Resting at the End of the Out-Breath

Every breath you take ends in a small pause. The air goes out, and for a moment nothing happens. Then the next breath comes in by itself, without your having to decide anything. You have done this several hundred million times and never once had to manage it.

Dying has the same shape. The breath goes out, the body’s grip loosens, and in the gap that opens, before anything else arises, the old masters say the nature of mind shows itself plainly, the way the sky shows itself when the last cloud leaves. Resting in the small version of that gap, the one at the end of every ordinary out-breath, is a rehearsal for the large one. It is also, on a hard day, a few minutes at ease.

This practice asks almost nothing of the body. It can be done lying down, on medication, in pain, with the television on in the next room.

The practice

1. Settle wherever you are, sitting or lying down. Let your hands rest. If your eyes want to close, let them; if they want to stay half open, that is fine too.
2. Take two or three breaths a little slower than usual, just to arrive. Do not make them deep. You are only noticing that you are breathing.
3. Let the breath go back to its own rhythm. Follow one out-breath all the way to its end, not pushing it out, just accompanying it.
4. At the end of the out-breath, notice the pause. Do not hold your breath and do not lengthen the pause on purpose. Rest there for as long as it naturally lasts, with nothing to do.
5. Let the in-breath arrive by itself. It always does. You do not have to fetch it.
6. Do this again with the next breath, and the next. Each out-breath, rest in the small open space at its end. Each in-breath, let it come.
7. When you notice you have drifted into thinking, which will happen many times, come back to the next out-breath. That is the whole method.
8. After a few minutes, or when you are tired, stop, without any ceremony.

What to expect

At first the pause may seem too short to rest in. You are not trying to make it longer; you are getting to know it. Some people feel a wave of fear the first time they really let the breath go out and do not immediately pull the next one in. If this happens, let the in-breath come right away and sit with the fear for a moment as a feeling in the body. It is the body’s old reflex, and it passes.

Sometimes the pause is very quiet, and there is a moment with no thought in it at all, only a plain, open awareness. Nothing needs to be done with that. Do not try to hold it or make it happen again. Stop if you become dizzy or short of breath, and let your breathing be entirely ordinary until you feel steady. There should never be strain. If you cannot follow the breath at all today, because of pain or fog or exhaustion, simply lie there and let the breath go out, and let it come in, and let that be enough.