Alternatives to Breath Focus in Meditation Practices

Breathing meditation emphasizes coordinating with breath for relaxation, not just concentrating on it.

### Exploring Alternatives to Breath-Focused Meditation Techniques
* 🧘 The discussion begins with a Reddit question about **alternative meditation techniques** that may be **more effective** than focusing solely on breath.
* 🤔 Many practitioners find it challenging to relax when concentrating on their breath, leading them to explore **body awareness** or **emotional focus** instead.
* 🧠 Neuroscience reveals that concentration activates the **amygdala**, which is linked to **anxiety and aggression**, making relaxation difficult during breath-focused practices.
* 💡 The speaker suggests that instead of concentrating on breath, practitioners should "**coordinate**" with their breath, allowing for a **more natural flow of awareness**.
* ❤ Practicing mindfulness by reciting the word **"this"** during inhalation and **"ease"** during exhalation can help balance the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, promoting **relaxation and empathy**.
* 📈 Regular practice of these techniques can lead to a **spontaneous flow of love and compassion**, enhancing overall well-being.
* 🔍 The speaker emphasizes that meditation should not be about rigid concentration but rather about **flexible awareness and release**, which aligns with the teachings of the Buddha.
* 🙏 Finally, the session concludes with a mindfulness practice that integrates the **four bases of mindfulness** and encourages **compassion for oneself and others**.

come let us explore what they do not tell us about breathing meditation. This morning's lesson is drawn from a good-hearted question found on Reddit, a question that begins Alternatives of breath and then continues, Has anyone found along the meditation journey other techniques that are more productive or simply more effective for them than focusing on the breath? So, we're going, so this is a keyword we will return to this sometimes. When I focus on my breath, it feels hard for me to relax and let my awareness flow freely. I find that shifting my attention to my entire body or my emotions can sometimes make it easier to maintain focus and allow awareness to naturally unfold. I mentioned this because I know that focusing on the breath is considered fundamental. However, I often wonder, is this something I need to keep working on to eventually get better at and enjoy, or should I consider switching to something that works better for me? This is an excellent question that I look forward to answering. I'll begin

with broad brush strokes, so I'm going to hit a number and [Music]. There we go. Been having difficulty with this lately, so let's begin with the Bandstand logical fallacy. How does that work? All these people doing it, they can't all be doing it wrong, therefore you should do it too. That's the basic Bandstand fallacy, but it's based on a house of cards. From when we go back to the Buddhist Buddha's earliest meditation manual, the anti su. He does not teach us to concentrate on a breath, but to coordinate with our breath. What's the difference? I think Neuroscience has the answer for us. So let's take a gander. Whether we call it Focus or concentrate or shata or samata, concentration is still concentration, and the only part of our central nervous system that is wired to concentrate are the mechanisms such as those found in the medial prefrontal cortex. We're designed to think in short bursts. When we use our brain to concentrate for five or 10 or 15 or 30 or 45 or 60

minutes we are going to stimulate our amygdala, this round thing here about the size of a pea or perhaps an almond that functions as the seat of our anxiety and our aggression. When we are stimulating our amygdala, it is impossible to relax, not because we're weak, not because we're inexperienced, because we are wired not to relax in the presence of anxiety. We are wired to respond to anxiety with aggression or with fear. We're designed to respond to anxiety by fighting or fleeing or fainting. We are not designed to respond to anxiety by being laid back. The amygdala, while inconvenient, is an important tool that evolved to ensure the survival not only of Homo sapiens, not only of primates, not only of mammals. It is found throughout the majority of complex animal life forms. This is a fundamental survival mechanism, and we excite it by concentrating on anything, even as something as mundane as our breath. Fortunately, there's more to our central nervous system than just our prefrontal cortex and our amygdala.

the most efficient way to practice mindfulness is to silently mentally empower massively recite the demonstrative pronoun this during each inhalation. Doing so impels the cerebral cortex to cooperate with our sympathetic nervous system. This sympathetic nervous system is INS sconed within the middle third of our spinal cord. It is evolved to help us perceive vulnerably, passively, viscerally, randomly, and fleetingly - the opposite of concentration, the opposite of focus. We have evolved to perceive science, sounds, sensations, flavors, sense, and the like, including emotions, intentions, thoughts, memories, and imaginings. What are we to do though with that which we notice? The answer to that brings us to meditation. The most efficient way to practice meditation is by silently, mentally, and passively reciting the one-syllable verb ease during our exhalation. Doing so induces our cerebral cortex to cooperate with our parasympathetic nervous system, which is INS sconed within both the lower third as well as the upper third of our spinal.

