You’ve made the time to meditate.

You’ve sat down on the cushion and aligned your mind.

Now, it’s time to get to the heart of meditation and cultivate some good old-fashioned mindful awareness.

Many meditation practices concentrate on concentrating awareness on breathing, which is effective.

The breath is always there and represents all rising and falling phenomena.

Sustaining our attention on the breath is more complicated than it sounds. Sure, you can do it for a couple of seconds.

But watch, you’ll be counting 1, 2, 3. Then it’s “Oh, hey, I’m pretty good at this!” and your mind wanders again…

To improve our attention-sustaining ability, we work through narrowing our attention from everything in our present experience until we reach the breath.

This is sometimes known as the breathing space meditation. I’m sharing my own nuanced but more effective variation.

By the way, the breath can be a triggering focus point for some people during meditation. If that’s you, consult your doctor before engaging in these practices.

Narrowing Awareness

Each stage listed below is designed to help you gradually transition to your main object of awareness: the breath. Following these steps will help you stay focused on the breath as you transition to it naturally.

Each stage below should be sustained for approximately ten breaths. If that feels too long, or you’re pushed for time, start with just two breaths on each stage. You can always work your way up progressively and increase the number of breaths weekly.

Stage 1: Everything (Narrowing Awareness)

Get yourself into a comfortable position with your back straight.

Once comfortable, close your eyes and start by drawing your attention and awareness to everything within and around you right here now.

It can be whatever you want, as long as it’s coming in through your senses right now.

It could be the sensations of your backside on the chair, the sounds of cars passing outside, and the birds tweeting. It could be the taste of your morning coffee left over in your mouth. You get the idea; be creative!

If you can keep several of these things in your awareness, that’s good; however, if you struggle and can only focus on one, roll with that instead.

Stage 2: Body & Feelings (Narrowing Awareness)

After reaching your chosen number of breaths in stage 1, it’s time to narrow your awareness to the sensations in your body right now.

At this stage, you could become more attuned to the sensations of your feet on the floor, your heart beating, your hands resting in one another, or the breeze coming from the window and running over your skin.

Maintaining peripheral awareness of what’s happening around you is essential, as you did in stage one. Don’t zone out; maintain awareness of the sounds and stimuli in your environment, but 80% of your focus should now be on bodily sensations.

There may be occasions where those bodily sensations are pleasant or unpleasant. You might be feeling pain or discomfort. If that’s the case, do your best to bring objective awareness.

Attempt not to get drawn into the narrative. Instead, treat it inquisitively like you’d never experienced it before.

Stage 3: Breathing (Narrowing Awareness)

It’s important to note that whilst breathing during meditation, the tongue should be rested on the roof of your mouth. You should breathe in and out of the nostrils and count at the start of the out-breathe rather than the in-breath.

After reaching your chosen number of breaths in stage 2, it’s time to narrow your awareness further. This time, you will focus on just the sensations of breathing, which means the feelings of your stomach and chest rising and falling.

The expansion and contraction of the diaphragm. The air flows in and out of the nostrils and over the upper lip. Rising, falling, rising, falling…

Your attention doesn’t have to be focused on any of these areas specifically, but it’s mostly about making sure that breathing is the core of your focus now.

You should maintain an outside awareness of the body and feelings outlined in stages 1 and 2, but keep them in the periphery.

Stage 4: Nose Breathing (Narrowing Awareness)

This stage is a minor refinement from stage 3. By now, you should already be in the flow of paying attention to the various sensations of your breath. But now, you’ll narrow this further until you focus solely on breath sensations at the nose.

Picture a little imaginary triangle between the upper arc of your two nostrils and the centre of your upper lip. This is where you should focus about 80% of your attention.

You should still have some awareness of the other stages we worked through, but these should only be distributed approximately between the other 20–30% of your attention.

It’s important to remember that at stages 3 and 4, you shouldn’t imagine any flow of breath, which can be a natural tendency; we’re simply directing our attention to its sensations.

Sometimes, it can be very dull, and we struggle to pick up any feeling. However, the gradual approach of these stages should make it easier to access these sensations.

