Here & Now: Being Breathed
Here & Now posts focus on new, modified, or experimental elements of my practice
Photo by David W. Levin; Hue, Vietnam, 2025
Focusing on one’s breath is core guidance of many schools of mindfulness/meditation, including the Plum Village tradition to which I joyfully belong.
I’ve often struggled with this instruction and have generally preferred using the mantra-based approach I first learned via Transcendental Meditation (TM) 10 years ago. I think this is true for two reasons:
The rigidly-, uniformly-trained TM instructors are resolute in their belief that following one’s breath is not an effective way to meditate. TM’s approach is to use a mantra — ie, a multisyllabic word that’s not really a word but a sound repeated silently in the mind — as an anchor or touchstone for the mind to return to in order to achieve a transcendent state of being. Accompanying their positive advocacy of mantra is a persistent criticism of breath-based meditation. Admittedly, their bias made an early impression on me, many years prior to discovering Plum Village and other traditions/teachers advocating for following one’s breath.
It is undeniable that my most pleasant, other-worldly, truly “transcendent” experiences in meditation have come when focusing on my mantra allowed my breath to completely vanish. I don’t mean my breath slightly slowed down or just got a bit quieter. I mean it virtually/effectively disappeared. For real. In my best TM-based meditations, when feeling a physical state of bliss throughout my body, I can — for a just a moment— take my mind’s attention off the mantra and notice that my breath has gone away almost entirely, so much so that I honestly can’t explain how I’m still alive. Of course, should my attention remain on the absence of breath more than a second or two, the breathing returns to normal. I lose it. But those moments, with vanishing breath and feelings of bliss, are key motivators for my daily meditation.
So if the TM technique is so positive for me, why bother trying to adopt breath-based meditation? Similarly, two brief reasons: 1) my most important spiritual teachers, notably Thich Nhat Hanh and others, are firm advocates of following the breath and their opinions/experiences carry a lot of weight, and 2) no meditation technique works perfectly in all times and circumstances. TM has a lot going for it, but for me, it has been particularly ineffective during times of acute stress and/or when I desire a meditative technique to, say, help me fall back to sleep in the middle of the night. For these reasons and more, I’ve long desired to have familiarity and fluency with breath-based meditation.
I finally figured out a way to do it.
“Are you breathing or are you being breathed?”
For the longest time, my biggest stumbling block with breath-based meditation was how difficult it was to keep my mind focused solely on my in-breath and out-breath. Yes, this is a very common challenge, but it felt as though I had a unique deficiency, trained as I was to have my mind focus on a mantra. I sometimes describe the mantra as “chewing gum” for the mind — something to keep it occupied and happy so it can ignore the rest of the body achieving transcendence. For one reason or another, breath alone wasn’t sufficient chewing gum. My mind bucked, raced, and tore through my breath-based sitting meditations like the veritable bull in a china shop. That had never happened before, even during my “worst/least enjoyable” TM meditations. It took me quite a while to realize that some kind of intellectual concept or framing would be a useful tool for me. Though not perfectly expressed, it was as if I needed to give my mind an “excused absence” letter. A permission slip. A reason to be OK with my focusing purely on my breath for a while. And that’s what the following teaching gave to me.
Many superb teachings of the dharma, as a way to convey the natural intelligence of the body and how the body always exists in the present moment, will posit some form of the empowering question, “Are you breathing right now or are you being breathed?” So much depth in this one question. Are you your body? Are your “unconscious” bodily functions somehow still under your control? Does ‘free will’ exist or is it just an illusion? What is your breath if not moment-by-moment evidence of the gift of your existence?
This prompt — especially the words “being breathed” — has tremendous sticking power in my mind. Wonderfully so. This became the needed key to unlock the door of breath-based meditation.
First, the very notion of “being breathed” requires a shift in perspective that the “I” I think I am may not be entirely running the full show. Perhaps the force/awareness/spirit/consciousness that operates our cells, that causes seeds to sprout and newborn animals to swim or take their first steps within hours — the power behind every autonomic or instinctive capability we experience in the universe — is the same power that is actually breathing us as individuals.
Next, an implication. If I am indeed being breathed, can I experience that consciously? Can my unconscious breathing can be experienced consciously?
This, dear friends, is how I’m able to focus on my breath during meditation. Once I establish my comfortable posture and get settled, I allow my mind to “chew” on the notion of being breathed. How it is happening. How it is flowing. Who or what is breathing me? What an exchange — what a gift — this is. The centerpiece of my technique is this: when my body inhales, I imagine myself as that which exhales into me. When my body exhales, I imagine myself as that which is inhaling the same breath. I know, sounds odd. But this is what my ruminations on “being breathed” led to — allowing my mind to ponder the other side of the breathing exchange. Experiencing non-dualism in a most quiet, subtle, personal way.
I allow my mind to consider these themes as I follow my breath. And thus far, it has worked extremely well — “worked” in the sense that I’ve been able to feel the benefits of meditation without use of a mantra. I’ve been able to quiet the mind, even and especially during moments of acute stress. I’ve been able to settle my body and lower stress in the middle of the night. Of course, as I’m wont to repeat often: nothing works perfectly 100% of the time. I still have meditations that feel far from ideal. But the ability to now engage in breath-based meditation has opened a new door in my daily practice, one for which I’m quite grateful.
The practice (as I do it)
Adopt a comfortable position. Sit on a chair or cushion. Upright. Comfortable. No music or purposeful soundtrack.
Allow yourself to settle. Give yourself a minute or two to just settle into your position, aware of your aspiration to meditate and give yourself this gift.
Begin to focus on your breath. Allow yourself a few inhales and exhales just focusing on the mechanics of the breathing without any conceptual notions laid on top of it.
Gently allow your mind to ponder the what/how of “being breathed.” Go there. Softly adopt a mindset that you are not actually breathing, but are being breathed. By the universe. By God. By the mystery. By consciousness beyond conceptual understanding. (By whatever concept and words are most comfortable to you.)
When you inhale, imagine you are on the other “side” of the exchange, breathing out into your body. Adopt the perspective that you are the air coming into your body. You are the source of that air. Put as simply as possible: as your actual body is breathing in, allow your mind to adopt the perspective of that which is pushing air into you. Your body is pulling, your mind is pushing.
When you exhale, imagine you are on the other “side” of the exchange, breathing in and removing air from your body. Ditto above, but in reverse: as your actual body is breathing out, allow your mind to adopt the perspective of that which is pulling air out of you. Your body is pushing, your mind is pulling.
After 20 minutes, allow your mind to release. And allow your body to relax fully. Your breathing can resume its normal operation. Your mind can slowly come back to its “normal”/routine state. Grant yourself at least 3-5 minutes of this transitional space before getting up and resume activity.
I hope you find this helpful.