cord this parasympathetic nervous system has evolved to help us both physically relax as well as mentally release. So, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are two facets of our autonomic nervous system. There are three benefits to doing this. Number one, it calms our anxious and aggressive amygdala. Number two, it excites our anterior cingulate gyrus, which has evolved to function as the hub of our mirror neurons and the seat of empathy and compassion and love. This is why the late Tenzin Gyatso, formerly of Tibet, insisted that the highest love is not the product of active concentration or active contemplation, reliance upon our medial or dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, but instead is the spontaneous and uncontrived fringe benefit of simply noticing and releasing. The third benefit is this: the more we do so, the more regularly we train in mindfulness and meditation, perhaps once every 12 hours or so, the more our choices and our

utterances and our deeds will flow through the effortless effort of Love's centered spontaneity. No, not scattered spontaneity, but centered spontaneity. So let's go back to the anapati in it. We are not, despite the ravings of questionable meditation teachers, we're not told to concentrate on a breath, but coordinate with our breath. So what's the difference? Concentrating our breath is like peering at something through a microscope; however, coordinating our breath is like treating our breath away a piano student treats their metronome. Or in other words, when we notice our body inhaling silently and mentally and passively, we recite this. When we notice our body exhaling silently, mentally, and passively, we recite ease. So why is this mistake so widespread, so ubiquitous? Sadly, that boils down to Sturgeon's law, which states that 90% of everything sucks, but not in the fun, tingly way. The majority of humans, the majority of meditation teachers, the majority of meditation authors sucking looks like

them touting, insisting that being rigid, fearful, superstitious, controlling, elitist, cryptic, competitive, and cruel are where it's at, and being flexible, loving, rational, laid-back, egalitarian, lucid, cooperative, and kind were they just mental disorders. But I think the Buddha would disagree. I think Lao Tzu would disagree, and I think that if you would put these techniques into practice, you too could disagree. So, let me make sure I answer all your questions and go back and look at the red bits. So, yes, concentration and flow are antithetical. This part of your brain concentrates, this part of your brain notices, this part of your brain's sorry, this part of your central nervous system relaxes, this part of your central nervous system lets go. So, if you want to hammer a T-peg in the ground that's going to remain unyielding, then you want concentration. If you want to flow, you need to cooperate with the dynamism of your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous

systems, so there are different things altogether. When you are trying to concentrate and you notice your mind wandering, that's your central nervous system trying to say, basically saying, Please stop concentrating. You want to be in the flow, and the flow is over here; it's not here. Those who are rigid, those who are fearful, those who are superstitious, those who are controlling are not known for their imagination; they're not known for their depth of insight. These are not the SFR St. Francis sissies; these are the T Court Thomas de tatas. Thomas de Torim was known for many things, but his creativity and his flow were not one of them. When we read the 81 poems of the Ching, we see that LSU said not only identifies what attributes are Yang and which are Yin, but also implores his readers to always choose Yin. And what we've seen is that if concentration is Ying, then awareness and release is most certainly Yin. And what we see time and again is

that these are not psychological things but psychological symptoms of physiological mechanisms, and yang and Yin are physiological. So, is our prefrontal cortex bad? No, but it has to be used the way it evolved to be used, and we use it in a smothering way. Because if you use it too much, we go into crisis. Consider this, and in your mind's eye, travel back to the Paleolithic era when certain members of the tribe would hunt. While hunting, they would be silent and focused single-pointedly on their prey. This would feed their aggression so that they could fight and throw rocks and throw pointed sticks, and this would feed their anxiety. So, if they missed, they could run like hell. Meanwhile, other members of the tribe would forage, and they wouldn't concentrate. They would just notice with a diffuse awareness. So, they could notice, you know, not only the berry they were picking but the next bar and what was going on over here. They could hear predators approaching. They were just there.

