The healing begins with making that vital connection between body and mind. Most often the emotional strain is felt in the different parts of the body, particularly guts, heart, and other internal organs, muscles, and skin.

So, we must begin by taking stock of the body through slow, gradual, and caring awareness. This sweeping body through awareness is important. The healing, therefore, starts with body and that to keep the body in a steady position. The steady position of the body can be retained best in sitting position. In the Zen Buddhist tradition “Just Sitting” itself is a complete path to healing.

Can we sit and keep our body relax?

We know by our experiences even to sit and just sit is difficult for many of us. WE cannot heal our body if we cannot sit and unless we sit we cannot relax our body.

How to sit

We can sit in any comfortable situation. But there are some principles which must be kept in mind.

Spine:

Our Spine is our main support in sustaining our body and its vital function. When we sit, the spine should take its natural shape and we can understand that it keeps our body supported. We need to keep it naturally straight. It cannot be bent/slumped or overstrained/bowed. When we keep the spine in a natural position, naturally we become more aware. The quality of awareness increases.

Awareness of here and now:

We begin with the awareness that we are sitting. Our legs are folded, our Spine naturally straight. Our skin is soft and delicate skins (like palms and soles) are relaxed.

When we are thus seated, we can begin to sweep our body through awareness so that our body is relaxed.

We begin with our spine, scan our back and chest. The principle is to feel that the spine is a support pillar and the rest of the body is soft, very soft, and we can relax in the suppleness of the body. So we begin scanning our body outwardly, all the way down to our muscles and we begin to relax our internal bodily organs starting from feeling the rise and fall of our abdomen to the brain through vital organs like heart, lung, liver, throat.

The more slowly and caringly we scan our body we begin to relax our body. We begin to experience deep relaxation. This relaxed body has a quality of making our breath natural and as we begin to become aware of natural breathing, the mind begins to calm down.

The relaxed body can make our breath feel natural and our mind calming down. Our bodies are affected by the afflictive emotions is a great insight of neurobiology. Buddha taught us to establish our awareness in the body. In traditional Buddhist terminologies, it is called Kayanupassana. Here the word KAYA has a connotation of aggregates which includes organs of the body, the various fluids of the body, and bodily process. It is said that when our body is relaxed our vital organs become more relaxed and expend less energies. The Buddha gives a detailed list of bodily organs.

Our respiratory system and natural breathing

Our respiratory sustains helps us to pump oxygen and pump out carbon dioxide. The inhalation and exhalation are going on all the time. When we feel a threat, our respiration becomes fast and when we feed safe our respiration becomes normal. We have been operating in flight/ fight mode for such a long time in our evolutionary history that such threats to our lives alerts the parts of our nervous system which are primitive in nature and overtake our bodies. Some fears and traumas can have paralysing effect on our bodies.

As a part of the bodily process, the Buddha chose cultivation of awareness based on ” breathing”.

How to establish awareness of breathing

Most of the time, we are not aware that we are breathing. And when we are training to cultivate awareness of breathing, our mind is so cluttered/ confused or full of sloth that we cannot keep track of breathing. It is also difficult to notice the breathing as breathing is always in the present, while our mind tends to brood over memories( past) or future(planning). In the healing process, it is important to be in the present: aware of breath, mind, and body in the present moment. This can help us to deal with the memories of the past as the” memories” of the past and they might loosen their hold on our present.

Now that we know that keeping awareness of breathing is not easy in the beginning, the Buddhist used various devices to” track” the breathing.

Some devices to “track” breathing

1. Counting

Counting the breath is an important device. This is traditionally called ” Ganana” in Indic languages and it has been referred by great masters like Zhiyi. Buddhaghosha refers it in vissuddhimarga. It is also found in very old texts.

Even the device of counting is designed in different ways. Some master recommends forward counting…

breath in; breath out- count 1
breath in; breath out- count 2
:
… count 10

Then they recommened repetition of this cycle of 10 for sometime.

There is another way of doing this counting as well.

Count 1: breath in; breath out
Count 2: breath in; breath out
.
.
Count10: breath in; breath out

Then they recommened repitition of this cycle of 10 for sometime.

Reverse Counting the breath

This is also a very useful device to became aware of breathing by reverse counting.

The breath is counted from 10 to 1 and this counting can be varied from 30 to 1 and 100 to 1.

2. Using verbal devices

In the first case, we used numerical devices. We can also use verbal devices. We can voice silently” incoming breath” and “outgoing breath” and” short breath” and “long breath”.

Some teachers have also recommended using word Buddho as the device to become aware of our breathing.

It is to be noted at this stage that the purpose of these devices is to become mindful of breathing: knowing breathing as it is.

Now we are going to look at the second door, as Zhiyi described it or we can call it a device. This technique is called following the breathing.

Following the breathing

This device in Indian languages is termed as anugaman, which means, following the breath. The incoming and outgoing breath is noticed naturally. The breathing is followed when it enters our nose to the rising and falling of the abdomen. The different aspects of breathing are mindfully noted. Incoming breath as incoming, outgoing as outgoing. Short breath as short, long as long. Hot or cold. Subtle or gross. All the varieties of breathing as noted. The turns of breath are noted and the points throughout the body where the contact with the breath is felt are noted.

At the same time, how different varieties of breath affect our mind is also noted. Buddhadasa recommends training the breath so that we can master the breathing and can vary it. Ajhan Lee Dhammadharo describes it as” keeping the breath in mind”.

The following breath leads to calming of the mind and the relaxation of body. Ultimately a neuro-body- breath feedback is activated. As the mind becomes more relaxed a minor samatha can be experienced and directing the mind to emerge mental states even minor vipassana can be experienced.

Author – Mangesh Dahiwale, Human Rights Activist