With this method, you're just going to focus on your breath, and nothing else. By doing this, you achieve a tremendous amount of relaxation.
If you practice this long enough, you can achieve a very deep and abiding sense of inner peace. It's fairly straightforward. There are really no "moving parts." It's not complicated at all.
Preparations
First, you need to find the right spot. Generally speaking, you should do this in an area where you're not going to be disturbed. There should be no distractions in terms of what you can see, hear, smell, taste, touch.
It should be a place that will be only available to you for around 10-15 minutes. It doesn't really take all that long, but you have to be in the right spot for a long enough period of time for this meditative technique to benefit you.
Second, you're going to close your eyes. This is a technique that you cannot do with your eyes open. Remember, we're basically going to avoid any kind of distractions. These distractions can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted and touched. No distractions. So, you close your eyes, and you just focus on one thing and one thing alone.
Third, focus only on your breath. How are you going to focus on your breath? Well, you're not going to focus on it by feeling it or hearing it. Instead, you're going to "watch it." In other words, you turn your “mental camera" to your breath. You imagine yourself seeing yourself breathe in and breathe out.
The key here is to feel it with your body and see it in your mind's eye. Eventually, these two sensations will line up. So, it diverts your attention from the stuff going through your mind as well as the stimuli that your body is picking up. Instead, everything is focused on your breath. Your conscious attention is focused solely on your breath.
You breathe in slowly, and you breathe out slowly. Everything is focused on the area of your body where the breath is coming in and going out. The key here is to not control your breath. The key is to not be self-conscious. Instead, you're just paying attention to this natural flow. When you feel that there's a strain in your lungs, you're doing it wrong. It means you're being self-conscious. It means that you're trying to force things. This should not be forced. It is actually effortless.
You’re just basically turning that mental camera that you have from obsessing about all these stresses or drama happening in your life to just focusing on your breath.
That's all it will be focused on. And if you keep this up long enough, you will become very, very relaxed. It leads to a tremendous amount of inner peace. However, let me tell you, in the beginning, it's going to be quite difficult. You might even feel bored. You might even feel like you're wasting your time.
It's because this is something new. Your mind is not used to thinking this way. After all, your mind has grown accustomed to thinking about a thousand different things at once. It's used to using up a tremendous amount of energy.
Now, you're using very little energy and you're focusing on only one thing. As you can imagine, that takes some getting used to. The good news is, it's worth doing because the calm and relaxation that you get will be priceless.
