1) Depak Chopra's favorite, breath in and out each to a count of seven (seconds); approximately seven seconds in, seven out. An opener, or appetizer, in my opinion. Continue until whatever.

2) Count your breaths 1 to 10 over and over, and watch how easy or hard it is to remember to keep count as you go.

3) Count your breaths numbering each breath as number one, over and over, since after all, there is only the number one and each breath to some degree deserves to be recognized as a coherent individual whole.

4) Combine the last two techniques: counting first to ten, numbering each breath one through ten, but then after ten, instead of going to eleven or doing a cycle of one through ten again, count ten breaths numbering each breath as one. And go as long as you can flipping like a coin between differentiated numbers and homogenous unabstraction.
*this method if childishly represents a framework with two sides, one which differentiates from one to the next, abstracting if you will, the other being dark in the area of distinction.

5) Breath each breath as if it were your own personal unit or quanta. The quanta for your life is a breath. Each beginning of your breath is the only beginning which is real to you on some fundamental level, and each end is a full end which accordingly is as real as any end could be with reference to you.

6) Practice breathing first with a clear start proceeded by a clear stop, and back and forth like a piston moving up and down. Then begin to round your breath. Pay attention to how the top and the bottom of your breathing are connected, and smooth out the transition from one breath to another. At some point, or for some period, you will not be able to tell if you are breathing in or out at any given point, only that you are breathing and that your breathing has momentum.

7) Just breath and don't try to change the way you think. Don't have anything your supposed to be paying attention to or something to count. If you think or if your mind is doing something you'd normally interfere with, like going in loops or on a tangent, then so be it, don't resist, just let it flow. And you will see that your thinking unravels itself.

8) In contrast to letting your mind go, work so that you keep your mind clear of anything whatsoever. If anything enters your mind let it go past and leave, leaving you empty. [The emptiness here is often described in Buddhism as being "Full." I would not recommend trying to push this into a rationally apprehensible concept, but rather take it as a paradox. When the emptiness changes to a fullness, or a space more like fullness then emptiness, you'll know, that is it won't be something you'll have to look for or something you'd miss if you didn't look closely. Trying to clutch it can sometimes make it harder to perceive and connect with. Letting it find you is another metaphor to describe it.

9) Breath, while being conscious that breathing need not be a voluntary intentional forced(or done) thing. Just sit there, or empty all the air from your lungs, and wait for your body to take in the air on its own without your explicit command; and let your body breath. If it is hard to take deep [enough] breaths this way then try stretching your abdomen. You may find in general your body was more tense then you thought or noticed. For the most part the more relaxed you are the more easily you can breath well (but you have to be alert too).

10) The Allen Watts Special: Breath and let the air move into and out of your lungs by itself. Let the air rush in, and out, without your mind or body doing a thing. Just catch the flow of in-out-in-out that is already there as a natural rhythm in time.
*my own personal feeling is that people are most naturally neither-nor and that breathing shouldn't be either effortless or effortful, but in a confused state which you wouldn't be able to say which it was, and yet breathing with momentum all the same. Such is a description of [crisp, non-vague] mystery.

11) Practice breathing so that: while you breath in, your mind fills with ideas, abstractions, realizations, observations, connections, divisions; and as you breath out let all thought dissolve from your mind, let yourself fall helplessly into a void bottoming out at the end of your breath. As soon as you begin your next breath you will begin to crystallize again. Try to do this over time making both the void and the crystallization fuller and deeper in their extent.

12) Most importantly breath on your own. When you get to be familiar with breathing then these exercises will be used no more then exercises and scales within music. Learn to play your own song. With breathing you can play yourself like an instrument, if you take the time.

13) Remember that while you are breathing in time, your mind can, with a foot on each breath, skate though time while not actually being in time. The experience of being outside of time is unmistakable and all but impossible to describe. Before you become too concerned with how possible this seems, try it. And in general try not to let skepticism numb your sights by deciding intellectually before-hand what the world has in store for you.

14) Let yourself navigate slowly further and further from the world of rules and necessities and obligations, if for no other reason (not to legitimate such a claimed necessity) then to develop your individual side which exists despite any obligations put on you by your situational and physical environment. These are your frivolities, your humor, your style, your imagination, your art, your stories. Life is a story but we seldom step back enough to see it in that scope. In other words, don't use schedule limitations and worrying be an excuse for procrastinating on developing your mind. Your mind deserves to be a priority even if the people around you don't feel that way.

15) One indicator of how bent on necessary-connection you are, is to see your own reaction to focusing on oscillations. For this use the oscillation of your breath, from one side to the other. See if it seems a waste to focus on the oscillation. The sound of the ocean is relaxing, and clearing, so couldn't breathing rhythmically have a similar effect. There are also oscillations everywhere around you, this will help you to see them.

16) Within your breath there are not only the two surfaces of inhale and exhale, but there are two nodes of connection, via which the opposite breaths are connected and spring easily from eachother. It is not that you breath out, and then in. There is something else to it. That place where the two breaths touch is very important point for some reason; and it is valuable to pay attention to. Depending on your personality you may wish to leave it as an unformed 'something else,' or you may call it a nothingness present in a field of affirmative somethings. You may call it a node of mystery, or of reversal, or transition, or a node which transcends either/or distinctions and so brings opposites together with ease. Despite that it may be the most superficial aspect of all that is going on, it is a part of breathing which is rarely mentioned at all (I have never heard it mentioned).

17) This is a world of dichotomies, try to see the paradoxes in things, the splits and oscillations, while still seeing the meaning behind what you are seeing as a whole. The intentions, the feelings, the content (or story) despite the shortcomings of the medium. Know and see that this world is written on cheese cloth, but pay attention to the story that is being written.

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