Following the Breath

...it is a great and memorable experience when for the first time (one) succeeds, with full consciousness, in allowing the natural, living breath to happen and discovers that it really does come and go, come and go of its own accord. Letting the breath happen without the participation of the will is therefore the first requirement. One must "let go." At the second stage the aspirant no longer emphasizes his exhalation but learns to let himself fall into it. He no longer tries to loosen the stiff pushed-up shoulders and chest but to loosen himself. He learns that the wrong breathing of the body expresses a wrong attitude of the self. From his breathing a man’s whole attitude to life can be read. The fear that prevents the "letting-oneself-fall" (with the breath) is a fundamental lack of trust in life. It generally takes a long time before a beginner, turning his conscious attention to his breathing, grasps the truth that not he but "it" breathes, and that he can confidently surrender even his breathing to the Great Power which keeps him alive without his assistance. This feeling that "it breathes" not that "I breathe" (and the beginner often imagines far too soon that he has known it) is one of the greatest, most blissful experiences. At the second stage of the breathing practice, one must free himself from his "I" as reference point. The surrender of the I-position experienced in right breathing demands more courage than is generally supposed.

— Hara