I’ve been listening to guided meditations lately as part of my morning writing and meditation practice, and it’s led me to a more subtle understanding of the idea of following your breath. Every time I hear that phrase — “follow your breath” — I find myself forcing air into my lungs, creating a visible, tangible expansion in my rib cage, opening my throat, imposing a powerful urge to yawn. But the guided meditations speak of the slight sensation of cool air entering the nostrils or warmer air expelling. Perhaps you notice the breath at the top of your nose?

Breath is a subtle thing. When my kids were babies I would go often to check on their breathing–a neurotic but, I’ve learned, not uncommon tick of early parenting. The rise and fall of the chest that one might witness in the peaceful moment of watching a little child sleep in a move is nowhere to be found for the anxious, bleary-eyed new parent. The child is still, unmoving. all the peace you’ve been longing for suddenly terrifying. I’d fit my big hand across the tiny rib cage–and wait. The subtlest sensation would finally cue me to relax. Mere millimeters of movement, not up and down, in no way obvious, would allow me to find my own way to much needed sleep. It occurred to me, my eyes closed, ear buds piping the soothing voice into my ear, “follow your breath,” that I could pay the same close attention to the signs of life in my own body. Not forcing or exaggerating, not changing. Instead, attending with infinite patience and precise attention to the smallest movement, the infinitesimal shift. Dropping to that level of attention with that much focus as I did when checking on my tiny children creates a radical shift in my perception. Forces me into this moment. Begins to turn me into a person on whom nothing is lost, which is to say, a writer.