Breath Infusion Secrets

Meditationtime Forum Post

Date:  Posted 4 years before Jun 11, 2018

MiBeloved 4 years ago

Many meditators are into watching and/or counting breaths or counting the relative duration between inhale-pause-exhale-pause. People make a big deal out of this. In the Americanized system of vipassana Buddhist meditation, this breath observation is a big deal.

I want to give those who are doing breath infusion using rapid breathing, some hints about how to go about keeping track of breath.

First of all do not keep track of breath during meditation. During meditation keep track only of the components in the psyche, the psychic adjuncts. Do not be involved in the breath. Let it be on its regular automatic operation. In other words, or to put it plainly, forget about breath. Let it take care of itself.

However this is because you should pay attention to it before meditation, when you are doing breath infusion. There is a time for paying attention to breathe in the system which I teach, and it is not while meditating. It is during the breath infusion practice.

Here is a list of the way a student should keep track of breath, in the order of advancement proficiency:

·       Track the outbreath by pushing it out with as much force as you can muster and with a rate of as much as you can muster in the specific asana posture you are in.

·       When you feel that the system is almost filled with air, then as the breathing takes place rapidly and automatically, keep track of the compression of the air and the distribution of it into the hard-to-reach somewhat inaccessible places in the psyche. Mentally help the infused energy to go to those places.

·       At this point when you feel that the system is filled with air and will take no more of it, switch focus the in-breaths. Kapala bhati means focus on the out-breaths. Thus this new recommendation for in-breath focus is the reverse kapala bhati, where, as the breathing takes place, the student pulls hard on the in-breaths and lets the out-breaths take place automatically. This is different to what is stressed for a beginner. A beginner should stick to focusing on the outbreaths for at least three years or more of daily practice because he or she will gain very little, if any, from focusing on the in-breaths. In the advanced stage however there is benefit from this reverse kapala bhati practice. Some student should try to do bhastrika pranayama which is the full pranayama but those who do so should notice that their breathing rate may slow down and the compression aspect may be reduced which means that they should abandon bhastrika (dual in/out breath focus) and stick with kapala bhati (out-breath focus only) which will give them the maximum desired infusion

chris_hall1951 4 years ago

Thanks’ Michael for the furtherance of the information on the significance of the inward and outward breath relative to the different levels of the practice.

Beginners should do it one way, the more advanced another.