If you can’t feel any sensation, it may just be a matter of noticing how the air that leaves our nostrils is slightly warmer than the air that enters after it has been warmed by entering our bodies’ microclimate.

There may also be times when the airflow feels particularly intense, even painful, at times when you become so focused. This is not a problem as it gives more sensation to direct your attention towards.

This can often be the case when working in a colder environment, as cold air provides more sensation. This is why I like to open my window during my morning meditation.

Sustaining Attention

After working through stages 1–4, you’re finally into the thick of it.

You’ve refined your attention, and you should hopefully be at a stage where your mind has settled as your focus narrows into present-moment awareness.

The goal is to be able to follow the breath for at least ten breaths at stage 4.

It’s not a problem if you’re unable to do this straight away. The practice is flexible and allows you to progressively increase the number of breaths at each stage. You might do it on a day-by-day, week-by-week, or month-by-month basis. It all depends on how quickly you adapt to the practice.

My general advice is to go slow. Training the mind is similar to training the body, and you can experience discomfort if you try to push yourself too fast without having sufficient time to adapt.

After you have counted for the goal of ten breaths at stage 4, it’s time to abandon the counting. It’s a valuable tool for helping us to settle the mind, but it’s not the end destination.

After the counting stops, the attention stays on the breath at the nose. But this is where things start to get interesting, and you’ll have the chance to observe some of the workings of your inner mind.

It’s fine only to manage a few minutes at this stage. However, remember that all the stages leading up to this one are just as valuable tools for training attention and will benefit you.

Our goal, however, is to keep our attention here for as long as possible. For this reason, I prefer not to set a timer for meditation. Instead, I like to set up a clock or stopwatch somewhere in view to see how long I have been meditating.

If I’m in a rush or things don’t feel right, I can progress through the stages quicker by taking fewer breaths at each stage.

This is why giving yourself more time to meditate allows a better opportunity to work through the stages with diligence, providing a better chance of reaping the rewards of the practice.

The path is not linear, and even experienced meditators can sometimes feel like they're back at square one. We all have to accept that this is part of the process.

Expanding Awareness

My favourite thing about the approach outlined in this post is that it doesn’t feel like a chore. You can decide to sit down and take one breath at each stage.

It will only take a few minutes. If you decide you’re ready to go deeper and want to work through ten breaths at each stage and remain focused for 30 minutes after stage 4, you can do that just as well.

Some people will prefer the open-ended nature of this approach; some people will not like it. I’ve always been a pragmatic person who likes to do things systematically, and this approach has worked for me because it is systematic.

Still, it gives anyone who uses it autonomy over how they apply it. This is important because much of meditation is about experience rather than narrative. Going by how things feel rather than how you think they should feel is more beneficial.

So when you decide you’ve had enough, it is important not to immediately leave your meditation and rush downstairs to get your morning coffee while you check your phone's emails.

Gradually expanding awareness allows us to carry our calm and composed energy from the cushion into our everyday lives. This, fortunately, isn’t anything more to remember from what you’ve learned already. To expand our awareness as we end our meditation, we work through stages 1–4 in reverse:

1. Ten breaths with attention on the nose (stage 4)
2. Ten breaths with attention on all sensations of breathing (stage 3)
3. Ten breaths with attention on all bodily sensations (stage 2)
4. Ten breaths with attention on all present-moment stimuli (stage 1)

I like adding an extra stage where I count ten breaths with my eyes open. This has been extremely useful in gently transitioning from meditation to daily life.

After finishing, I also find it valuable to remind myself that the only bad practice is the one that never happened.

Bringing it together…

Get yourself in a comfortable position for meditation.

Align your mind using the “ROLL” approach outlined earlier.

Please make sure to bring your attention to all stimuli in the present moment.

Narrow your attention to the sensations of the body.

Narrow your attention further to sensations of the breath.

Narrow your attention further to the sensation of the breath at the nose and sustain your attention here for as long as you can comfortably.

When you decide it’s time to end the meditation, work back through these stages of awareness in reverse.

Enough for today.