Stop Returning To Your Breath When You Meditate

Stop returning to your breath when you meditate. 

Even though this is one of the most common instructions in meditation, it is often more damaging than helpful. 

Why? Because instead of flowing through your meditation, you focus on controlling and micromanaging the inner flow of your energy. 

This is not efficient. And arrogant. 

Arrogant because you assume that laser focusing on one aspect of your meditation, the one YOU chose, is better than going to where the natural healing abilities of your body and Soul take you. 

It is not efficient because you are essential policing your inner world, introducing a sense of artificial strain 

You also are in danger of feeling like a constant failure and might quit meditating altogether. 

Brains wander because this is how our nervous system:

- releases tension

- builds new synapses

- destroys the connections that it doesn't need

Your brain is working hard on decluttering and sorting, and will jump on any opportunity to do so. 

Besides sleep, meditation is the only time you are not actively trying to achieve something. That's the only time your brain can take care of itself instead of following your instructions on what to do. 

Do yourself a favor and leave your brain alone. Get your hands off the driving wheel.

When you sit down to breathe, and in about 3-4 seconds, your brain starts wandering, that's a success, not a failure. 

When this happens, let your attention EXPAND and include both your breath and your wandering thoughts in the energetic field of your meditation. 

Let your thoughts get bigger or smaller, faster or slower. Let them fade in the background altogether. 

Let the natural flow of your breath permeate the electricity of your thoughts, and add a sense of softness and tranquility into your experience. 

The point of meditation is NOT to get rid of thoughts. It is to ensure you can be at peace while being yourself. 

By dragging your attention to your breath every time you notice your mind going on a journey, you are denying yourself the opportunity to be at ease. 

Your thoughts don't matter. 

You losing focus on your breath doesn't matter. 

It will happen, and that's expected, healthy and beautiful. 

You want to lose focus on your breath and drift away into a deeper state of relaxation, where you can no longer tell the difference between your breath, your thoughts, or the vastness of the Universe. 

The gift of meditation is stepping away from what you think you know and dissolving into Benevolence so it can heal and refresh you.

We get to the space of tranquility not through monitoring our breath but through full acceptance of our experience and gentleness towards ourselves no matter what. 

What's important is practicing ease, not effort. 

Surrendering, not micromanaging. 

Once my meditation clients get that, the rest of their meditation flows like an ocean breeze, unrestricted and free.