treat her well.
It is the complex of guilt that causes that person to suffer like that because they didn't have the insight of impermanence.
Impermanence is just one concentration we can practice.
The last set of four exercises,
Perceptions.
Now we come to the realm of objects of mind.
In Buddhism,
The world and all phenomena are conceived of as objects of mind,
Not as objective reality.
We're often caught by the notion that there's a consciousness inside us and an objective world out there that we're trying to understand.
And this affects our perceptions.
But in the light of interbeing,
Subject and object can't exist separately.
When we perceive something,
The object of perception always manifests at the same time as the subject of perception.
To be conscious always means to be conscious of something.
The thirteenth exercise is contemplating impermanence.
Breathing in,
I observe the impermanent nature of all dharmas.
Breathing out,
I observe the impermanent nature of all dharmas.
We're ready to accept and agree that things are impermanent.
But we still live and behave as though we will always be there and that we will be always the same person we are now.
In reality,
Everything is changing in every moment.
When we're with someone,
We may be in touch with the person he was twenty years ago and we're not able to touch the person of the present moment.
He has a different way of thinking and feeling.
We're not really in touch with the truth of impermanence.
So we use mind consciousness and meditate on impermanence.
The concentration on impermanence brings the insight of impermanence that can liberate us.
Impermanence is just one concentration.
Going deeply into impermanence,
We discover no-self,
Emptiness and interbeing.
So impermanence represents all concentrations.
While breathing in,
We keep our concentration on impermanence alive.
And when we breathe out,
We keep the concentration on impermanence alive.
Until we make a breakthrough into the heart of reality.
The object of our observations may be a flower,
A pebble,
The person we love,
The person we hate,
Maybe us,
Maybe our pain,
Our sorrow.
Everything can serve as the object of our meditation and we have to touch the nature of impermanence in it.
The 14th exercise is contemplating non-desire,
Non-craving.
Breathing in,
I observe the disappearance of desire.
Breathing out,
I observe the disappearance of desire.
This exercise is to help manas,
Which is always seeking pleasure and ignoring the dangers of pleasure seeking.
The contemplation on impermanence can help manas to transform.
We look deeply into the object of our craving to see its true nature.
The object of our craving may destroy our body and our mind.
Being aware of what we desire and of what we consume is a crucial practice.
The Buddha offered us the teaching on the four nutriments,
The four sources of food we consume every day.
The first source is volition,
Our deepest desire.
It brings us the vitality we need to live our life.
We have to look into the nature of our desire to see whether it's wholesome or not.
Our desire may be pleasure seeking,
Which can be very dangerous.
It may be the desire for revenge,
The desire to punish.
These kinds of unwholesome desire have at their foundation a lot of wrong perceptions.
We need to look deeply to recognise that such desire has come from fear,
Doubt,
Anger and so on.
Good Arthur was also inspired by a kind of desire,
An aspiration.
He saw the suffering in his kingdom and saw the political power wasn't enough to help.
So he sought another path,
That of transforming himself,
Helping other people to transform and opening up a new way.
We call that desire the mind of enlightenment,
The beginner's mind.
We should have a strong aspiration to maintain our beginner's mind alive.
It's a beginner's mind that gives us the strength and energy to continue the practice.
The second source of nutriment is consciousness.
This is our collective consciousness,
Collective energy.
Individuals in a group tend to generate the same kind of energy.
When we come together to practice mindfulness,
Concentration,
Compassion,
We generate these wholesome energies collectively and it's very nourishing and healing.
Building a sangha is very healing for the world.
If we're with a group of angry people,
Their negative energy comes into us.
In the beginning,
We may not be like them,
But if we stay long enough,
Slowly that collective energy will penetrate us and to some degree,
We'll become like them without even realising it.
It's very important to see whether or not we're in a good environment for ourselves and for our children.
We need a safe environment in which the collective energy is wholesome.
The third kind of food is sensory impression.
What we consume in terms of music,
Magazines,
Films,
Conversations,
Advertisements.
When we read an article or watch a film or a programme containing violence and anger,
It penetrates into us.
