Welcome Back to Your 7-Day Meditation Kickstart
Day 4
Review the previous day
How not to breathe in meditation
Misconception Buster
Today, we're going to bust the misconception about the breath in meditation. When it comes to the stereotypical idea of meditation, there’s usually a lot of attention placed on deep breathing. You'll even hear people taking deep breaths in and out in meditation circles (or maybe you're the one breathing deeply!). Sometimes, the meditation teachers will instruct you to control your breath in certain ways. But the reality is you do not need to control your breathing whatsoever in order to have an effective meditation.
Wait, I’m not supposed to breathe like Darth Vader??
Look, it's not that deep breathing is un-meditative. There are entire meditation practices based solely on manipulating and controlling the breath in very specific ways. And everybody knows that deep breathing can have a calming effect.
But going back to our definition of meditation, we described it as:
“A comfortable, seated, and consistent eyes-closed practice of experiencing present moment awareness and, when possible, quieting the mind."
If we're having to think about controlling our breathing during the experience, we wouldn't be meditating in accordance with our definition, because breath management makes the experience somewhat unnatural, and therefore more complicated than necessary. This means we sacrifice comfort—which inevitably takes us out of the zone we ideally want to be in for this approach.
Breathe like you're Netflix and Chilling instead…
Instead of controlling your breath, just breathe normally and allow yourself to fully engage in the moment, with the same effortlessness of watching Netflix. You would ideally want to be fully drawn into your Netflix show, right? You don’t want to be trying to watch your show while simultaneously remembering to deepen something that you were already doing naturally—which was breathing.
Noticing the breath is okay
To the breath fanatics out there, if you just have to do something with your breath while meditating, try simply noticing your breath—but know that noticing your breath is not the same as focusing on your breath. Focusing takes your mind out of that flow state we discussed yesterday—whereas lightly noticing your breath allows your mind to get lost back into the flow state.
In other words, don’t do this:
To use the breath to settle the mind, all you do is lightly notice that you're breathing naturally. This is the meditation equivalent of counting sheep while attempting to sleep at night. Let the quality of noticing your breath feel more like an afterthought than a fixed point of focus. When you notice that you're thinking something unrelated, just begin to notice your breathing again (but remember, take the “Homer Simpson“ lazy approach to noticing your breathing—no need to be alarmed about anything).
Today's Practice:
Reduce breath control from “focus” to simply "noticing" the breath
In today's 10-minute meditation, you're going to continue practicing being mentally lazy and, in addition to that, whenever you are cognizant of the fact that you're meditating, you'll just begin noticing your breath. This will ideally allow you to slip back into the meditative state (present moment awareness)—that’s where you may find yourself thinking unrelated thoughts or you may feel like you‘re falling asleep (we'll address this later). Those are both positive signs that your meditation is working beautifully.
Instructions
Sit comfortably
Set a your alarm to chime at 10 minutes
Lightly notice your breathing
Let go of any need to control your mind or experience
When the soft chime sounds, you're done.
Conclusion
In a typical meditation, you may only be aware of your breathing for 2 minutes out of the 10. So if that's what you experienced, you were right on track. Tomorrow, we'll discuss an often overlooked pitfall to avoid in meditation, particularly if you aren't having the above experience.
Be Accountable
Post an image that shows where you've been meditating, or your favorite meditation spot so far, and make sure to tag #lightsmeditationkickstart so we can all cheer you on!
