A Fully Permitted Exhalation and an Open House For Your Breathing

By: Charlotte Selver

…Being as busy as we are, with one activity heaped on top of another, our heads have lost their elasticity and freedom. Often this lack of freedom is created through the holding of too much inhalation inside of us, which doesn’t permit the cleaning out, the sweeping out, the renewing that is needed. Only fully permitted exhalation can do this. It would be helpful to give yourself plenty of time to find out whether you allow exahling as needed; that means whatever time exhaling wants to take when you do not do it, but allow it until you have, so to speak, a feeling of satisfaction, of completion.

It is also possible that, having permitted a satisfactory exhalation, nothing further seems to occur immediately in breathing. Don’t be upset by this. At one point breathing will start again. There is no need to worry if inhalation does not come immediately after the exhalation; and please listen to me as I say once more, if it comes, not if you inhale. Who can feel the difference? You know, some people take a breath. Wait until it comes by itself! And allow it to distribute in you as it wants to. In other words, be an open house for your breathing, and don’t manipulate it.

All this is a question of sensitivity, and when you orient yourself, you become a fine disoverer. It is much better when you find out about things for yourself, when you trust your own sensations and learn from them and do not have to be told everything. That is truly “exploring.” And you will be delighted at how clear a language the organism speaks.

Allowing Breathing

By: Charlotte Selver

…breathing comes by itself, spontaneously—if we allow it. Therefore, it is the allowing—the possibility of becoming more permissive—that we want to explore.

When we become more sensitive for what being permissive means, then the whole day is full of opportunities for exercising this possibility of becoming more permissive—or, if I might say it differently, more loving in the way we contact whatever we may contact. As soon as we become more open for something we do, we find that the first thing in which we can recognize this increased openness is our breathing.

…Exploring breathing really needs to be a practice, but a practice which is absolutely new each time—not a repetition of old ways, but a finding out what is going on in the condition and activity in which you happen to be at a particular moment. No moment can be compared with another; in wach there is something new to discover.

Breathing Is Always as the Person Is

By: Charlotte Selver

…Breathing is always as the person is. It is the clearest index of what is happening in the person—unless it is made up. Many people think they should breathe “properly.” Forget it! It is no use, because there is no “proper” breathing. Your breathing indicates very clearly what state you are in. When you are more reactive, your breathing is more reactive; when you are more habitual, your breathing is more habitual; if you are pushy, your breathing gets pushy too, or stops.

Breathing Connects Us With the World

By: Charlotte Selver

We by nature are not isolated from the world around us…and the process of breathing is connected with everything which happens in us and around us, just as plants are connected to everything around them.

All the mysterious interwovenness which is happening in the living organism is coming to expression in every moment in which we are living in our environment.

We are usually not awake enough for it, but sometimes you may have noticed that when something or somebody really interests you, you’re speeded up, even when you were tired a moment ago. Your breathing changes; you are functioning quite differently than before.

From Reclaiming Vitality and Presence: Sensory Awareness as a Practice for Life. Charlotte Selver (1901-2003) was a teacher of the Gindler/Jacoby method of awareness and exercise, a somatic bodywork method she further developed and taught after her arrival in the United States from Germany in 1938 as Sensory Awareness. Her work was highly influential to Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm, and Fritz Perls (one of the founders of Gestalt Therapy). Selver frequently taught at the San Francisco Zen Center and its affiliated centers, and Suzuki Roshi was well acquainted with her. Her Sensory Awareness method has a close affinity with Soto Zen.

Tuning the Breath in Zazen

By: Keizan Jokin

When sitting in meditation, your body may seem hot or cold, uneasy or uncomfortable, sometimes stiff, sometimes loose, sometimes heavy, sometimes light, sometimes startled awake.  This is all because the breath is not in tune and needs to be tuned.  The way of tuning the breath is as follows: open your mouth, letting the breath be long or short, gradually harmonizing it; following it for a while, when a sense of awareness comes, the breath is then in good tune.  After that let the breath pass naturally through the nose.

Keizan Jokin (1268-1325) is considered the “second founder” of Soto Zen. Keizan and his disciples are credited with spreading Soto Zen in Japan, away from monastic practice and toward a popular religion appealing to all levels of Japanese society.

What We Call "I" is Just a Swinging Door

By: Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

When we practice zazen our mind always follows our breathing.  When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world.  When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world.  The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is limitless.  We say the “inner world” or “outer world,” but actually there is just one whole world.  In this limitless world, our throat is like a swinging door.  The air comes in and goes out like someone passing through a swinging door.  If you think “I breathe,” the “I” is extra.  There is no you to say “I”.  What we call “I” is just a swinging door when we inhale and when we exhale.  It just moves; that is all.  When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing: no “I”, no world, no mind, nor body, just a swinging door.

From Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind