Q2-19890301-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-anapanasati_full_awareness_of_breath_series_tape_6-33809 Leandra Tej

Talk: 19890301-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-anapanasati_full_awareness_of_breath_series_tape_6-33809 Leandra Tejedor Start_time: 00:03:10 Display_question: I would like to share about my experience practicing with the breath, during stressful times, and while listening to the symphony. Keyword_search: stress, awareness, calmness, breath, body, mind, symphony, anapana, contemplate, life, attention, health, energy, Indian yogas, Buddhist pranayama, alcohol, conditions, Kayanupassana Question_content: Questioner: I wasn't here last week, so I hadn't done the detailed work that you were describing. But from the instructions from the week before, I found it to be extraordinary. For the very first time in my practice, I find the kind of inner gyroscope, that I've been looking for, in the middle of just unbelievable stress, in the last couple of weeks. Pressure, no panic, and no…a kind of calmness, and awareness, that isn't normal for me, in daily life. The practice is starting to finally spill over a little bit into times when I lose it. The other…on another… Larry: Could I stay with that for that for a moment? What I need to know is, that's the general direction that the practice goes in, no matter what the technique. Was the breath of any help in accomplishing this. Questioner: Yes, that’s the reason. Larry: I see. Okay. Questioner: And it wasn't just a breath. It was a whole breath. I can feel a sensitivity to the whole body. And I've never actually done it that way before, and it just has made all the difference. No other technique ever “worked”. It's just amazing. It was almost instant, that it had that effect. Larry: It can, and in this third contemplation, we'll be in an explicit way, deepening exactly that. Questioner: The other thing that happened was, listening to a symphony concert. I listened because, I heard music in a way, I've never heard it before. It’s like my whole body heard it. And it was, it was just extraordinary, and it's just unbelievable. I felt like crying for days afterwards. Larry: Again, was…were you practicing anapana, while listening to the music? Questioner: I was aware of that, and it was again, it was like my legs heard the music. Larry: I understand. Questioner: My body heard the music, in a way which I had never. That never happened before. But the breath turned my body into something different. I don't know how to describe it. Larry: Well, that's part of what we're finding out. What was suggested last week, is that, well, the breath is life. That is literally, what we're contemplating, when we contemplate the breath is, we're contemplating life. That is, if the if the breath doesn't come in, the body doesn't live, and there's no basis for the mind, to continue in this present form. So, it's obviously a very fundamental process that we're paying attention to. So, it has the power. It affects the body in a very dramatic way, in terms of the overall health, energy, calmness, et cetera. Break_line: And all Indian yogas, without exception, have put in a lot of care, and attention, to studying the breath, in different ways. And this is, in a sense, Buddhist pranayama, and it's done by in the first four. The first four contemplations have to do with contemplating the breath, in the body. And so, what you're going to see is, that the breath conditions the body. That is, if you have a coarse breath, or a rough breath, it's going to condition the quality of the body. If you have a very deep, fine, peaceful breath, it's going to condition the quality of the body. Now, quality can mean the stability, peace, overall health, of the physical body. And of course, the original way in which the breath conditions the body is, that it conditions it to be alive. That is, because we breathe, the body is able to have life. Break_line: It’s a little bit like this. Let's say you take some drinks of alcohol. Probably everyone in this room knows that it has an effect. I mean, I don't know, maybe there's someone here who has never been drunk, but perhaps many of us have been drunk. And so, you know, if you put this substance in, the substance entering into the system has an impact, which is quite obvious, right. The mind is different, the body is different. It seems like a lot of things are different, sometimes dramatically so. What we don't understand is, that every substance that we put in, has an impact. Every food that we eat has an impact. Everything that we drink has an impact. Perhaps not as dramatic or as obvious as alcohol. Break_line: Now, the breath is a very subtle substance. It's a form of food. It's more subtle than thought, which is another form of food. Can be seen that way. If you're having lots of certain kinds of thoughts, you're conditioning the body, a certain way. Lots of negative thoughts, doubting thoughts, that's affecting the body. Now, the breath is even more subtle. It nurtures the body. It nourishes it. It sustains it. Okay, now we overlook that, as you know. Probably many of you know many people are not interested in following the breath. It doesn't seem to have enough of a story to it. Okay, but what this whole first three or four contemplations is attempting to do, is to resurrect the power of nature, that we are an expression of. And it's trying to resurrect the sense of what the breath is. That it has tremendous possibilities, for the way in which we care for ourselves. Break_line: Now this is only… remember the first four contemplations, we're only on the first three, but the first four, all have to do with Kayanupassana, that is, the contemplation of the body. Later on, of course, we'll see that the breath influences feelings, and the mind directly, and so forth. So, it's just a powerful conditioner of life, period. But for right now, we're emphasizing the body, and that's central fundamental. So that just as, let's say it's easy to tell that alcohol when introduced into the system, has an impact, but not so obvious when we eat different foods, which also affect whether the mind is alert, or dull, or agitated, or smooth, or sleepy, or high energy, et cetera as well as the body. We don't have that sensitivity for the breath. In fact, the breath, often we don't even think of it at all, unless we get sick, or we get the wind knocked out of us. If a person has asthma, they're likely to be a lot more sensitive to what I'm talking about. They really can hear this, but most of us are…we take it for granted. In other words, we're hanging by the breath. And so, we assume that, and then we move on to much more exciting things. Well, this is bringing us back to another level of our foundation and it's beginning to say we're learning how to become expert. Just what does the breath do? Now we know it keeps us alive, and now it's working out more subtle influences, that the breath has on the body. End_time: 00:11:06