Count the Breaths

The first meditation app I tried told me to count my breaths.  An interview with a popular meditation champion told me to count my breaths.  A book about meditation told me to count my breaths.

And then finally someone told me why you count your breaths.

Do you know?  Because I didn’t.

I thought it was something about the way you were supposed to breathe, though I noticed on one app that you could set a timer to your preferred breathing pattern, accounting for things such as whether you like to pause at the top of the breath or just inhale and exhale back-to-back.  One app told me to intake the air through my nose and out my mouth, while another said under no circumstances should I ever exhale out my mouth.  (Why?)

Everyone kept bringing up breathing but no one was telling me why focusing on breathing was important.

Because it’s happening now.  Or, as Smiling Mind stated it, breathing is an anchor to this moment.  In other words, it’s the one thing every single living person is definitely doing at this moment.  You may be sitting or standing or lying down.  You may have your eyes open or closed.  (Well, I assume they’re open right now if you’re reading this.). But there is only one option when it comes to breathing: You are breathing.  Or you’re dead.  Or you’re temporarily holding your breath, but you’re going to go back to that whole breathing thing in a moment.

So if they need you to focus on something that is happening in the present moment so you stay in the present moment, breathing is a safe bet.

Not only that but because you’re always breathing, unless you had a moment where you couldn’t breathe, you most likely don’t have distracting thoughts from your past about the act of breathing.  The act of not breathing, yes.  The act of breathing… well, I can’t remember how I breathed yesterday or last week or last year.  And you don’t have any strong feelings about breathing in the future beyond the fact that you’d like to keep doing it.  So you can focus on your breath without your breath becoming a distraction because it’s reminding you of other things.  I came up with this last point on my own, but I’m going to guess that it’s true, too.

So now you know.  (Unless you already knew, in which you’ve been using different meditation apps and books.)

I’m going to stop thinking that it’s optional and focus on the breath.