What is Anapana Practice?

An unusual meditation practice

This website introduces an unusual but very effective meditation practice. It's unusual in a number of different ways. For one thing it's an old practice—two and a half thousand years old—yet it seems fresh and undated, as approachable today as it ever was. Apart from the language in which its instructions were written down, it could have stepped straight out of our own times.

A body-based practice

It's also unusual in being firmly body-based. Before it moves the focus to the mind, its first six steps all focus on the body. And even when we work more directly with the mind, physical feelings or sensations continue to be prominent. The word "experience" comes up repeatedly. We can observe things at a distance, but we experience them directly, through all of our senses. So we're asked to experience our reactivity in Step 7, which is to sense its physical manifestations in the body. Then we're asked to experience our state of mind in Step 9.

A psychological training

It's a meditative practice, but it's also a form of training oneself, a psychological training which can help to change our deep-seated habitual reactions. This may involve healing deep places and old wounds within. It does this as gently and as naturally as breathing. Most of us carry wounds from the past. Some of those memories we have buried so successfully that we've long forgotten them. We don't allow them to surface in our thinking. Won't it be unbearably painful to have them surface again in this practice?

A healing practice

This is a healing practice. Before we face anything that needs to be healed the practice brings us to a place in which we can meet whatever we may need to meet. Deep hurts will not peep out from where we may have hidden them until we sense it is safe for them to do so. When those unhealed hurts of the past come into contact with the calm and contentment, the ease and well-being, the joy and the hope of the present in our practice, the dark shadows in our memories will be chased away. At last we'll be able to look fearlessly and honestly at yesterday's monsters, and find them diminished and powerless before our present-day strength. And if we can meet yesterday's terrors so painlessly, can the future hold anything we need fear?

An unusual turn in the road

Many earnest seekers from all religious traditions have taken a problematic turn in the road. Wishing to purify the heart they have taken up painful ascetic practices, disciplining and punishing the body. The Anapana practice seems to reflect the experience of one person who took an unusual and much misunderstood path. Tradition says he tried the ascetic pathway first, starving himself until he nearly died, until he realised he was gaining nothing from it. Then in a moment of inspiration he remembered a rather pleasant experience he had once had as a child which involved mindful awareness of the body. Could such an experience be the way to what he sought?

He had tried every other approach he knew of. It was worth a try. His companions, according to the story, were disgusted. "The mendicant Gotama has reverted to luxury" they said, as they left him eating a little rice gruel. Who was this man, and what was his new practice? Gotama was the person who has come to be known as "the Buddha" or "the Blessed One" by his followers.

A practice for all who are human

Yet I hasten to add that Anapana has little to do with the teachings, the practices or the customs of today's Buddhism. Buddhism has developed into a great world religion, but in the process it has mostly left Anapana practice behind. Whether you are a Buddhist or not, this practice is accessible to all of us. You don't have to be a Buddhist in order to practise it—and actually, I'm not—nor will it turn you into a Buddhist.

The only qualification you need to benefit from it is to be human: to have a human mind, and a human heart, to have grown up in human society, to be subject to the normal human hopes and fears, to have suffered the normal knocks and setbacks of life, and maybe some of its thrills and successes too. If that's you, welcome to the Anapana adventure. Whether you practise a religion or not, doesn't matter. Whether you're a Buddhist or not, doesn't matter.

If Anapana practice helps you to become a better human being, I'm sure it will make you a better Buddhist, a better Christian or Moslem, a better Hindu or Jew, a better non-theist even. It will make you a stronger and more resilient person, a more compassionate person, a calmer and more peaceful person, an easier person to live with, and a benefit to any society or community. Yes, these are some big claims, but I think they are justified. See for yourself by embarking on your own Anapana adventure.

The Anapana adventure

I was delighted when I first discovered Anapana practice, and I decided at once to learn it. My attempt to learn it turned out to be more challenging than I had expected, for I had no reliable guide to it. It became an unfolding adventure, and I had little idea where it was leading me. But when I followed it to the end it proved to be deeply healing and transformative.

Along the way my life took an unexpected turn, one that could have been hard for me to come to terms with. I was surprised to meet that turn with almost no pain or regret, and I honestly believe that was the result of all the months and years that I'd spent working with Anapana.

Here's an overview of the whole practice.

A varied practice: The first phase

It's also a varied practice. Rather than giving us just one thing to do, its approach progresses through a series of distinct phases. It's set out in sixteen steps, and these seem to fall naturally into four groups of four. We start the practice each time with simple mindfulness of the breath, then of the whole body. This first phase helps us to slow down and sit calmly, ready for the deeper work ahead.

The second phase

In the second phase mindfulness of the body goes further and leads us into a very pleasant state of ease and well-being. That's important because it enables us to meet some of the issues that are troubling our minds, and hold them in the calm and well-being we have created, until we can bring heart and mind into stillness.

The third phase

We may have stilled both body and mind, but we haven't yet changed the way we respond to what life may throw at us. Fear or anger, craving or aversion, and a host of other painful reactions, will continue to arise. The healing of all our reactivity is the work of the third phase of the practice. Only when we have calmed today's issues can we start to develop a new dispassion towards other troubling issues. The third phase is a quiet and still phase, but it leads to a complete liberation from whatever psychological bonds may be shackling our minds.

The fourth phase

The results of this practice are seen in its fourth phase. This phase is not actually part of our meditation practice. This is life as we live it, after the healing and liberation of its third phase. When we arise from our practice, our responses to whatever life may hold will have changed. Things that may once have given rise to painful reactions we now meet with a calm dispassion, in which we can think clearly and respond in more positive ways, sometimes in quite creative ways.

Each time we practice, we work as far through this sixteen-step process as we are able to go. With practice we find we can get a little further, and further, until we can progress through the whole process. This will take time, patience, and skill, but once we get started on the process we find it becomes its own reward.

Together, the sixteen steps which make up these four phases make up a complete meditation practice.