It’s common, when the topic of meditation and its challenges arise, that I recall a conversation with a friend.
Someone with years of practice and study in this field.
We were talking about meditation, about the expansion it has experienced in recent years, and about how I had been gaining increasing benefits since I started applying a more systematic work of coherent breathing in my sessions.
He listened carefully. And then he said:
“You know, in the past, the meditation student began with pranayama. They learned to master the breath. Only when the mind became stable was the next step given — meditation. Today, this doesn’t always happen.”
There was a silence between us.
And I realized that that sentence explained a lot.
What was lost along the way
With the boom of meditation came shortcuts.
The apps. The guided audios. The eight-week programs. The promise that anyone can meditate — just sit down, close your eyes, and observe the breath.
And it’s true. Anyone can try.
But there is a difference between trying and managing to deepen.
Many people sit to meditate and find tension instead of rest. The mind won’t stop. Sleep appears before clarity. After a few minutes, frustration sets in.
And the frequent conclusion is that meditation, although a valid practice, is not a practice they can integrate into their days — already uncomfortable in themselves, already chaotic in themselves.
Some say those discomforts pass with practice, with persistence. And that may be true.
But there is a question worth asking before persisting: are we insisting in a direction that makes sense given our current condition?
Because insisting without that clarity does not necessarily bring progress — it may even bring more effort.
It requires more energy than one has available.
And often leads to abandonment. Not out of weakness — out of exhaustion.
What happens when breathing is dysfunctional
Breathing through the mouth, in a short and shallow way — even at rest, even during meditation — tends to keep the nervous system in a state of higher activation.
And even if the breathing is nasal, dysfunctional patterns may exist — hyperventilation, retention, or less efficient use of the diaphragm.
The body is seated, in a safe place. But inside it may be on alert.
In that state, the mind hardly calms. It wanders, resists, falls asleep.
Not necessarily due to lack of discipline — but due to the absence of physiological conditions that can facilitate the practice of mindfulness.
The Indian tradition recognized this. Pranayama — the systematic work with breathing — was not a parallel exercise to meditation. It was its preparation. An entry condition.
The idea was that only when the breathing was more regulated would the mind have conditions to still itself. And only then could meditation give what it has to give.
What can change when breathing is more regulated
When one learns to breathe more deeply, slowly, lightly, and nasally — before starting to meditate — the nervous system tends to receive a different message: of safety, which can relax.
The body slows down. The heart rate regularizes. The mind finds a more natural anchor point.
Stillness does not need to be forced. It can emerge from the conditions that breathing creates in the body.
It is the difference between trying to calm the surface of a choppy lake with your hands and stopping throwing stones.
Good practices.
Lourenço de Azevedo