Breath has sound, it has texture, it has motion. As your body moves with the inflowing and outflowing breath your body balances automatically. Breath even has an impact on the visual field; there are subtle differences to notice.
Breathing with awareness is one of the essential meditation techniques cherished the world over. Simply pay attention to the flow of air with appreciation for the gift of each breath. Doing this even a few minutes a day will bless your life. A human being develops senses for whatever she pays attention to. If you pay a lot of attention to wine, you will learn to identify what type it is just by a sniff of the bouquet. If you watch a lot of baseball, you will learn to see what type of pitch is coming at the hitter earlier and earlier in the wind-up or release. Mothers can tell the state of their babies at a glance. If you pay attention to breath, your body will over time evolve the senses to really, really enjoy it as one of the Fine Things of Life.
Breath has to be mostly automatic and out-of-awareness by default, because our life depends on it every minute. We each breathe many times a minute, whether we are awake or asleep. In a day we breathe more than twenty thousand times. Each of these breaths connects us to the entire planet. Appreciating this connection is joyous but optional — it is what you do after survival is assured.
The movement of attention to cherish breath is instinctive, for all living things have a natural attraction toward that which gives them life. Meditation is an instinctive urge, a calling, as deep as any of the ancient yearnings that move human beings. All the hundreds of techniques are just ways of cooperating with that urge. In order for meditation to feel that innate, it helps to learn it at your own speed in your own way. Start now.
Take a breath, have fun.
