Use code SUMMERPRACTICE for a 25% discount on all On Demand Courses through August 31.

The Out Breath: Unlocking Concentration

With Toby Sola recorded on June 16, 2024.

Found our teachings useful? Help us continue our work and support your teachers with a donation. Here’s how.

Shodo Harada Roshi is known as a “teacher of teachers”, with masters from various lineages coming to sit with him in Japan. If you went to Harada’s monastery, the main meditation technique you’d learn involves slowing the out breath to last one minute. This drastically slows down your physiology, which in turn settles the mind.

Listen to the audio version below, or click here to download the mp3.

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Vimalasara Mason-John

    When did you stop breathing?

    We could say that the Buddha was teaching us to breath again. It’s said that the prince Siddhartha was sitting under a Bodhi tree, practicing the anapanasati (the mindfulness of breathing) when he gained enlightenment and became awake, a Buddha. He was aware of the whole experience of breathing. Through breathing he trained the mind…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of Nov 15, 2022

    This week’s topic is Kindle the Flame. Metta practice, which nourishes the heart’s capacity for friendliness, brings many benefits. It softens our relationship to ourselves, nourishes us with a sense of connection, puts challenges into perspective and offers a safe ground from which we can meet life with a sense of care. We dedicate this week to (re)ignite the flame of metta, using as an inspiration the Karaṇīyamettā Sutta, a famous discourses of the Buddha.

    Read More

  • Christelle Bonneau

    Truth and surrender.

    Worldwide Insight talk from Christelle Bonneau: “Truth and Surrender”. Guided meditation, Dharma talk and Q&A.

    Read More

  • Sophie Boyer

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Sophie Boyer – Week of 18 November, 2024

    We’re delighted to have Sophie Boyer guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they bring peace and depth to your practice.

    This week’s theme is: The Fruits of Attention

    What difference does a simple reorientation of attention do to this moment? How will it condition what comes next? Every day this week there will be an opportunity for the fruits of attention to be revealed such as care, generosity, and morality. Let’s explore this together.

    Read More

  • Integrity – A Bridge Over Troubled Water

    In challenging situations, we can lose our ground. Not knowing what to rely on, we are liable to reactivity, either withdrawing or lashing out. Fear and anger are very human reactions to what we perceive as injustice or threat. While there is no need to condemn us for experiencing them, our hearts might yearn for…

    Read More