How To Count Breaths - Without Losing Mindfulness

This talk discusses how to effectively use the techniques of ‘counting’ and ‘labeling’ to increase mindfulness. It highlights how those techniques can inadvertently be the cause of a drop in mindfulness as the practitioner focuses on them too much. You will learn how to correctly employ these techniques and boost your mindfulness practice.

Transcript

I recently received a question about how to balance breathing with mindfulness.

So basically the question goes,

Today I noticed that I was getting so much involved in the process of counting my breaths and labeling my thoughts that I was forgetting to remain present in the moment.

I've felt this several times,

But I'm getting better at bringing my attention back to the present moment and to my breath.

And that highlighted an issue that I've faced in the past with my mindfulness meditation.

Just as a little backstory here,

A little sort of technique fill in,

One of the ways that you can stay mindful is to draw your attention back to your anchor.

And in this case,

It is the breath.

And the way you can do that repeatedly is to count the breaths.

So you close your eyes,

Focus your attention on the breath,

Entering and leaving the nose,

And count.

You might count each breath one to ten,

And you'll start again.

Or you'll just count in and out.

And the idea is that you just count to ten or count in and out,

And then start again so that you're not getting sort of bogged down in how high you're counting.

Our goal is just to return our focus back to the breath.

And then after you've counted for a while,

You'll realize that you're super focused,

And then you can let go of the counting technique.

So you find yourself meditating,

Your mind starts wandering,

And you decide to employ the technique of counting.

The other technique that this question is being asked,

Or asking,

Sorry,

Is labeling.

And once again,

Your mind is wandering,

You're meditating.

And you simply start labeling your thoughts.

A thought pops up.

You say thoughts,

You say moods,

You say emotions or memories,

Feelings,

Physical sensations,

Sounds.

And then eventually your mind will come,

And you return your focus back to the breath.

And if you find that your mind isn't calming,

That there's this sort of overwhelming onslaught of thoughts,

You can label that as a cloud,

As in a cloud of thoughts,

A cloud of stimulus.

These two techniques can be employed to help you to return your focus back to the breath to keep meditating.

But here comes the problem.

There's a risk that counting the breath and labeling the techniques will become the activity itself,

And that you'll get so caught up in that activity that you lose mindfulness.

So how do you balance it?

It's like when you're focusing on your breath,

You start automatically controlling the breath,

Rather than simply observing it.

And I think there's a few answers here.

The first one is just to continue practicing.

Notice that you're getting caught up with it.

That noticing of the catching up is an act of mindfulness.

So just keep going.

Try labeling or counting the breaths for a certain duration,

And then letting go of the practice.

You'll be counting or labeling for a couple of minutes.

Your mind calms,

And then you just let go of that practice.

Perhaps you bring it back in the session,

Perhaps you don't.

But you're not trying to do it for the entirety of the session.

Ultimately everything we're doing here,

Even the act of noticing the breath itself,

Is a practice to be eventually discarded.

Our ultimate goal,

If you can say that there's a goal,

Is to be mindful.

And that's not using an observation of the breath.

That's just observing reality as it is for what it is when it arises,

Or as it's arising.

There's an analogy that some of the old meditation books bring in,

And the idea is that,

You know the instructions that we're doing here,

These techniques are a finger pointing to the moon.

They're not the moon,

But they're the way to get to it.

And breaching that gap between the finger and the moon can only be taken by you.

The other analogy is the idea that maya,

Or deception,

Or non-mindful states are like a splinter in your hand,

Or in your thumb.

Now to remove a splinter,

You might get another splinter.

You get a needle,

And you dig the splinter out.

But now you're holding two splinters,

So eventually you have to let go of both.

I.

E.

You use the techniques of labelling and of counting to get you back to focus.

Then you drop those techniques.

You're focusing on the breath.

That's the meditation practice.

But then eventually,

You drop that practice and just sit in mindfulness.

So I hope that's clarified some of your question.

I suppose what I'd like to address before we close is the controlling of the breath.

A lot of the instructions,

If your anger is the breath,

Says just to observe the breath mindfully.

Don't control it.

Just see it coming and going.

But the moment you place your attention onto the breath,

There's a risk of it getting controlled.

You start observing it,

Then you start controlling it.

So if that happens,

You can do a couple of things.

Number one,

Just observe how you're controlling it.

Observe that the moment you start observing the breath,

A bit of control takes over.

Then sit with it,

And over time,

Sit with it.

Over time,

Sit with it.

And you'll see that you eventually give up that control.

And number two,

If it is a big problem,

And it's distressing you,

It's causing you to not practice or just to try anyway,

Potentially change your meditation object.

Change to sounds in the environment or sensations of your feet or any other object,

Something that you're visually seeing.

And that way you can't control it.

You can't control the sounds.

They come and they go.

The breath is used because it's always with us.

It's always there.

It's ever-present.

But it doesn't have to be the meditation object.

My meditation object of choice is just an object of practice.

It's like going to the gym.

You might exercise consistently using one piece of equipment,

But it doesn't mean that you can't exercise on different equipment.

So try a different meditation object and just observe how your observations impact the flow of the breath.

So if you have any questions for me,

Please do reach out.

You can find me on social media at Zach P.

Phillips through my Insight Timer profile or via my website,

Zachary-philips.

Com.

And from those places,

You can ask me a question.

I'll either answer you directly or I will make a post like this one that sort of goes in depth.

I suppose the other places you could do will be as a question in one of my courses as well as a response to or a review of this talk or any of my talks.

Just ask the question.

I'll get to it.

Anyway,

Thanks for listening.

Good luck with your practice and give it a try.

I hope you have a great day.