Breath Awareness Meditation (Mindfulness of Breathing)

How to do it

1. Sit upright on a chair, cushion or bench, back tall but not stiff. Rest your hands and drop your shoulders.
2. Close your eyes, or rest your gaze softly on the floor a little ahead of you.
3. Take two or three slightly deeper breaths to settle. Then let your breath find its own pace.
4. Pick one place to feel the breath: your belly, your chest or your nostrils. Choose the one you feel most clearly.
5. Stay with that one spot for the whole sit. Don't move between them.
6. When your mind wanders, and it will, silently name what pulled you away ("thinking", "planning") and come back to the breath. No scolding.
7. Don't steer the breath. Let each one finish on its own; there is nothing to count.
8. When time is up, let the last breath finish. Open your eyes slowly and wait a few seconds before you stand.

Benefits

• Calmer and clearer in one sit

  You'll get up calmer than you sat down. In trials of mindfulness programs, anxiety and depression scores fell by a small to moderate amount after about eight weeks^[3].

• Dozens of reps every sit

  Each time you notice a wandering thought and come back, you practice the skill itself. Ten minutes gives you plenty of chances.

• See what your heart did

  With an Apple Watch, Spoon shows your heart rate during the sit and charts it afterwards.

• A habit that adds up

  Every sit saves to Apple Health as Mindful Minutes, so you watch your practice build.

What the research says

The best summary is a 2014 review in JAMA Internal Medicine: 47 randomized trials with 3,515 adults from a range of clinical groups. Mindfulness programs improved anxiety, depression and pain by a small to moderate amount, with moderate-strength evidence. Evidence for less stress was low, and for positive mood, attention or sleep it was low or insufficient. There was no evidence that meditation programs beat active options such as medication, exercise or other behavioral therapies^[3].

One caveat: nearly all these trials taught a structured course over several weeks, with an instructor and home practice. Silent, solo sitting with a timer is rarely tested on its own, so its evidence is thinner^[3].

Meditation can also have side effects. A 2020 review of 83 studies with 6,703 people found adverse events in 8.3% of participants, most often anxiety and depression. The rate was 3.7% in experimental studies and 33.2% in observational ones, and some events happened in people with no history of mental health problems^[4].

Where breath awareness comes from

Breath awareness is one of the oldest recorded meditation instructions. The Anapanasati Sutta, the Buddha's discourse on the full awareness of breathing, sets out sixteen exercises. The first is simply knowing an in-breath as an in-breath and an out-breath as an out-breath^[1].

In 1979, Jon Kabat-Zinn brought a secular version into medicine as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), an eight-week course with daily home practice^[2]. Spoon's Meditation gives you the timer and the quiet; the practice is yours.

Tips

• Expect your mind to wander within seconds. Noticing it is the practice, not a failure.
• If your breathing feels forced, you are steering it. Let it be exactly as it is.
• Pick your spot before you start and keep it for the whole sit.
• Set a length you trust and stop checking the clock.
• Lying down works, but you're more likely to fall asleep. Sit up if you want to stay awake.

Related exercises

• Sufi Zikr (Dhikr) BreathingFive seconds in, seven seconds out, with room for a word of your own.
• Nine Purification BreathsNine slow breaths in three sets: left, right, then both. A clear mind before you sit.
• True SleepThe 90-Minute NapA nap long enough for one full sleep cycle, so you wake from lighter sleep instead of deep sleep.