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Guided Meditation: Allowing Breathing; Dharmette: Introduction to Mindfulness Pt 2 (1 of 5) Trust Breathing - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on December 15, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Allowing Breathing

Good morning, everyone, and welcome. Today the subject will be meditation on breathing—mindfulness of breathing.

I have spent fifty years of my life meditating on the breath, and it has been a central feature of my life. I have loved it. As with any relationship, it has had its ups and downs, but we have been committed to each other, the breath and me, finding our way together.

One of the things I love about paying attention to breathing is that breathing sits at the nexus. It is at the center of just about everything having to do with our life. It is a wonderful place to be centered yourself, from which there is a relationship to psychology, emotions, activity, and relationships with other people. All kinds of things come into play around the breathing because of all the ways that breathing has to adjust in order to be responsive to the needs of the body, mind, and heart.

For me, it is a truth-teller. I sit down to meditate, and by noticing how I am breathing, I notice something about how I am. But by breathing mindfully—breathing with awareness—it changes the dynamic. It is almost like I have two forms of breathing: the breathing that happens on its own without any attention, and the breathing that happens with awareness. Awareness makes all the difference.

Then breathing joins a very powerful, significant feedback loop where mindfulness of breathing begins to change the breathing. It begins to relax the breathing, quiet the breathing where it is held, and harmonize the breathing—just by being aware of it. Not always, but sometimes. Because it is so connected to moods and emotions and how I am, the rhythm of breathing is like a massage. It begins to settle things and harmonize things psychologically, emotionally, and physically in many ways.

To begin, assume a posture of meditation. Sit a little bit more upright than usual, or if you are lying down, adjust your back so there is a little bit more space or room for the rib cage and the diaphragm to breathe without restriction.

Gently close your eyes and discover how you are breathing now. Breathe as if you are allowed to breathe the way you are, but you are checking in with a friend. How are you? What is being carried in the breathing? What is being expressed? How is the rhythm of breathing in relationship to the rest of you?

Gently take a few long, slow, deep breaths. Do so in a way that feels relaxing for you. Relax on the exhale. Relax the whole torso, belly, chest, and shoulders.

Then, let your breathing return to normal. Watch it as if you are watching a natural event in the natural world—something that is interesting, like watching a river, ocean waves, or deer in a meadow. Settle back to watch and feel the experience of breathing. Accompany your breathing. Be a good friend to your breathing to know it better. Not to change it, not to fix it, but to meet the very center of your life.

Everything centers around breathing one way or the other. By attending to your breathing, you are indirectly attending to everything. For these minutes, there is no need to attend to other issues, stories, events, or emotions. Trust attending to breathing. The rhythm of breathing in and breathing out, one breath at a time.

Allow for a receptivity to the experience of breathing. Feel that you are on the receiving side of a natural process that has been continuing since you were born. Allow yourself to be on the receiving side of mindful breathing, aware of breathing. Letting go of thoughts. Quieting the mind.

If you can, feel the silence, the stillness, or the spaciousness that is around you and within you. Feel the breathing within the silence, stillness, and spaciousness. Breathe as if breathing is the most important thing.

As we come to the end of this sitting, calmly and carefully feel how your body is breathing down. Gently feel, sense, and watch the movements of breathing in and breathing out. Maybe even notice the subtle sensations at play as you breathe—sensations that rise and pass in a rhythm.

Take a few deeper breaths to experience your body more fully, where the expansion of the rib cage and the belly moves you into a fuller connection to your body. In a longer exhale, find a time to relax more and settle.

Imagine as you breathe in the expansion of the rib cage and the belly that your awareness rides it out into the world. As if the awareness that radiates and spreads from you—through your imagination, through your sense of the wider world—can carry your goodwill, well-wishing, and care for the world.

As you end this sitting, gently repeat these words to see if they resonate with something that has been touched through this meditation:

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

And on this day, may I contribute to that possibility, even in the smallest ways.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Introduction to Mindfulness Pt 2 (1 of 5) Trust Breathing

Good morning. I would like to welcome you to this beginning of the week series of small dharma talks.

The plan for this week is to continue and repeat—hopefully in a newer, deeper, fuller way—the basic instructions in mindfulness meditation that I teach here at IMC. Introducing these instructions in this way has a number of values. One is to do it piecemeal so that there can be a deeper engagement, understanding, and discovery of how to practice with different areas of our life.

Overall, in mindfulness practice, we want to be able to develop a form of awareness—mindfulness—that can be all-inclusive. Nothing is left out. But to do that well, sometimes you need to focus on one area for a while to study it, get to know it, and know its ins and outs and how to be mindful of it.

Here at IMC, we give introductory courses that are ninety minutes long. The first week is breathing, the next is the body, then emotions and thoughts, and the fifth week is tying it all together. Sometimes we have whole daylong retreats on each of these topics so we can really get into it. The more familiar we are with the ins and outs and details of each of these areas, the easier it is to have a productive, meditative, mindful relationship to them.

This week I am repeating the same sequence as last week, hopefully to support you in developing your own deeper familiarity with these areas in yourself. There is no end to this process of discovery. I have been doing this for fifty years, and I am still discovering different ways of being aware and different things to be aware of in my life. It is a wonderful, fascinating journey.

What makes the journey fascinating is to become familiar with and find ways in which mindful awareness begins shifting and changing the inner landscape. For me, it often makes me quite happy. I sit down, and slowly over the course of meditation, I just feel happier and happier. I can't exactly say that there is a reason for that happiness, except that I love being alive in the simplicity of the moment. That is in contrast to a mind that is preoccupied and caught up with what should and shouldn't happen, what has happened and what should not have happened, and our complaints, challenges, injustices, or fears of life.

