Breath and Meditation: On the Path to the Temple

By Stefan Bischof, Otilia Planelles Ramos, Susanne Lomer and Annette Reiche

This book is a collection of guided meditations for beginners and professionals and describes at the same time a development process in search of the true self. This process is carefully attuned to the process of development of human consciousness.
It is about breath and body awareness, about ruthless self-honesty and loving self-acceptance, ultimately about letting oneself be guided and transformed by the depth, by the Self or by what we also call God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: tredition
• Release date: Oct 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9783347646438

Book preview

1 A Word in Advance

This book is, for the most part, a practice through guided meditation. It is important that you learn to find your own pace. If one of the meditations does not feel right, feel free to skip it. Find a duration for each meditation that suits you. Return to a previous exercise if the current one overwhelms you. Exchange your experiences with someone you trust. This book is no replacement for a meditation teacher.

In strict, traditional styles of meditation, there is no space to communicate the experience. I know of people who became psychotic after years of meditation in India. During meditation, feelings of extreme alienation may arise. Instead of experiencing wakeful perception, the practitioner may be bogged down in a coma. Sometimes, he/ she is not even aware of the condition or finds no remedy to reestablish mindfulness. The brain segregates different life events and perceptions such as feelings, sensations, thoughts, and images, especially after traumatic experiences. The neuronal pathways between distinct cerebral areas are interrupted. Such experience has to be taken seriously and communicated (to the teacher). Even therapy should be considered.

Meditation predominantly serves evolution and change. It cannot replace therapy.

Stefan Bischof

2 Motivation for Meditation

2.1 My own Way towards Meditation

At the beginning of my twenties I wanted to learn how to better concentrate, how to be more calm and patient. I wanted to better handle my emotions, work more efficiently. In brief, I wanted to become a different, better, more valuable person.

The results thereof were drastic: for the first years, I was mostly fighting my pain during sitting meditation, my restlessness, my lack of concentration. In fact, I was fighting my whole body and spirit and most of all myself.

For me as a rather rigid guy, it went down like this:

 I immediately understood that breath meditation is all about observing the breath. The result of this understanding was that I was constraining and shortening my observed breath to the extent of apnea. Consequently, my tension increased.

 The observation of my breath was not neutral. I judged whatever was perceived habitually and ceaselessly.

 Every negative judgment was a rejection of myself as I was in the moment, which hurt a lot. As a result, my pain grew stronger and only when I could no longer take it was I ready to concede old patterns and become more merciful and empathic towards myself.

 I gradually realized that the strict, world-renouncing path of the monk was not meant for me. I sought and found a path through experiential breathing with Ilse Middendorf in Berlin. This path uses mindfulness, focus, and dedication to make the body and breath the focus of all action.

 Only much later, after years of meditation and self-therapy, a Jungian Analysis, and after much time as a householder was I ready to entrust myself with a spiritual teacher.

From all these experiences arose a very personal approach to meditation that I will describe in this book, step by step, and whose experiences and insights will hopefully be beneficial to you as well.

2.2 Your Path

Even if you have come to mediation with a similar motivation – bettering oneself, becoming calmer, more efficient, more spiritually advanced, to suffer less from oneself, from others, from life itself – the point is not to achieve something.

Exactly where you are right now you already have everything you need. You are only the blink of an eye away from your own true wealth: the awakened heart of the Bodhicitta, the soft, tangible place inside of you that is wide open like the sky, warm, and brilliant.

You sit down on your pillow and trust.

The rest will come.

Zen says: ` your straw sandals.

3 The Possibilities of Breath and Meditation

 Learn to embrace a ruthless self-honesty and loving self-acceptance that sets you free.

 Get to know your breath as a tangible and sustaining inner structure and substance. The breath becomes a perceptible partner that you can avail yourself of as an inner compass in every situation to help you stay present no matter what happens. Strengthen your ability to be with things as they are. This opens up the possibility to be as you are and who you are (Bischof, Obrecht Parisi, Rieder, 2012).

 Experience your depth, your essence, and the Divine through the breath: silence, energy, flow, emptiness, fullness, spaciousness, connectedness, oneness, generosity, kindness, …

 Connect with your wounds and pain to melt, to become vulnerable, to experience compassion from your heart for yourself and others. Through the words of the Indian holy man, the Godchild of Tiruvannamalai, Yogi Ramsuratkumar (ca. 1975):

4 Object Meditation

Exercises which focus the attention on something internal such as the breath or external such as a picture lend themselves well for a gradual introduction to meditation practice. The following instructions are based on concepts of Buddhist meditation practice (Vipassana) as well as exercises from breath and body psychotherapy. They are all self-affirming.

4.1 Meditation Postures

At its root, meditation is rather an all-encompassing attitude towards life than a formal exercise.

The very best and highest attainment in this life is to remain still and let God act and speak through you.

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328)

Sitting Postures

Sitting on a stool (front view)

Sitting on a stool (lateral view)

Sitting on a chair or stool, if possible without armrests. Both sit bones are close to the front of the seating area so that the thighs are free to move. The upper and lower parts of the leg make approximately a 90 degree angle. Choose a thin, relatively firm cushion or even try without one so that the contact to the support is as clear as possible..

Sitting on a cushion (front view)