DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - At what rate should I advance in my breathing meditation?

**CGECngjA** · 12-24-2010, 03:52 AM

I am currently practicing ~30 min breathing counting meditations, 1-2 times a day.

I count 1-inhale, 2-exhale, up to 10.
I rarely break my counting, but when I do have distracting thoughts, they come into the foreground while the counting is in the background. So my counting is always solid, but I'm not sure what this says of my concentration.
To add other things to focus on, I focus on the sensation of breath in/out of the nose, and I visualize a weight ascending/descending with the breath.

I have read that the progression should go to just counting the inhales, and then ceasing to count at all. I imagine ceasing a focus or a visualization would come soon after that.

I wonder; am I doing too much right now? I feel that the counting is almost distracting at this point; I would rather simply count the inhales. In fact, most breathing guides I have seen have recommended starting only counting by inhales/exhales, not by both as I'm doing. But I found a few that did, and I thought that maybe it would be a more gradual progression. Should I move on? I don't want to develop poor joriki.

12-24-2010, 03:52 AM	#1
CGECngjA Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 421 Senior Member	At what rate should I advance in my breathing meditation? I am currently practicing ~30 min breathing counting meditations, 1-2 times a day. I count 1-inhale, 2-exhale, up to 10. I rarely break my counting, but when I do have distracting thoughts, they come into the foreground while the counting is in the background. So my counting is always solid, but I'm not sure what this says of my concentration. To add other things to focus on, I focus on the sensation of breath in/out of the nose, and I visualize a weight ascending/descending with the breath. I have read that the progression should go to just counting the inhales, and then ceasing to count at all. I imagine ceasing a focus or a visualization would come soon after that. I wonder; am I doing too much right now? I feel that the counting is almost distracting at this point; I would rather simply count the inhales. In fact, most breathing guides I have seen have recommended starting only counting by inhales/exhales, not by both as I'm doing. But I found a few that did, and I thought that maybe it would be a more gradual progression. Should I move on? I don't want to develop poor joriki.
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