Trouble breathing

[Jimbonn]

Hey guys,

I've been meditating daily for about a month now, but I am having a few issues I hope to resolve. First issue has to do with my breathing. When I meditate I sit in a cross-legged position with my back upright on my bed with a pillow supporting my back. In the beginning when I started meditating this posture did not make me uncomfortable. However, now whenever I meditate in this position I feel like my belly is having a hard time focusing on my breathing, almost as if it is tensing up and gives me an uneasy feeling. So what should I do? Should I try meditating in a different position? The strange thing is is that this position only started to feel uncomfortable about a week ago, I was doing fine before. My second question is this: As the days progress I feel like meditating has grown to be more difficult when it should be the exact opposite. Yes, I had and still have some difficulties focusing (as every beginner does) however I was growing into it and began to feel its healing properties. Now I feel like its more difficult for me to concentrate and I feel more frustrated and get put off easily when meditating. Why?

[Riddle]

Which technique of meditation do you practice ?

I used to experience and still experience some trouble breathing too, breathing gets chaotic, uneasy, but if I keep going on, there comes a moment when it gets calm on its own, again after a while the chaotic stage comes, followed by calm stage again, it's like the day follows night and the night follows the day. Let the breathing take it's own course, don't try to control it, and keep going on.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Jimbonn

Hey guys,

I've been meditating daily for about a month now, but I am having a few issues I hope to resolve. First issue has to do with my breathing. When I meditate I sit in a cross-legged position with my back upright on my bed with a pillow supporting my back. In the beginning when I started meditating this posture did not make me uncomfortable. However, now whenever I meditate in this position I feel like my belly is having a hard time focusing on my breathing, almost as if it is tensing up and gives me an uneasy feeling. So what should I do? Should I try meditating in a different position? The strange thing is is that this position only started to feel uncomfortable about a week ago, I was doing fine before. My second question is this: As the days progress I feel like meditating has grown to be more difficult when it should be the exact opposite. Yes, I had and still have some difficulties focusing (as every beginner does) however I was growing into it and began to feel its healing properties. Now I feel like its more difficult for me to concentrate and I feel more frustrated and get put off easily when meditating. Why?

We generally find that when the surface level of thought quiets down, deeper aspects of the psyche come into view, and because the superficial reactive/avoidance tendencies have subsided, the things one has been avoiding start to arise in conscious awareness. The mind often starts to create dilemmas and discomforts in the body so as to revive the old reactive habits, such as erratic breathing becoming frustration as you mention, which prevents conscious awareness from looking any deeper. Knowing this is mind's tendency means it can't get away with it anymore, it's like you 'caught it in the act'. Because you're aware of what it is doing, it'll give up doing it.

[Shivani Devi]

Greetings.

I've also been finding it difficult to breathe deeply lately because my belly tenses up whilst sitting on the floor, closing my eyes and trying to focus on my breath...so I found the perfect way around it.

Light a candle...sit in a comfortable, but straight-backed chair about 2 feet away from the candle and just focus on it.

Now, breathe in through your nose, as much as you can...then, through pursed lips breathe out very slowly...like you are blowing out the candle, but don't blow it out...just purse your lips and breathe out very slowly, emptying your lungs of all the old, stale air. It should take you about 3 times as long to breathe out this way than the inhalation took.

Make sure you empty the lungs totally...then breathe in through your nose again (about 6 seconds)...then back out through your pursed lips, fully emptying your lungs (about 18 seconds) and all the while, focus on the flickering flame of the candle.

If thoughts arise, just let them pass and bring your awareness back to either the candle or your process of breathing this way.

After about 10 rounds of this, my stomach is fully relaxed and I am totally off with the pixies.

Good luck with it.

[Mr Interesting]

Gosh that was great Gem, exactly what I needed to hear! I've been struggling with pain for about six years now, not a great deal and obviously a kind of self imposed riddle, and I'd been reminded, in the other thread, to just come back to plain ol' consciousness and that in itself was a Godsend but then, and after watching another video... taking ages to get through it, there was simply something missing, a slight tweak of the will sitting in observation... then there it is... pain is reminder from the mind to re-establish, to not go forth but to remain.

So, even the mind learns, the mind becomes subtle and the interplays lead ever onwards!

[peteyzen]

I cannot agree enough with Gem`s comments above. The tricks of the mind alter and shape shift as your practice deepens. I have had times when I thought i was almost unable to breathe, but because I knew it was a trick of the mind (just like itches and thoughts and other distractions) I stuck to returning my mind to the breathing each time it got distracted, and moments later, my breathing became so free and so easy and so wonderful, I couldn`t believe id been troubled before. Then I realised that, again, my minds focus had moved away from the breathing and now was revelling in having beaten the mind, but it wasn`t focusing on the breath, so...the mind was distracting me again through internal dialogue, in a nanosecond it had switched, in an attempt to stop itself stilling. Clever and tricky thing the mind!

[FallingLeaves]

personally I get a lot of mileage out of not breathing.