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The inhale takes the majority of energy needed to breathe.

Inhaling needs the chest to expand and that takes strength, effort.

Muscles have to contract to accommodate oxygen.

Notice what happens physically, visually when we inhale deeply.

Focus, feel your lungs expand, fill up, and then hold this energy, life force.

The first pause has a feeling of pressure wanting to be released.

The deeper we breathe, the more pressure we create.

This first pause takes effort to hold back the pressure of our inhale.

The hard work of breathing is over after this first pause.

The exhale takes little energy to no energy.

It feels as the inhale created all the pressure (energy) needed to exhale.

The exhale feels like a filled balloon we allow to deflate on its own.

Tension, worry, and doubt can flow out in this exhale.

The chest and lungs return to resting.

We inflate the chest and lungs and then return them back to resting, simple.

The last pause allows the bad air to clear and the breath to have balance, flow, symmetry, rhythm.

Pay close attention to these pauses, the body is in a suspended animation space.

Inhales and exhales have movement and sound, the pauses find us without movement, without exertion, and without sound.

The most immediate, most powerful life force, the breath. Our breath breathes on its own without any input from us.

It is the only body function where the external (air) enters our body, without cognition.

Meditation is the intense focus on all four parts of the breath, absent of thought, concern or judgment.

The breath controls our nervous system and is our focus object to reach our creative, right hemisphere.

The most immediate need of our being is oxygen. We can live without water and food for days, only seconds for oxygen.

So much power is contained in our breath, we just are fooled because of its mundane appearance.

I think if meditation was packaged as an expensive cure many more would use it.

Being free and seemingly harmless fools the masses.

Dedicate ten minutes a day, work with only one breath, then assess your experience.

Take another slow breath and repeat. In time expand to three, then five, then ten.

You may find your self meditating