We have to decide what to consume and what not to consume.
Psychotherapists need to be very careful.
As a psychotherapist,
You listen to so many kinds of suffering and anger.
You need a strong practice to stay healthy and solid,
Otherwise you'll get sick.
You're trying to help,
But you may be invaded by the negative energy of the clients you meet with every day.
Every psychotherapist has to build a sangha.
With a sangha,
You're protected and you get nourishment every week when you come together.
Otherwise you'll burn out and you can't continue to help.
The Buddha spent a lot of time building a sangha and we should do the same.
We can look for elements of our sangha around us and build a sangha for our protection and nourishment and to keep our practice alive.
Otherwise we'll lose our practice after a few months and the sensory impressions,
What we consume by the way of the eyes,
The nose,
The ears,
The body and the mind will penetrate us.
Mindful consumption is the practice that protects us,
Our family,
Our society.
It's a path to healing ourselves and preventing the destruction of our planet.
The fourth source of nourishment is edible food.
We should eat only the things that can bring peace and well-being into our body and mind.
We eat in a way that helps retain compassion in our heart.
If we can do that,
We can save our planet and assure a future for our children.
The fifteenth exercise is to contemplate cessation.
Breathing in,
I observe cessation.
Breathing out,
I observe cessation.
Cessation means nirvana,
The extinction of all notions,
The true reality in itself.
The nature of reality transcends all notions,
Including the notions of birth and death,
Being and non-being.
This is what is at the heart of this meditation,
The final effort to get liberated.
The contemplation on impermanence,
No self,
Emptiness,
No birth and no death can lead to this kind of release.
The notion of birth and death can be a source of anguish,
Anxiety and fear.
It is only with the insight of no birth and no death that we can transcend anxiety and fear.
The sixteenth exercise is contemplating nirvana,
Extinction.
Breathing in,
I observe letting go.
Breathing out,
I observe letting go.
This exercise is to throw away all notions in order to be free.
This concentration can help us touch the true nature of reality and the deep wisdom that will liberate us from fear,
Anger and despair.
The word nirvana means extinction.
Nirvana is not a place to go or somewhere that exists in the future.
Nirvana is the nature of reality as it is.
Nirvana is available in the here and the now.
A wave rising on the surface of the ocean is made of water,
But sometimes she forgets she's made of water.
A wave has a beginning,
An end,
A coming up,
A going down.
A wave can be higher or lower,
More or less powerful than other waves.
If the wave is caught by notions like beginning,
Ending,
Coming up,
Going down,
Being more or less powerful,
She'll suffer.
But if she realises she is water,
The situation changes right away.
As water,
She no longer minds about beginning,
Ending,
Going up,
Going down.
She can enjoy going up,
Going down,
Being this wave,
Being the other wave.
There's no discrimination,
No fear.
She doesn't have to go and look for water.
She is water in the present moment.
Our true nature is no beginning,
No end,
No birth,
No death.
If we know how to touch our true nature,
There's no fear,
No anger,
No more despair.
Our true nature is the beginning of nirvana.
We have been nirvanaised from the non-beginning.
In our mind,
To die means from something we will suddenly become nothing,
From someone we will suddenly become no one.
We know a cloud cannot die.
A cloud can become rain,
Snow,
Hail,
A river,
Tea or juice,
But it's impossible for the cloud to die.
The true nature of the cloud is the nature of no birth and no death.
So if someone close to you has just passed away,
Be sure to look for her in her new manifestation.
It's impossible for her to die.
She's continued in many ways.
With the eyes of the Buddha,
You can recognise her around you and inside you.
Darling,
I know you're still there in your new form.
Before our birth,
We already existed in our mother's womb.
And before that,
We existed half in our father and half in our mother.
Something cannot come from nothing.
We haven't come from non-being.
We have always been there in one form or another.
Our nature is the nature of no birth and no death.
Nirvana means the extinction of all notions,
Including the notions of birth and death,
Being and non-being.
The 16th exercise is to throw away,
To release all these notions and be completely free.
The sound of this bell is a voice calling me back to my tree home.
We take this calling as inspiration.
Bell