To be caught up in that mind is a mind that is uncomfortable—a heart that is uncomfortable. But to have all those settle out for a while and recede, and just to be present in a very simple, relaxed way, brings me a lot of happiness and joy. Some of this has to do with being with the breathing.

One of the really important things I have learned about mindfulness of breathing is how breathing is at the nexus—the meeting point—maybe of our whole life. The need for oxygen to have energy to operate as a human being needs to be spread throughout the whole body. Because of how much energy we need to expend and use in different parts of the body for different things, the breathing adjusts accordingly to provide that.

There is a lot of emotionality that affects the breathing. A lot of actions and thoughts affect it. The only shift and change in my meditation might be what I end up thinking about. I could think about something that I find very troubling, and nothing else has changed, but as I think these troubled thoughts, my breathing changes. It gets shallower, tighter, and restricted. Breathing sits in the middle of all these things. If I think warm thoughts—if I do metta¹, if I have feelings of kindness and goodwill—that seems to be very settling and opening, and that affects the breathing in a very different way.

Simply stay with the breathing. Trust the breathing. Entrust yourself to the breathing, even when it is uncomfortable. What I have learned is to be comfortable with discomfort. Somehow, see the discomfort that is there when I am breathing as a call to gently touch or massage that as I breathe. Sometimes I feel the discomfort more when I inhale, and then it recedes as I exhale. I think of that as a loving massage—just feeling the discomfort and releasing. Sometimes it is on the exhale that it is uncomfortable. I have learned to be very content, very patient, with feeling any kind of way that the breathing is uncomfortable.

The change that brought me was that I am no longer reactive to my breathing. I don't react to the discomfort of breathing or the discomfort that might be associated with emotions. I don't build reactivity upon reactivity. Rather, I just hold it very spaciously. Just feel it. Be comfortable with this discomfort, kind of like it is a gentle massage or a gentle opening to feel more fully.

That does two very important things. One is that it begins to relax any holding I have—relax any tightness, constriction, or way in which I am manipulating the breath unconsciously. As that relaxes, it changes my inner life, my mind, and my heart.

The other is that an ordinary mind is often following the chain of associated thinking. It is just following the thoughts that arise, being carried along by them, repeating them, and ruminating without much concern about how useful or appropriate it is to think, what the impact of thinking is, or if there are better ways of thinking. Do you even have to think so much? Is it okay to take a vacation and quiet and relax?

To learn to follow something else besides the train of thinking—to follow breathing—means the energy of the mind, the fuel of attention, is not going there to fuel more thinking. It becomes fuel for greater attention and greater awareness of breathing. It becomes an alternative to the thinking. So, thinking begins to quiet down because it is not being reinforced.

Simply stay and follow the breath as best you can. Follow the rhythm. Stay with it over time. Some people find it helpful to count the breath. For years, I used to count the exhale up to ten and then start over again. If I lost count, I would just start again at one. It is a very simple way.

But in some way, just follow the breath. Be with the breath. Be massaged by the breath. Receive the experience of breathing. Be available for it and stay with it. If the mind wanders off, come back and stay with it. Ride the breath. Surf the breath. Imagine that the rhythm of breathing is petting the cat in you so you can purr. Just stay with it.

That begins to quiet the reactive mind, the thinking mind—a mind that often creates a lot of tension. It quiets the mind that maybe has created the uncomfortable breathing that might be there. Just staying with the breath settles and quiets so much for us.

Over time, we start learning the interaction between breathing and the mind, breathing and thoughts, and breathing and emotions. We can see how they interact and are mutually dependent on each other. We see how mindfulness of breathing is an antidote to being caught in thoughts and reactivity. It helps to decrease the stress and relax the holding that we have.

Breathing is very, very simple in a certain way, and the idea for mindfulness of breathing is to keep it simple. If it is not simple, then it is probably not going to support you. It is not an engineering job. It is not a goal-oriented job. It is not like we are trying to hold on tight and laser into the breath to really get focused and concentrated. We can get concentrated, but the words for concentration that I like are settled, steadied, and unified. That builds over time. It is a gentle building. It is almost like we are making space as we are staying with breathing for things to settle, steady, gather, and be unified.

So, be very spacious and very simple. Be simple awareness that stays with the breathing the best you can. You learn how not to give in—how to let go of the trains of reactive thoughts you might have. Don't keep reinforcing them. Trust the simplicity of coming back and the simplicity of breathing. Nothing has to be solved. Nothing has to be fixed. Nothing has to be believed. Nothing has to be made into a story. Very simple.

This is the foundation of meditation. It is the first instruction, not only because it is beginning instructions, but because it is the very foundation. It is at the center, and everything else wonderfully radiates from that center—an awareness that radiates from mindfulness of breathing.

Please, for this day, stay close to your breathing. I don't know how you can remember to check in with your breathing throughout the day, but try to stay with your breath. Even if it is just three breaths, close your eyes. Just be with three breaths and see what that does. Be with five breaths and see what that does, and then continue with what you are doing.

Before you are going to drive, sit down and close your eyes: three or five breaths. Before you turn on a device: three breaths. When you turn the device off or put it down: three breaths. Before you are going to do something, like wash dishes, just stand by the sink and take three breaths. Or simply check in: How is your breathing right now? What emotions or moods are being somehow contained by or expressed through how we are breathing?

Take this day not to fix anything, but to become familiar. Recognize what is happening, how your breath is, and how this simple mindfulness of breathing can shift so much.

Thank you. I hope that you enjoy your breathing today, and I will do the same.