Habit Energy & Mindfulness of Breath

Join Raeya and her Monday night meditation sangha to explore stillness and presence. This guided meditation begins with a reading from the work of Tich Nhat Hanh and blends into a guided meditation on letting go of habitual thinking and settling into awareness of breath and body. Use this meditation to practice mindful listening, allow stillness, and to cultivate connection with the contentment of right here and now.

Transcript

So welcome.

I would really like to share a reading with you tonight.

Every once in a while I bring something in.

Perhaps there are other words to listen to other than my own but also just to give us some stories and some other concepts to maybe think about or different ways of hearing things and working with things tonight.

So I'm going to read to you and then we'll have a sit after that.

And as always you're very welcome to,

If you need to,

Throughout your sit to shift or change your position.

Just do that within your practice.

So if you find that you need to shift seats or you need to move the body,

Just make the shifting,

The awareness that that needs to happen and the moving into doing that part of your practice.

So you can settle into your seat,

Just finding a way to set yourself that gives you a sense of steadiness in the pelvis.

You might rock a little bit side to side and just check that there is equal weight or responsibility on both hips.

Noticing if you need support underneath the legs or if you can give equal release through both legs and down into both feet.

And out of that coming downward,

The pelvis settling,

The legs settling,

The feet softening.

Just feeling an upward energy through the spine.

As if you could create a little bit of space in between each vertebra.

And as you feel the spine lift upward,

The chest rising a little bit,

The shoulders drawing back and down in the body.

And then just closing the eyes.

And you can let the muscles of the face really relax here so that you're not holding the brow or the eyes or the jaw in any particular way.

Feeling the whole of the face softening,

Widening.

And letting the tongue settle away from the roof of the mouth.

As you feel your body settle,

Just letting your ears to,

So that you can listen not just with your ears but with the whole of your body to how these words and sounds land.

So we're reading this evening a little passage from Tehann.

There's a story in Zen circles about a man and a horse.

The horse is galloping quickly and it appears that the man on the horse is going somewhere very important.

Another man standing alongside the road shouts,

Where are you going?

And the first man replies,

I don't know,

Ask the horse.

This is also our story.

We are riding a horse,

We don't know where we're going and we can't stop.

The horse is our habit energy pulling us along and we are often powerless.

We are always running and it has become a habit.

We struggle all the time,

Even during our sleep.

We are at war within ourselves and we can easily start war with others.

We need to learn the art of stopping.

Stopping cyclical thoughts,

Habit energies,

Stopping forgetfulness and stopping identification with strong emotions that begin to rule us over time.

When an emotion rushes through us like a storm,

We have no peace.

We turn on the TV and then we turn it off.

We pick up a book and then we put it down.

How can we stop this agitation?

How can we stop our fear,

Despair,

Anger and craving?

We can stop by practicing mindful breathing.

The way to maintain your presence in the here and the now is through mindfulness of breath.

There is no need to manipulate the breath.

Breath is a natural thing like air,

Like light.

We should leave it as it is and not interfere with it.

What we are doing is simply lighting the lamp of awareness to illuminate our breathing.

We generate the energy of mindfulness to illuminate everything that is happening in the present moment.

As you breathe in,

You can say to yourself,

Breathing in,

I know that I am breathing in.

When you do this,

The energy of mindfulness embraces your in-breath just like sunlight touching leaves and branches of a tree.

The light of mindfulness is content to just be there and embrace the breath without doing it any violence,

Without intervening directly.

As you breathe out,

You can gently say,

Breathing out,

I know that I am breathing out.

I rejoice in the fact that my breathing is there.

Breathing in,

I know that I am breathing in.

Breathing out,

I know that I am breathing out.

I smile at my out-breath.

This is how you can practice.

You could get a great deal of joy out of it right away.

If you continue for a minute,

You will see that your breathing is already different.

After a minute of practicing breathing mindfully without discrimination,

The quality of your breathing improves,

Becomes calmer,

Longer.

The gentleness and harmony created by your breathing penetrates into your body and into your mental formations.

As you breathe in,

Respect the in-breath.

