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

When in doubt breathe out: the power of the breath to ease pain and other contracted states.

With Vidyamala Burch recorded on April 16, 2017.

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

In this talk Vidyamala discusses how most of us hold the breath whenever we are in pain or other difficult states. She leads a ‘whole body’ breathing meditation followed by input on how to rest in the flow of the breath as a way to learn to rest in the flow of life and let go of the resistance that causes so much extra suffering.

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Joseph Goldstein

    The Inquiring Mind

    The more we understand ourselves, the more we understand each other. In this talk, we’ll be discussing some foundational understandings that provide a framework of this inquiry. It will include such topics as training our habits of attention, suffering as…

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Martin Aylward – Week of 4 March, 2024

    This week’s topic is “Wide and Deep: an Integrated Practice in Meditation and in Life”. This week at Sangha live, the morning meditations with Martin will draw each day on elements of dharma practice and understanding that can be both cultivated in meditation, and applied in daily activity. We’ll encourage a steady participation in the mornings through the week, and reflect on using the daily themes to explore our habits, beliefs and reactions throughout each day.

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Don’t be realistic. Be real

    Through the cultures within family, education and work, we are constantly orientated towards ‘realistic’ expectations and visions for our lives. Dharma practice asks us to abandon the realistic in favour of the real; listening deeply to life and to how things actually are, so as to respond wisely and lovingly, fully and freely. In this…

    Read More

  • Nathan Glyde

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of May 10, 2021

    This week’s theme is: Invitation to Awaken.

    The Buddha adopted a medical model to express the seminal and accessible four noble truths. We can see a diagnosis, a cause and symptoms, a cure, and a treatment. Namely dukkha (stress), taṇhā (thirsting), nibanna (freedom), and the noble eightfold path of release. This can be taken as a simple direction of how to understand and treat the human condition. It’s also an invitation into the depths and intricacies of the dharma.

    Read More

  • Kevin Griffin

    Integrity and Clarity: Foundations for Awakening

    Everything in Buddhist practice builds on ethics and morality. With this basis, meditation and insight unfold naturally. This talk will explore the connection between living a life of integrity and developing spiritual awakening

    Read More

  • Nirmala Werner

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of 22 September, 2025

    We’re grateful to have Nirmala Werner guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they support and deepen your practice.

    This week’s theme is: The Still Heart: Cultivating Equanimity in an Unsteady World

    In a world marked by constant change, uncertainty, and emotional intensity, equanimity can seem like a distant ideal-or even a form of indifference. But in the Buddhist tradition, equanimity (upekkhā) is not cold or passive. It is the spacious, steady heart that knows how to stay open, grounded, and present with whatever life brings.

    In this week we will explore equanimity as a deep source of inner freedom-neither detached nor reactive, but wise, loving, and awake.

    Through daily reflection and embodied practice, we will ask:

    What is true equanimity, and what is it not?

    How can we meet change without losing our ground?

    How do we love and let go-at the same time?

    And how can we live with a still heart in a restless world?

    Our Dharma Library thrives through collective generosity. Your donation helps sustain this offering for our entire community.

    Read More