perception was not single-pointed but spherical, if that makes sense. Diffused, it served a different evolutionary purpose. Every Warrior, every Special Forces person, if they've survived in missions, eventually forsakes Yang and turns to Yin as a way to cope and undo the damage that Yang has done. I think it would be quite lovely if together as a team you practiced after approximately 30 seconds of housekeeping. This is llama jig yatsu of the Buddha Joy meditation school. For more than 30 years, I spent about eight hours a day, almost every day, studying, practicing, mastering, and reverse engineering the teaching and techniques of each School of meditation so that you would not have to welcome my friends to meditate like a Jedi, which is made possible due to the generosity of viewers just like you. And now together as a team, let us turn our attention to the latest iteration of Letting Go mindfulness meditation and love. So our main practice is going to be mindfulness and meditation, but just as a sprinter does

like out of his car and goes straight to the starting blocks but warms up first. We're going to warm up right now with impermanence, one moment. So let us bring the Satya patana, four bases of mindfulness, which in this case are the circumstantial, the physical, the interpersonal, and the mental. So let us bring the saatana, four bases of mindfulness, into Tiana's three marks of realities, Anika, impermanence, and another, not selflessness. We start with DH, the circumstantial, observing the coming and going of appearing circumstantial phenomena, help us to see however changing one another is nothing permanent to grasp. So we're going to take all these words and coalesce them into just six syllables that we're going to divide between our inhalation and our exhalation. We're going to use the word Lots as a monosomic synonym for circumstances. We turn now to the Caya, physical feeling, the coming and going of sensual phenomena, help us to feel whoever.

changing one another is nothing permanent to grasp. We turn now to the veana interpersonal listening to the coming and going of resounding interpersonal phom. Help us to hear, however, changing one another is nothing permanent to grasp. We conclude with the cheetah mtal. Please chant with me, noticing the coming and going of lucid mental phenomen. Help us to clearly perceive, however, changing one all is nothing permanent to grasp. We're going to take all these words and coalesce them down to just six syllables that we're going to divide between our inhalation and our exhalation. Having concluded our warm-up, we are now ready for the main body of the practice. We bring whatever we spontaneously notice into the paths of Sati aware awareness, also known as mindfulness, and some of the release, also known as meditation. So let us perform three collections of 144 rounds. We do this in three stages. During the first stage, we well first of all, I, we, let's start with brass tax. What is meant in meditation by

around around is another way of saying a repetition. It is another way of saying a set of one inhalation and one exhalation. So, the first thing we do is break it down, and the second thing we do is work on technique. So, how do we break down 144 rounds into 12 sets of 12 repetitions? Now, how do we count 12 repetitions on just four fingers and one thumb? Simple. During the inhalation, while silently and mentally and passively resetting the demonstrative pronoun this, we advance the right thumb, beginning with the little finger. So, this would be the first. So, let's do this together right now for fabulous You. Just learned how to count 12 repetitions on our left hand. We can count sets of those repetitions, beginning with our index finger, our first set of 12 repetitions, our second set, our third set, our fourth set, and so on. Now, we talked about three collections, and we count collections on the knuckles at the base of our right hand, and here's

how we do that during the first collection. We rest the great knuckle at the base of our right little finger upon the tip of our left little finger with both hands in our lap. Sorry, during the third collection, we would do the same thing with our ring fingers. During the third collection, we do the same thing with our middle fingers. And if there is a fourth collection, we would do that with our index fingers. You might say, Well, why not just use a timer? Because cell phones break, batteries run out, sometimes they're stolen, sometimes they are confiscated, stolen by officials. But as long as we have our hands, we need not use an external counting device. There are two benefits of using our hand, two additional benefits. First, the energy systems in our body are holographic, and the knuckle for our little finger correlates to our secret wheel. Ring finger correlates to our naval wheel. Middle finger correlates to a heart wheel. Index finger correlates to a crown wheel, which is pretty cool. The second additional benefit is, I guess, the third additional benefit is

that it helps with neurodivergent stemming. I'm neurodivergent, and I've had to work out all sorts of hacks to thrive with meditation. And I've had a rep play with meditation to survive with my enlarged amygdala, which is common for trauma victims and neurodivergence. So for me, meditation has never been about bragging rights and simply not becoming Mr. Hyde. Having said that, let's practice now. If I was super special and I had the second camera, and if YouTube would permit it, I would have two cameras, one focusing on my palm and one focusing on my hands and my lamp, so you can see what's going on. But I don't know how to do that in a way that would be acceptable to YouTube, you know, bound bandwidth and stuff like that for e for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for.