Light the lamp of mindfulness so that it illuminates your in-breath.

When the in-breath is short,

You take note of the fact that it is short.

That's all.

You don't need to judge.

Just note very simply,

My in-breath is short and I know that it is short.

Do not try to make it longer.

Let it be.

When your breathing is long,

You might simply say,

My breathing in is long.

You respect your breath,

Your physical body,

Your mental formations.

Mindful breathing is a kind of bridge that brings the body and the mind together.

If through mindfulness of the breath you generate harmony,

Depth,

And calm,

These will penetrate into the body and into the mind.

In fact,

Whatever happens in the mind affects the body and vice versa.

If you generate peacefulness in your breathing,

That peacefulness permeates your body and your state of mind.

If you have practiced meditation,

You have already discovered this to some extent.

If you have been able to embrace your in-breath and your out-breath with tenderness,

You know that they in turn embrace your body and your mind.

Peace is contagious like that.

Happiness is also contagious because in the practice of meditation,

These three elements of body and mind and breath become one.

As the body settles and the words settle on the body.

Just bringing your attention towards your breathing.

Wherever it happens to be most vivid for you right now,

It might be at the nostrils,

Just watching the air pass through the nose.

It might be that you gravitate towards the abdomen,

Feeling the belly softly expanding and relaxing.

It might be somewhere else altogether.

Where you feel,

Where you experience,

Where you image your breathing,

Bring your attention there.

As you zoom into this sensation of the body breathing in and breathing out,

Resist the urge to interfere with it so that you are not doing the breathing.

Your body breathes.

You witness and experience being breathed by your body.

With each in-breath,

Recognizing your inhale,

Breathing in with your full attention,

Knowing that your body is breathing in.

With each out-breath,

Giving your full attention to feeling the body breathing out.

Breath is short,

Long,

Easy,

Difficult,

Smooth,

Coarse.

Just let it be.

Your practice is quite literally a practice of letting go of control so that you can observe what is,

The way things actually are right now.

With each out-breath,

Recognizing your inhale,

Breathing in with your full attention,

Knowing that your body is breathing out.

When you notice the body tightening or the mind closing in around particular thoughts,

Just experimenting with letting go so that your role in sitting is not to conduct,

To control,

Or to do,

But to pay attention without judgment.

With each out-breath,

Recognizing your inhale,

Breathing in with your full attention,

Knowing that your body is breathing in.

Noticing your habit energies.

You notice this habit energy allowing yourself to just fall back into the present moment,

Into this awareness of breathing,

Of being breathed.

You notice this habit energy allowing yourself to just fall back into the present moment,

Of being breathed.

Just noticing where the attention is right now.

Letting yourself fall back toward the present moment.

Letting yourself really absorb,

Perhaps even enjoy,

Just the simplicity of this moment of your day.

Just sitting.

Just breathing.

Just paying attention.

In-breath,

Of letting go.

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Reviews

I love the analogy of the “body breathing you” thank you 🙏🏽

One of the best guides mindfulness of breath meditations! Thank you.

Another wonderful meditation and an introduction to habit energy which I have not heard of before but which explains a lot! Thank you

Simple yet so effective. Thank you.

Really enjoyed it. Thank you !!

Very helpful - calming 🙏thank you 🌺

Wonderful, thank you🙏

Wonderful, the language really helped me better embody presence in my breath.

Broken, but on the mend...

#Blackheart #Clearminded #Laserfocus #Mindfulness

That was nice! Calming, perfect attention to breath without forcing it. Thank you.

“being breathed” love it!

Thank you🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻I particularly appreciated the guidance in settling into sitting...

Very helpful in disengaging and dis-identifying from my habitual thinking mind. I will practice this. Thank you.

Wonderful. Thank you. 💖⚙🌻🙏🏼💖

I am grateful for this meditation. It was excellent beginning to end. I love the space to be present with the breath. Namaste

Fabulous!!! Would listen to everyday.

Breathing in...I know I am breathing in...thanks so much for the reminder.

Amazing, thank you!

So simple, yet extremely effective! Loved it.