Know what to do when focusing on the breath feels wrong
Recognise that breath attention can make some people more tense or uneasy — and adjust the practice rather than forcing it.
Why it works
Attending closely to breathing makes a normally automatic process conscious, and for some people that brings self-consciousness about breathing, a sense of not getting enough air, or tension. Researchers who interviewed practitioners across Theravāda, Zen and Tibetan traditions documented a wide range of meditation-related challenges, including fear, anxiety and changes in sense of self, some lasting. Knowing that difficulty is a documented possibility, and that changing the object or the intensity is a legitimate response, keeps a difficulty from being mistaken for either failure or progress that must be pushed through.
How to do it
- If breath attention makes you tense or short of breath, open your eyes and widen attention to the whole body, the feet on the floor, or sounds in the room.
- Try a broader, lighter attention — feeling the body breathing rather than watching the breath at one point.
- Shorten sessions, or switch for a while to walking practice or kindness practice.
- If fear, disorientation or distressing memories keep arising, talk to an experienced teacher, and to a clinician who understands meditation if it is affecting daily life.
Evidence
Lindahl and colleagues’ mixed-methods study of Western Buddhist practitioners produced a taxonomy of 59 meditation-related experiences across seven domains, with distress ranging from minimal and transient to severe and enduring; Britton’s review argues for a “middle way” in which more mindfulness is not always better and dose and fit matter. (observational)
The study is qualitative and was designed to describe challenges, not to estimate how common they are or to isolate breath-focused practice specifically.
Sources
- Lindahl, J. R., Fisher, N. E., Cooper, D. J., Rosen, R. K., & Britton, W. B. (2017). The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists. PLOS ONE, 12(5), e0176239. About this work
- Britton, W. B. (2019). Can mindfulness be too much of a good thing? The value of a middle way. Current Opinion in Psychology, 28, 159–165.
Common mistake
Assuming that if the breath makes you uneasy you are doing it wrong and should try harder — sometimes the skilful response is a different anchor or a lighter touch.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Ānāpānasati: The Sixteen Steps of Mindfulness of Breathing
- Know each breath as long or short
Begin by simply knowing whether this in-breath and this out-breath are long or short, without making them any particular way.
- Experience the whole body and let the breath calm it
Widen attention from the breath alone to the whole body breathing, and let the bodily activity of breathing settle on its own.
- Breathe experiencing joy and happiness
Let the pleasant feelings that arise in a settled sitting become part of what you know with each breath, rather than a distraction from it.
- Know and calm the mental formations
Notice how feeling and perception are colouring this moment, and let that activity settle while you breathe.
- Experience, gladden, steady and free the mind
With the breath still present, know the state of the mind, brighten it when it is dull, steady it when it scatters, and release it when it is caught.
- Breathe contemplating impermanence and letting go
Let each breath show you that experience is changing, and let that seeing turn into fading interest, ending and release.
- Move through the sixteen steps as one practice
Let a single sitting travel through body, feeling, mind and letting go, taking each group of four only as far as it is actually alive.
- Notice how breath practice builds the factors of awakening
Recognise mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquillity, concentration and equanimity as they develop out of the practice.
Related concepts
- Satipaṭṭhāna: The Four Foundations of Mindfulness
The discourse that modern mindfulness grew from, practised the way the text lays it out
- Vipassana Meditation, Made Practical
Insight, equanimity, and the body-scan approach to liberation from reactivity
- Shamatha: The Buddhist Practice of Calm Abiding
Training the mind to rest: the nine stages and their modern neurological parallels
- Breath Counting Meditation
The count, the restart, and why simplicity is a feature, not a limitation
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