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How to Turbocharge Your Meditation with Gratitude
One of the simplest and most common forms of meditation is to pay attention to the breath. To practice this meditation, you sit still, with your eyes closed, and notice the breathing process without trying to change it. You can start doing this, or perhaps continue doing this, right now.
Breathing is a very special process because while it is usually orchestrated by the unconscious mind, it can also be controlled consciously. Luckily, when you forget about your breathing, your body breathes for you. Your autonomic nervous system takes care of operating your diaphragm so that your blood stays sufficiently oxygenated and you don’t keel over and return to the earth from whence you originally sprang.
At any time, we are able to intervene with our conscious mind and intentionally control our diaphragm and therefore our breathing. We can move our breath in any number of different patterns, enabling us to both speak and sing. To achieve physical endurance, we can consciously pace our oxygen supply by breathing more slowly and deeply than we would automatically.
The ability to decouple our breathing pattern from our gait is one way that we evolved to persistently hunt and exhaust animals. Most animals are adapted for short sprints, in which their lungs are pumped by their hind legs, interspersed with periods of rest…
