Back to practical experiential exercises: Little is so primary to human life as the intake of breath to provide oxygen. The earlier breath exercise was to allow focus upon the breath without altering its natural flow. Although that exercise is quite useful to monitor your conscious awareness, and to withdraw awareness from the outside world a bit, other practices involve specific patterns of inhalation and exhalation to aid in the creation of meditative states of awareness.

This simple circular breath is perhaps one of the easiest of these methods.

Sit down and allow thoughts of the day to fade. Observe the breath as it naturally flows for a few moments. Close your eyes.

When ready inhale slowly but comfortably. Make sure that first the abdomen expands, then the chest, then the tips of the shoulder. This full breath fills the entire lung space. Don’t neglect to expand the abdomen first. Reverse this sequence for the exhalation and try to empty the lungs completely by pulling the abdomen in at the end of the exhale.

For this particular breath exercise, count the number of seconds of the inhalation, do not pause, immediately start the exhalation for exactly the same number of seconds as the inhalation. Again, do not pause at the end of exhalation, but start the next inhalation which should also last for the same number of seconds. The breath is similar to a large circle with the inhalation being half, and the exhalation being the other half, with no breath holds at any point. Keep the breath flowing in this cycle for ten to fifteen minutes to start.

How does this practice feel different from the earlier one? Do the results of practice differ?

Find a comfortable number of seconds for the inhalation/exhalation: don’t struggle or strain, and don’t slow the cycle to a point of feeling “air hunger.” It’s a relaxation exercise and a refocusing of awareness, not an endurance test!