Without thinking or intending, my body breathes on its own! Surprise! Everything participates in the miracle. Legs invite the air. Palms pulse with the gaseous tidal flow. Stomach and back, neck and head, face and chest, every part responds to every other.

Breathing in, all of life supports me. Breathing out, sharing deeply. I breathe heart to heart with the world. My breathing in, is the world breathing out. My breathing out, is the world breathing in. We are lovers! Cell to cell. Membrane to membrane. Intimately moving in rhythmic embrace. How simple. How natural. How richly now.

People who practice this cycle often note that as their smile deepens, so too does their breathing. The process is very natural. Breathing in and breathing out..... smiling. Perhaps you have already practiced breathing meditation where you trained yourself to watch the breath coming and going. You may have even learned to control the breathing in various ways. With the cycle of samatha, we don't so much "watch" the breath, nor do we try to control it in any way. We simply feel the movements of the body breathing. Just smiling and breathing. That's it! Don't think of this as a meditation practice. This is life. With rare exceptions, breathing happens twenty-four hours a day, from the moment we are born to the moment we die. If we are breathing, we are alive.

Most people are aware of only certain parts of their body at any one time. A tightness in the chest, a pain in the elbow and so forth. Unfortunately there are many other parts that completely escape our attention. Although we may know it intellectually, few people experience their body as one completely integrated organism.

I sometimes find it useful to think of my body as having only one very complex muscle that simultaneously flexes in a multitude of different directions in order to support the various movements. This may sound a bit strange but just consider your own body this way. Have you ever had a sore back? At times like this, even picking up a relatively light weight object, can make us acutely aware of how bending in a certain way requires that we anchor ourselves in another part of our body. In fact, if we attend very closely to our physical movements, we will find that every little movement is accompanied by compensating movements in other parts of the body.

I remember holding a new born baby and marvelling that as she breathed, a ripple of movement ran from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head and then back again. Breathing is a rhythmic muscular movement. As adults, could we become so still and so sensitive that we intimately feel the subtle movements of breathing rippling throughout our entire organism? Smiling and breathing. Right now I am sitting back from my computer to do this. Please join me for a moment. We can smile and breathe together. As you breathe, become aware of the palms of your hands. Can you sense the rhythm of your breathing right here in your palms? Attend to your feet and legs. Can you feel the breathing in your thighs and feet? Notice your back breathing. Your scalp and face. Feel your arms, your chest and abdomen. As you smile, open your awareness to feel your entire body breathing.

Of course, we breathe with much more than just our lungs. Air moving in and out of the chest won't do us much good if it isn't transported via the blood to the cells which absorb oxygen and give off various waste products. Some people feel a little foolish doing all this smiling. Our Scottish friend admitted as much. If that is the case for you, since you've gone this far anyway, why not go the whole hog and do something completely ridiculous! Imagine each cell of your body is a nose! An entire human body made of trillions of tiny noses, each one savouring the delicate scent of oxygen. Ah! Here's a molecule from the rainforests of Borneo. Mmm, here's some from the grasslands of Patagonia! Becoming very still, see if you can feel all of these noses inhaling and exhaling; inner connoisseurs of the rare and wondrous art of breathing. If you feel reluctance to do this, at least you could try sharing it with your children! Teach them how to be really "nosey"!

Breathing in. Breathing out. One's entire body breathing and savouring this essence of life. Sometimes the wonderful simplicity of smiling and breathing slips away without our even noticing. This can especially happen to "meditators". Our smile fades as we intently focus. Our critical faculties may subtly turn to judgement. Instead of enjoying our breathing, enjoying the immediacy of being alive, we step out from our bodies and once again become distant observers, uninvolved bystanders, spectators at some kind of meditation sporting event. Once we are no longer directly involved, our minds begin to wander all over the lot. Old stories surface. Reviewing the past and planning the future. The easeful pleasure of presence disappears and we are left with wild hive of buzzing thoughts. Does this ever happen to you?

Like an early morning mist rolling up the valley, this subtle dulling can obscure the arising moment. We are settling nicely into our meditation, when, without really noting it, we find ourselves drifting in a vague aimless way. Any sense of active exploration has disappeared in the mist. Some people associate this drifty state with a sense of turning "inward" but it can also mask a subtle turning off from, or a turning away from what people often think of as the "outer world". This is not awakening. A better name might be asleepening! Imperceptibly, a gradual tightening and freezing of our faculties takes place until we are deep in an experience that is neither here nor there, neither awake nor asleep. Compared to the business of our lives, it may feel restful and calming but it is not very functional for driving a car in busy traffic or interacting with others in a compassionate and enlivening way.

If you recognise this dullness creeping in, check your smile and if it seems to have disappeared, Bali eye dance until you recontact a playful quality that refreshes. When we find ourselves smiling and breathing with deepening calm, then it's time to brighten the state even more by anchoring ourselves in the sensory richness of present moment.

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