for for for for e for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for if you've just joined me allow me to catch you up to speed. The most efficient way to practice mindfulness is to silently, mentally, and passively recite the demonstrative pronoun this during each inhalation. Doing so induces our cerebral cortex to cooperate with our sympathetic nervous system and sconed within the middle third of our spinal cord. This sympathetic nervous system has evolved to help us perceive vulnerably, passively, viscerally, randomly, and fleetingly perceive what? Perceive sight, sound, sensations, flavors, sense, and the light, including emotions, intentions, thoughts, memories, and imaginings. What are we to do with that which we notice? Meditate. What is the most efficient way to practice meditation? To silently, mentally, and passively recite the one-syllable verb ease during each exhalation. Doing so induces our cerebral cortex to cooperate with our

parasympathetic nervous system and sconed within both the lower third as well as the upper third of that same spinal cord. This parasympathetic nervous system is evolved to help us physically relax and mentally release. [Music] Let us wind down this meditation session with a brief contemplation of Love, wherein we bring the four bases of mindfulness into the path of tiant's three marks of realities, du stress, and M loving-kindness. We begin with the cheetah mental. Since we are not alone in our mental frustrations, we could also long that others' mental needs also be met. Since we are not alone in our interpersonal frustrations, we could also long that others' interpersonal needs also be met. Since we are not alone in our physical frustrations, we could also long that

this physical needs also be since we are not alone in our circumstantial frustrations. We could also long that other circumstantial needs could also be met. If you feel that I have earned it, you could give this live stream a thumbs up. You could even help support this channel in approximately at 10 and a half hours. I would very much like to return to today's evening meditation class and group practice. And if you are as geeky as me, May the force be with you always. [Music]

What They Don't Tell You About Breathing Meditation

Meditate Like a Jedi with Lama Jigme Gyatso

Focusing on the breath can be challenging for some, leading to a desire to explore alternative techniques for relaxation and awareness.

The traditional approach of concentrating on the breath may stimulate the amygdala, causing anxiety and making it difficult to relax.

Neuroscience suggests that our central nervous system is wired to respond to anxiety with aggression or fear, highlighting the need for a more holistic approach to meditation.

The most efficient way to practice mindfulness is by silently reciting "this" during inhalation, which aligns the cerebral cortex with the sympathetic nervous system.

For meditation, reciting "ease" during exhalation induces cooperation with the parasympathetic nervous system, promoting physical relaxation and mental release.

Regularly practicing these techniques can calm the amygdala, activate empathy and compassion, and lead to effortless, centered spontaneity in our choices and actions.

The speaker argues that rigid and controlling behaviors are not conducive to creativity and flow, which are essential for insight and imagination.

Concentration and flow are opposites, with the former causing tension and the latter promoting relaxation and awareness.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of using the prefrontal cortex in a balanced way, drawing on examples from the Paleolithic era to illustrate the benefits of diffuse awareness in foraging and noticing one's surroundings.

Spherical Perception and Mindfulness Meditation

Perception is described as spherical and diffused, serving an evolutionary purpose.

The practice of mindfulness and meditation is emphasized, with a focus on impermanence and the changing nature of phenomena.

The session includes a warm-up with the four bases of mindfulness and three stages of practice, aiming to cultivate awareness and release.

Counting Repetitions and Collections Through Hand Movements

The concept of "around" refers to a repetition of inhalation and exhalation.

To break down 144 rounds, the technique involves counting 12 repetitions using four fingers and one thumb.

The method also includes resting knuckles to count collections, offering a practical alternative to external counting devices, while providing additional benefits related to energy systems and neurodivergent stemming.

The most efficient way to practice mindfulness is by silently reciting "this" during each inhalation, which helps the brain and sympathetic nervous system cooperate.

For meditation, silently reciting "ease" during exhalation induces cooperation with the parasympathetic nervous system, promoting relaxation.

The session concludes with a contemplation of love and the four bases of mindfulness, emphasizing the importance of meeting both our own and others' needs.