How to get better at Breathing Meditation

Breathing meditation is a great beginners meditation technique. It is also a technique which you can perform while starting a meditation session.

The secret to getting better at anything is practice and understand the essence of that thing! And that’s what we will do here. If you don’t know anything related to breathing meditation, I would suggest you check this article first and know the basics.

so, lets learn "How to get better at Breathing Meditation"

Monkey Mind needs to sit!

Photo by madison lavern on Unsplash

Breathing meditation is really simple, but what makes it interesting is that it is really difficult to master. You just sit and concentrate on your breathing, but suddenly a thought takes you away with it and before you know, you are dreaming about the food that you will eat tonight!

A part and parcel of this meditation technique is also to know how to come back to breathing.

In meditation terms, mind is often referred as a monkey. It can never settle! But it can be trained to jump away less often. Not be roping it to a pole, but by letting it free within a limited area, and gradually decreasing that area.

So, when you find your monkey mind wondering in the jungle of stories, what you do is not to get panicked and try to stop the thoughts and stories. But instead, just try to analyze how the mind went into the story, just try to remember what was the tasty fruit that your monkey mind saw and left its place.

After you know the initiator, just keep that in mind. The next thing to do is to get your mind back to concentrating on the breath. But you need to do it cautiously, not forcing the brain! Just tell your brain that what it was chasing was just a story! And it will come back to concentrating on the breath!

As soon as you will let your mind know the truth, there will be a short moment where your mind will be thoughtless, and you will feel lighter!

But not for long, because you will soon realize that you are not thinking! And guess what, that is a thought in itself!

Choosing Point of Focus

Another important thing to consider while breathing mediation, is choosing the point of focus.

You have to focus on your breath while meditating is what they tell! But where specifically should you focus! This question has bothered me at times to such an extent that I just focus anymore!

If ever this question bothers you, just consider one thing. What do you think first when I tell you to focus on your breath?

It might be many things, for example you might think of your nose and visualize air coming through it and going out. one might feel the stomach expanding and contracting. You might also feel the air going down into your lungs and coming out. these are all visualizations! And there is only one thing wrong with visualizations, that sooner or later, you start to change them.

So what do I mean here when I say ‘changing’ them. I mean you might start to visualize it from a different perspective, and then you would start talking about which perspective is better! You might start a conflict with yourself about should you visualize nose or stomach!

There are infinite things like these that will come to your mind and distract you from concentrating!

So what is the solution?

I have tried so many things, and this is what works. just concentrate on the feeling and put a block curtain on your monkeys’ eye!

See, it is very difficult to stop a visualization, because our mind thinks mostly in terms of visualizations. So I find it easier to think that I am staring at a black curtain or staring in a night sky without any stars, and then after the mind is settled on the image and how it looks, I divert my attention to the “feeling” of breathing!

This is the most important thing here, you need to concentrate on the feeling of meditation. But sooner or later, the visualizations will start again. Repeat the same process, put a black curtain once again and start to feel the breathing!

This is one of the most useful techniques that I have found which allows me to concentrate on breathing for longer periods!

Whenever you meditate in the future and decide to do a breathing meditation, just implement these tricks that I have told you here and see the results for yourself!

But don’t stick to only breathing meditations, I suggest you cycle between types of meditations! Here are the top 5 meditation techniques that have been a part of my schedule since long!

So, here is 'How to get better at Breathing Meditation'

Keep consistant and keep experimenting, (this tips are what have helped me, but meditation is different for each individual, as you have your own monkey, you have your own way to handle it! Experiment with different fruits and check which fruit is liked by your monkey the most! And control him be that fruit!! 😊 )

Don’t forget to subscribe by the mail, share this post with your friends and family and motivate them to meditate! The world would be a lot better with more people in control of their monkeys 😉.

-A Mere Meditator