Breathing Meditation

Respiration méditative pour cultiver la pleine conscience

In today’s hectic, distracted world, a calm and settled mind may feel like wishful thinking. Fortunately there are established techniques that make it possible for us to tame and train our busy minds. Cultivating inner peace and calming the mind are two of the better-known benefits of mindfulness meditation.

In what is probably the best-known mindfulness technique, we focus on breathing. That’s right – breathing! Even though breathing and living go hand in hand, we generally only pay attention to the breath when we are congested or winded. We don’t realize that the breath is a marvelous meditation tool, and one that’s with us all the time. Paying attention to the breath is a time-proven method that helps us resist distractions and stay mindful.

Meditation is all about freedom. Only a fraction of the world’s population is formally imprisoned, but the entire human race is imprisoned in the body and the earth itself. None are free from the inevitability of sickness, age, and death, however free of them they may be at the moment. The human condition is subject to innumerable limitations. Who really controls his life fully, attains all his goals, and knows no setbacks of any kind? No one.

Our real self, the spirit, is ever perfect and free. But we have forgotten that. So we identify with our present experience of bondage and consequently suffer in countless ways. Our situation is like someone who is asleep and dreaming that he is being tortured and beaten. In reality he is not being touched at all; yet he is experiencing very real pain and fear. He need not placate, overpower, or escape his torturers. He needs only to wake up. Meditation is the way of self-awakening, the way to freedom from suffering and limitation.

Meditation is the way of remembrance and restoration. A person suffering from amnesia has not ceased to be who he really is, but he needs to regain his memory. The memory block from which we suffer is the condition of the various levels on which we presently function, especially the mind. It is also a matter of the dislocation of our consciousness from its natural center.

Here’s a straightforward introduction to meditation based on breathing.

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