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

  • Frank Ostaseski

    Tonight the Subject is Love

    Love is the essential quality needed for the journey through life. The heart’s desire for deep connection fuels the journey, inspires and deepens our practice. This is why at some point we stop practicing to get anywhere, or to achieve anything… we just practice because we love it. Link to the YouTube video that we were…

    Read More

  • Willa Blythe Baker

    The Wisdom of the Body

    While we might think of the body as flesh and blood, there is so much more to this mortal coil. The body in fact may be our deepest teacher. In this session, we explore how to listen to the wisdom of the body and realize its potential to guide us to groundedness, self-honesty, presence and wisdom.

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Caverly Morgan – Week of June 8

    We’re very grateful to have Caverly Morgan hosting our Daily Meditation Series for North America. To find out more about Caverly, and to view her past recordings and contributions to Sangha Live, click here. Monday, June 8 Hope is the light of possibility, part 1 Wednesday, June 10 Remembrance: light becomes what it touches Friday,…

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Love and Dust: Opening your Heart Wide to a Dying World

    With the fragile condition of our eco-system finally breaking through into the mainstream news cycle, we can easily be overwhelmed by the loss of biodiversity and permafrost, the pollution of earth, air and oceans, and the attendant insecurity and danger to life on earth. We might struggle both with the information itself – the amount,…

    Read More

  • Chris Germer

    The Power of Self-Compassion

    Most people are more compassionate toward others than themselves when things go wrong. However, burgeoning research shows that self-compassion is good for everybody. Fortunately, it can be learned.  How can we seamlessly bring self-compassion into meditation practice and daily life?  What are two secrets about self-compassion practice that make all the difference?

    Read More

  • Shaila Catherine

    How Conduct Bears Fruit: Training in Not-Killing

    In this session Shaila Catherine explores the fruits of karma and the consequences of action through a detailed consideration of why and how we practice ethical precepts. The focus for this talk is the commitment to not kill.

    Read More

  • Nathan Glyde

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of Jan 3, 2022

    This week’s topic is: Beginning to See More Possibilities.

    The Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki, said: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” With a beginner’s possibilities we can release our heart’s wholesome aspirations. Let’s engender a beginners spirit, and manifest our innate potential for freedom and well-being: embodying a saint’s patience to start again; an adventurer’s openness to step out of constricted views; and a creative’s zeal to reimagine ourselves and our world”

    Read More