Thoughts about breathing and mindfulness: there are some practices within yoga that teach and employ special ways of breathing. We hear of “breathing techniques” and “breathing exercises.” These practices all include a focus on manipulating one’s breathing in various ways: to make it deeper, to make it slower, to breathe only through the nostrils, or the mouth, or to alternate nostrils, and so forth.

This type of manipulation or alteration of the breath is not a part of mindfulness practice, or insight meditation (from the Vipassana tradition in Buddhism). The breath is allowed to be just as it is, naturally, however that might be. It might be shallow, it might be deep; it might be rapid and it might slow down. None of that is important. What is important is the repeated direction of attentional focus ON the breath. The breath, within mindfulness practice, serves the function of a constantly changing physical sensation upon which to direct one’s non-judgmental attention. Any attempt to make the breath be a certain way is regarded in the same way as any other of our endless human attempts to make our reality more satisfactory! These efforts are to be regarded with compassionate awareness.

So, I suggest that my practicum students not use the term “breathing technique” or “breathing exercise” when they teach their clients about mindfulness practice. To do so would suggest that the client should be having some kind of special kind of breathing, or even some kind of specially lovely experience while breathing! This would lead to disappointment; one of the lessons of mindfulness practice is that our expectations of specialness can lead to suffering, because we feel cheated when those expectations are not fulfilled.

It is in fact the ordinary that is truly “special.” When we stop trying to manipulate and improve reality, we can perceive the inestimable value of the universe we are given in each moment of awareness.