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Originally Posted by Gem
My approach to breath is to start by sitting and feel my breathing at the nose. Many say feel the belly rise/fall, or just feel the breath in general, but there are reasons I don't go for that myself.
I feel small as space as possible because the subtle sensation is very small and fast changing. If we feel a large area like belly rising/falling, we feel a generalised sensation over a large space, but that more general sensation is made of millions of smaller, subtler sensations.
To feel the more general sensation is very easy, but feeling the subtle parts that make it up actually requires focus.
If the object is gross and easy to feel then it doesn't require any concentrated focus to feel it. The meditator is only trying to hold the mind still on a gross level of perception. It has a calming effect, but it's not going to bring awareness through to the subtlest levels of body.
In my practice I sit, and I feel the general area of nostrils and upper lip. When I feel air blowing anywhere in that area, I watch that (it's not so easy to feel). I focus on the air blowing feeling and discover it is made of smaller dynamic parts, so I watch a smaller, subtler part of it - as the mind calms and focuses in some more, if something even more subtle is noticed, then I observe that subtler movement of air.
In this way we do keep attention on an object, but in addition to that, we train the mind to become really sensitive and sharply perceptive to the subtler levels of sensation.
This translates to body awareness later on, because body awareness, like breath awareness, is not just being able to feel the body at a gross hard solid level. It's bringing awareness deep into the subtle body.
Of course, breath awareness and body awareness is a 'physical meditition', and it isn't directly attempting to produce a spacious mind, but the calm concentration of focus needed to feel out the subtlest feeling possible results in a 'meditative mind'. It's just our purpose is to feel for the lightest touch of the air as we can, and this simply requires the mind to quieten down. Hence we don't try to quieten the mind or produce any state, we only try to feel the softest touch that we can.
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