A breathing technique for meditation Posted on November 1, 2013 Last updated on November 1, 2013

As you probably read, daily meditation is very beneficial for stress reduction, mood enhancement, and as a general vehicle to improve your daily life. I won’t go into the benefits of meditation in this post, but if you haven’t done it yet, here is a short article on the benefits of meditation.

A common technique when meditating is to concentrate on your breath, slowly breathing in, holding your breath for just a short moment, and then calmly breathing out, all while being completely concentrated on the breath and without letting your mind wander away towards your daily troubles.

This is easier said than done, and many times, without a concrete image to fixate upon, my mind wanders somewhere else and I lose concentration. To help me not lose concentration on the breath, I like to imagine a point travelling on a symbol similar to the infinity symbol. You start at the bottom left, and slowly breathe in, imagining your breath climbing up the slope of the symbol. Slow down while reaching the apex, and then, utilizing the momentum of the breathe-in, start breathing out while visualizing your breath rolling down the symbol. Once you reach the bottom at the other end, repeat symmetrically. To visualize this, see the diagram below.

You can also change the direction you are travelling in from time to time. You can also experiment with speeds and momenta, or introduce longer stops at the maxima and minima.

Hope this snippet was useful; let me know other interesting methods you have for not wandering away from your breath during meditation.