Breath and meditation for beginners starts with the one thing you are already doing. Anapanasati — the mindful recollection of the breath — is among the oldest and most direct meditation practices in the Buddhist tradition. The Anapanasati Sutta describes in precise detail what the Buddha taught on this: that breath, attended to with care, becomes the foundation for everything that follows. Not because it is complicated, but because it is always present, always available, and it tells the truth about the state of your mind right now.
This page covers the practice in three progressive stages: settling with the breath, working with breath, light, and energy, and — in a separate page — giving and receiving through Tonglen. Each stage builds on the last. Start at the beginning and go at your own pace. There is no rush.
Part One: Just the Breath and Meditation
Everything good in life starts with a breath — every morning, every kind word, every smile. The recollection of the breath, or Anapanasati, is an easy somatic way to tone our hectic vagal parasympathetic response and begin the mindful awareness of looking within. I don’t think I need to quote a scientific study to tell you that your brain will appreciate some extra O2, do I, now just breathe.
It does not work right away. It can take months or years to train, but it works every time, if you don’t give up. You need to be generous and patient with yourself in the most meaningful behaviour one can develop — the biggest gift you can ever give your mind, that of meditation.
I know for some of you it feels like the anxiety is too wound up, or that your worries are too powerful to overcome. Guess what — you don’t have to do anything other than breathe into, breathe past, and breathe on. You have to breathe anyway. Let’s just do it more mindfully, with purpose and attention and intention.
Starting Simply
We can give ourselves three things in the beginning: some time — let’s say five minutes — a comfortable place to sit, and some good posture. The minimum is a straight back, not rigid, not slouching. We are not at attention in the military, nor are we falling asleep. We find the middle, always the middle between the two extremes. The top of the bell curve is where the electron is most likely to be, not at either end. Too deep? Yeah, sorry.
We find the middle between our anger and our joy, and between our anxiety and our excitement. Slowly we will find the pauses between our inhalations and our exhalations — and even the middle between two thoughts. Before long the five minutes are over. Take one more slow full breath. Now, how do you feel?
The Counting Practice
There is simply no better way to turn one’s attention inward than to feel how the air tickles, cools, or warms the first few centimetres of our noses. Try it now: close your eyes, then slowly and calmly breathe in and notice the sensation as the air enters. Turn your attention further inward as your diaphragm slowly moves down and your chest expands. How does this change as you feel the need to exhale? It is as if a hundred kilograms of weight leave my shoulders as the chest contracts.
Once this feels natural, try counting. Count to one for the first complete in-and-out breath, two for the second, and so on up to twenty-one. If you become distracted — the grocery list, the face of someone you passed in the hallway — start again at one. No judgement, no commentary, just back to one. It is completely natural to only reach two or three before having to start over. This is not failure. This is the first honest look at how distracted we normally are.
Meditation is called a practice because it is something we practise. Four or five days in a row, as little or as much time as you like. Once the mind and body are as calm as water in the evening, when the wind has died down, one can see deeper into the ocean of mind. This is Laktong — insight. And when we begin and end with the wish that all beings find happiness, we begin to develop something beyond the personal: real compassion.
📝 LINK: ‘good posture’ → /proper-meditation-posture/
Part Two: Breath, Light, and Energy
We use colour here for several reasons. Especially in the beginning, when mind is learning to be still, it needs something to hold on to. So colour helps, it’s attractive, the mind likes it, and it’s only one thing more over and above your breath. Another layer so to speak, and in more advanced meditations it becomes clear how Vajrayana Buddhism uses colours.
Once the breath practice feels comfortable — once you can settle without forcing it — we add the next layer. We begin to work with energy in the form of colour, light, and sound, and we bring our attention to the chakras as inner focal points within the meditation.
The Colour Breath
As before, we sit with good posture, on a cushion or chair, and follow the breath for a few moments until we are settled. Then: we inhale air visualised as bright white light. As it passes through the throat and nears the lungs, it slowly transforms to bright red. Our attention rests on the diaphragm, and then on the chakra four finger-widths below the navel. As we exhale, the red light rises, gradually becoming blue. As it passes the heart centre it is completely blue, and it leaves from the mouth or nose as pure clear blue light.
OM — AH — HUNG
Once the colour breath becomes comfortable, we introduce sound, one sound per breath. As we inhale, we feel and gently let out the sound OM — the vibration of the body as we slowly exhale. As we slowly inhale for the second breath, the focus rests on the diaphragm, AH — the vibration of speech slides out as we slowly exhale. Now the third inhalation, and we let the vibration of HUNG — the vibration of mind fill the space around us. These three syllables correspond to the three centres of our being, and their repetition begins to unify them in a way that simple breath awareness does not.
We repeat for as long as we wish. When ready to close, we rest for a moment in whatever openness has arisen, then bring to mind the wish that everything felt in the practice — any peace, any clarity — radiates outward to all beings. All is fresh. All is new.
What Comes Next
These two practices — breath awareness and breath with light and energy — are the foundation. Once they are established, the next step is to take what we have cultivated and turn it outward: not just receiving with the breath, but giving. That is Tonglen, and it has its own page.
Next: Dissing Distraction, How to Stay Focused in Meditation→