Shared by Stefan
I wanted to share with the community some aspects and observations of my journey in Zazen meditation over the past year or so. A major challenge for me has been managing posture: while I could occasionally feel what seemed right, my mind and my body were apparently not on the same page most of the time since I have had poor posture and resulting pains for most of my life. While working to mitigate this, some experts in biomechanics emphasized that proper breathing is a prerequisite for proper posture, especially breathing out ‘completely’ while being fully relaxed, in order to activate some essential muscle groups.
When we think about breathing, we usually think “in, out, repeat”, and when we are in situations that require to take a deep breath, the first thing seems to be to take a big breath in. And the English language suggests that in/out are just reversals of airflow, while in fact breathing in and breathing out carry very different qualities. Breathing in is very active, breathing out very naturally just letting go. Yang-Yin.
I have struggled a lot with starting meditation by breathing in and trying to calm myself down while breathing in. When I follow my inbreath and observe what it wants to do to me: “yay!, energy, new ideas, activate”. It doesn’t necessarily calm me down. The nature of this is quite well captured by the French word for inbreath: inspiration, generation of life. But clearly this needs to be balanced in meditation and in life.
For myself, the essence of ‘taking a deep breath’ is taking a very deep breath out to clear the mind and relax the body, as a starting point before anything else. Thank you!
Hakone Zendo 