Meditation in Stillness, Meditation in Movement - Breathing

By Stephen Cheney

Previous Chapter: Stillness

BREATHING

Breathing and Meditation are so intertwined as to be inseparable. The study of one leads to the study of the other.

The total surface area within the many crevasses in your lungs is about 50 times the surface area of your skin. So, the inside of your body, of your lung caves, is far more exposed to the outside air (though not sun radiation) than your body surface. You are an Inside-out creature as it were. In an adult the total lung surface area, if flattened out into a sheet, would make a square sheet of about 100 metres on each side.

We are giant creatures, just all folded up like a paper origami creation.

When at rest, an adult breathes in, with each breath, about 500 ml of air, so about half a litre (a ‘ml’ is a millilitre). At rest, the body’s cells require at least 250 ml of oxygenated air. For a coordinated transport of oxygen in from air to blood stream and the waste gas Carbon Dioxide out from blood stream to air, the body’s two pumps, the lungs and the heart are in synergy. When you breathe slowly the blood flow also slows as thus does the body’s metabolic rate.

The shapes of the lungs that have evolved for air to fill are as two balloons, both large at the bottom and thin at the top. Their presence helps to keep the heart in place: if a lung collapses then the heart can be strained and a heart attack result. Normal daily breathing with the upper chest empties and refills the top of the lungs, leaving the larger lower regions unreplenished and thus going stale.

A baby, if you watch it, breathes by raising and lowering its abdomen, so it uses its diaphragm more. This is called abdominal breathing, where the lungs are being more fully used. Maximising oxygen intake and carbon dioxide removal and thus body efficiency. Most oxygen is taken in at the base of the lungs where the diaphragm is, thus the importance of deliberately moving your diaphragm to pump the lungs in proper breathing.

When sitting or standing an upright posture is important for correct breathing. Slumping compresses the chest and enables only use of the upper lungs for breathing, a self constriction. So, your head should be held upright and breathing in through your nose (so no tightening of the throat) allows the full use of your diaphragm and the maximum expansion of your lower rib cage.

Breathing Exercise

• Sit quietly and put your palms, one on each thigh. 
• Then deliberately breathe by expanding and contracting in turn your abdomen. 
• When deliberately drawing in your abdomen try to pull it all the way back to your spine. 
• When deliberately pushing out your abdomen try to expand it like a balloon. 
• Breathe slowly, in through the nose and out through the mouth, clearing all the stale air out of your lungs and replacing it with fresh air. Try not to use your upper chest in this. 
• Soften your hand grip on your thighs and drop your elbows to relax your arms. You do not need much of this deep breathing to clear your lungs.

All the principles of heaven and earth are living inside you. Life itself is truth, and this will never change. Everything in heaven and earth breathes. Breath is the thread that ties creation together. — Grandmaster Morihei Ueshiba

Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment. — Nhat Hanh

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor. — Nhat Hanh

Regulate the breathing, and thereby control the mind. — B.K.S. Iyengar

There are many different sitting meditation exercises.

Stillness Meditative Exercise

1. Light a candle and in a quiet room comfortably sit down facing it. Looking horizontally at the candle, hold its picture in your mind.

2. To relax, raise your shoulders up to your ears, and then move them backward, and then smoothly drop your shoulders onto your torso. This provides correct deportment and balance with your bone structure holding up your upper body weight and not overly using your muscles to do that.

3. Your open palms should be uppermost, one on top of the other, resting in your lap, the weight of your relaxed arms pressing down on them.

4. The candle light is too bright for our purpose, so rapidly blink your eyelids a number of times and then close your eyes by gently lowering your lids to softly rest on the lower lids. Eyes open receive external inputs; eyes closed send internal outputs.

5. Seeing the candle light in your mind now float the candle mentally upward to say 45 degrees from the horizontal so you are receiving and projecting through what is termed your ‘Third Eye’. Look not to the Third Eye but through the Third Eye; it is a doorway to the stars; a window. You are mentally ‘seeing’ outward through your Third Eye, but your source of looking is from your One Point, your mass centre in the centre of your lower abdomen, Dan Tian (or Tan Tien) in Chinese. The centre of your mass is the centre of your matter’s distortion of Space-Time, though extremely small an impression as it may be: it is still there.

6. There are many forms of breathing, but here just breathe in and out slowly. Do not breathe using your upper chest or deliberate rib cage expansion, instead focus on your body centre and your abdomen expanding outward to draw air inward, not forcefully sucking air in, and bringing your abdomen inward to expel the air. For every breath take five seconds drawing in and five seconds breathing out. Pay attention to the rhythm you are weaving.

The brain uses different frequencies of waves to network different kinds of information. The above process and rhythm should open your mind into radiating energy in the form of networking that we need. Mental Alpha waves of frequency about 8 to 12 Hz are emitted as also are Theta waves of frequency about 4 to 7 Hz.

7. In your mind send your focus not just to the floated candle point but through and beyond it on a journey. It is important to not just stop at a point. The focus being a continual flowing into the Beyond without stopping. A sort of rushing through a tunnel without walls. A photon sailing through the Universe.

A silver thread expanding through body and mind into other reaches. It is a mental movement without body movement, similar to dreaming but being awake and your sense of hearing is not disengaged. When you wish to return to the normal awareness, just stop your sailing outward and drop your focus from your Third Eye to normal frontal and open your eyes. Blink.

Similar types of mental travelling might be called ‘Astral Travelling’ with its Thibetan mystical connotations, but words are only labels and experience is all.

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. — Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)

Imagine that during inhalation a silver thread is drawn in through the nostrils, down the spinal column to the lower abdomen. Simple breathing techniques are a central part of Zen practice, another key to controlling your emotions. — Chuck Norris, martial arts champion and teacher.

Next Chapter: Movement

(Image: Breathe[Ed] via Google Images)

[The views expressed in this publication are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Dissecting Society™ . © 2007-2019 Author(s) ALL RIGHTS RESERVED]