Massaging the breath - finding and soothing subtle tension

So be comfortable. And that’s something I should always say at the start of these practises, but I don’t always remember. We’re always looking for a way of sitting or laying down or standing up or whatever that really takes pressure off the physical body. We’re trying to. We’re trying to unwind tension and we’re trying to reach a kind of relaxed awareness. And we don’t need to put any additional pressure on the body by pushing through any discomfort. So, particularly this morning, be comfortable. As we enter into meditation, before we even decide to direct attention or awareness here or there, just notice what you’re already noticing, what’s already occupying you — might be some experience in your body, some emotional experience, might be some train of thought. Spend a while just establishing our embodied awareness. So coming into the body, or to put it a different way, noticing that awareness is already present in your body sense and just kind of moving there, bringing that into the foreground. The body sense is not really one sense. It’s made up of many things. Temperature, pressure, the sense of interoception, which is your internal ability to feel your body from the inside as the skin’s contact with what the skin is in contact with. There’s even the sense of the kind of space that your body takes up — proprioception — even the sense of balance, knowing which way is up. All of this and more makes up our body sense. No one actually believes we have five senses anymore. Scientists put the number at something like 20 or 30 or something like that. And most of them are what we would call senses of the body. So most of our sensing apparatus is involved in this embodied awareness. So just exploring this inner world of temperature, of pressure, of tingles, of energy moving, of digestion and respiration, and noticing in this body, in this whole world of experience, many, many sensations that make up our experienced body. In this body, there are parts that feel tighter, denser, more contracted — parts that feel smoother, more open, more relaxed. And these parts are really just sensations. They are sensations. They are regions of this space of experience — sensations that feel more tight, more tense, sensations of pulling and pressure. Maybe you can identify these in the forehead, in the jaw, maybe some other places. There’s other regions of this space that feel more open, kind of feel wider, more spacious. We’re just tuning up our ability to sense subtle tension. In a minute, we’ll be applying this to the breath. But in a way, the body is an easier place to notice this because it has more areas we can look in for this subtle tension, and then this spaciousness and ease elsewhere. So having just tuned up this perception, we can just affirm our intention and our attitude — just really allowing, welcoming, caring for this experience of the body. Tapping into our good intentions for practise and bringing them into reality, bringing them into experience in the way that we meet these sensations, this shifting play of tension and relaxation in the body. So we’ve got this awareness that can find tension, that can root out subtle tension in the body. And we’ve got this attitude — really just allowing everything, allowing the tension, even allowing the resistance to having tension, allowing anything that might come up — doing so out of a sense of care and compassion. So these two ingredients — awareness and attitude — we’re going to take these and apply them to our experience of breathing. We’re actually going to encourage the breath to be a little bit longer and a little bit smoother than it normally is as we bring this deep presence to the breath, following it the whole way, getting really close to the breath and feeling its shifting textures for the whole duration of the inhale, then that inflection point, and the whole duration of the exhale, all the way to the short pause before the next cycle of breathing. If you pay really careful attention, you’ll notice that some parts of this cycle of breathing are easier to be present for than others. Some parts are smoother than others. Often the kind of middle of the inhale and the middle of the exhale is easy to be present for. And then we kind of lose something towards the end. Maybe we meet a little bit of turbulence, we more easily distract. This subtle turbulence is a kind of subtle tension held in the body and breathing. Also notice at the bottom of the exhale, the belly can be kind of holding on, not wanting to let go all the way. There may be some parts of the breath where we feel we need to sort of pull, need to tug the breath to get it over a hump. So we’re tuning in, in this very subtle way, to these different manifestations of tension in the breath. If anything feels too much and it feels like it’s harder to breathe doing this, then feel free to take some sort of deeper breaths and come out of that subtle awareness. It can be quite a lot to stay there. But then head back in and notice these points on the cycle of breathing that are tenser and really wholeheartedly hold these points of tension with this compassionate awareness — rather than trying to get them to go away. They’re too subtle to just consciously relax them. You may be able to consciously relax your shoulders or your jaw. This subtle tension on the breath is often at a deeper level, and it needs a subtler approach. It needs our care and our love and our presence. Very often we find that when we hold the breath in this way and really give this soothing attention to these points of tension, maybe some emotion that’s manifesting in the breath — that we then become aware of — maybe some fear, some anxiety, some sadness, just welcome and allow that as well. If that’s present, we can notice. Or where there are parts of the breath that are harder to stay present with — we notice that we distract. For example, at the end of the inhale or the end of the exhale, we lose connection with the breath. Bring some real curiosity for the next cycle of breathing. Really notice what’s happening there that makes me lose this connection. Is there some discomfort that I don’t want to feel? So can I move there with this real gentleness, willingness to feel whatever tension, whatever discomfort, whatever’s held there? At the beginning, I said something about massaging the breath. That’s kind of what we’re doing. We’re looking for these points of knots or tangles. It’s not such an active massage. It’s more like a gentle caress or a meeting with presence. If we continue to bring this presence, this deep attunement, the breath will become less knotted, less tangled. These points of discomfort will soften. We don’t really need to make them do that. You can bring extra care to the pause at the end of the exhale, letting it really be a full pause, and just noticing your belly, your chest and your throat in this pause, noticing anything that’s held there, anything that sort of doesn’t want to relinquish with the exhale. We just bring care and we bring softness and we bring kind awareness. By practising in this way, we get a lot of insight, a lot of understanding. We get to notice how when we try and bring awareness to the breath and stay there, we notice how these points of tension and discomfort kind of throw us off. And we check out, we distract and then we realise that we’ve become distracted and come back. But this helps us to understand why the distraction happens. It’s not because we’re not trying hard enough. It’s not because we’re not good meditators. These points of subtle tension and discomfort that are more difficult to be present for — this is very valuable to see. And it’s possible that it has an immediate side effect of feeling like the breath is more tense, more contracted. And that’s our cue to allow more, soften the awareness more, soften the attitude more. And as our awareness softens, and as kindness becomes more fully present in the way we’re attending to the breath, the breath itself opens out. And then we can continue with this kind of process. But now we can come to a more spacious awareness of the breath. Rather than being so close to the nitty gritty — which is very useful to understand these blockages and knots and tangles — come to a full body awareness and receive the breath as this whole body rising and falling. We can enjoy the relative ease of the breath. After going through this process of holding the subtle tension with care, with compassion, maybe the breath feels slightly more smooth and open, pleasant. We can begin to appreciate whatever sense of ease there is in the breath. So generally in meditation, whatever feels good, we appreciate and enjoy. Whatever feels difficult, we allow and welcome. For the last few minutes, we can stay with this breath in the whole body. Anytime we feel moved to zoom in to a part of the cycle of breathing, care for any tension that we’re holding, we can do that and then open back out and enjoy the sense of spaciousness.