How should we breathe during zazen? Master Dogen’s descriptions about that are surprisingly brief. He just says that your long breaths should be long, and your short breaths should be short. In other words, we should breathe naturally. But obviously we’re breathing naturally in the posture of zazen. So, an almost universal consensus has been reached that our breath should be centered on our lower abdomen. Those descriptions are brief, I think, because Dogen is very keen that we shouldn’t have a technique of breathing.
But notwithstanding that, quite often people do describe a technique of how to breathe in zazen. And the technique is very often that we focus on our exhalation. We have a complete exhalation and, towards the end of that exhalation, we’re pressing our lower abdomen out. Those instructions are wrong. And they’re importantly wrong for a specific reason. Dogen doesn’t wish us to have technical ideas of what to do once we put ourselves in the posture. Because if we do that, we’re still within the realm of the self. We’re not, in his language “throwing ourselves in the house of the Buddha” We’re still within our calculating mind.
So our zazen, as it were, is taking place within the sphere of the self, rather than the self being put to one side within the universe practicing zazen through you. So it might appear to be an obscure point, but it is actually very important.
The brevity of Dogen’s instructions are carried forward to the Soto school’s website where they give instructions for zazen, which repeats almost word for word what Dogen says about breathing and posture in the Fukanzazengi.
Taking it as a given that we should not have a technique, and specifically not a technique of breathing, then how should we breathe? It’s fair to say that most practitioners do probably have an emphasis on the outbreath. So, for instance, when I first started practicing with the AZI, what we were taught was to have a complete exhalation. And then, just as it were, waiting for a natural unwilled and uncontrolled inhalation: quite natural, quite uneventful, and then we start exhaling again.
And whilst it’s not right to impose a technique on top of that, we can observe what our experience is. And it seems to me that what our experience is when we’re focusing on our exhalation is like a down elevator in our centre, so our breath is going lower and lower and down our abdomen, into our pelvic bowl. And if we’re paying careful attention there is actually a slight push at the perineum; not a conscious push, just a downward push like a lift gradually going down, compressing what is beneath it. And then that downward movement on the exhale just stops, then there is a natural pause and then an inhalation which happens as above
It is equally possible for us to pay attention to our inhalation. And if we do, what we notice is, again on the inhalation, a downward pressure, but it’s a different downward pressure than on a long exhalation. So on the long, conscious exhalation, downward pressure is like something gradually coming down, like a delicately falling weight, compressing what’s beneath it. Whereas if the focus is on the inhalation, it’s like an energetic jump up, there’s a downward pressure on the in-breath, like a dancer pushing down before jumping up into the air, there’s an unfurling energetically of the spine. And so we experience this upward movement as well as the downward push, which people often try to artificially replicate by saying that we should push up with the top of the head, by which they mean the crown chakra, which is here, i.e. the fontanelle. Those instructions are terrible. Please ignore them.
But it’s true that on the inhalation in this way there is this energetic movement upwards. The attention that we pay to the exhalation, and potentially to the inhalation, are not exclusive of each other. We don’t have to choose particularly when we’re not trying to impose a technique there’s often a natural variance. And it seems to me that they also have different but related and complimentary benefits.
The focus on the slow deliberate exhalation, it seems to me, really helps with a kind of meditative absorption. So rather than some superficial and possibly quite rapid breathing in our upper chest, this slow, very embodied breathing really really helps our state of focus in zazen and it really helps with embodiment as well. So it acts as a kind of counter to the activities of our thinking mind. The focus on inhalation has, I think, a slightly different focus than the deliberate exhalation, which is a kind of absorption. The conscious focus on the inbreath has a much more energetic [rather than absorbitive] focus and that energetic focus, in its own way, is also very helpful. It’s not egoic. So it’s not taking place within the sense of self, but it’s also, I think, quite integrating with our environment [which enhances the non-ego] when we’re sitting, breaking down the self/world dualism. So it’s not as it were, our energy that’s unfurling on the in-breath. It’s a field quality. It’s something universal.