The mind is an amazing instrument—a powerful jet that can take you to almost any destination. However, if you are unable to focus, the mind is as ineffective as an aircraft without a pilot. No matter how much you want to get somewhere, a lack of focus will always lead you astray. If you strengthen your faculty of attention and harness your mind’s incredible power, you will possess an invaluable asset. A focused mind is the key to achieving your goals. If your wish is to experience more joy and peace, strengthening your faculty of attention is an essential first step.
        Many exercises help to develop focus. However, not all concentration-training techniques result in the cultivation of mental calm and intelligent insight. To cultivate these qualities, a concentration exercise should do two things. First, it should heal the root cause of restlessness and dissatisfaction. Second, it should help facilitate an experience that leads to self-knowledge. If you heal discontent at its source and grow in awareness, your life will be abundantly joyful.
        This book teaches a simple technique that can be transformational. It can make you calm, focused, and happy—not just temporarily, but for the rest of your life! The lessons found in each chapter teach breath awareness—a concentration exercise that develops mental faculties including memory, attention, perception, intuition, and intellect. Breath awareness provides immediate and long-term relief from unhappy physiological and psychological states. It not only calms the mind’s surface, but it also changes the mind at its deeper levels. Breath awareness can heal the very cause of dis-ease and discontent. Just as physical health is restored with exercise and nutrition, the mind can be healed with breath awareness.
        The mind is our greatest gift, our most valuable faculty. Mind is the instrument that lets us experience joy, sense beauty, and feel love. It is the origin of intelligence, creativity, inspiration, thoughts, dreams, and imagination. If the mind is dull or delusional it becomes the source of much misery. If our goal is to achieve joy and peace, we must find a way to eliminate the harmful mental conditioning that keeps us from being happy. Breath awareness provides a way to achieve this goal.
        Breath awareness is a relatively well-known technique practiced worldwide. Among the many reasons that people choose breath awareness over other mind-strengthening exercises, the first and foremost is that it works.
        Breath awareness has been practiced for over 2,500 years. It has been preserved in its purity and handed down verbally from teacher to student. In the past thirty years it has gained popularity and is being taught to thousands of people at centers and meditation retreats around the world. Its original Pali name is Anapana-sati, or breathing in and breathing out with awareness.
        Breath awareness works for anyone, regardless of age, race, politics, culture, or religion. As it is non-dogmatic, it does not conflict or undermine a person’s beliefs, rituals, or practices. Breath awareness is taught freely to any person who wants to learn and costs nothing more than a little time each day to perform.
        People enjoy breath awareness for many reasons. Not only is it easy to learn, it produces immediate results and does not take days, weeks, or months to feel better. Just a few minutes of breath awareness can calm agitation, settle distress, and rejuvenate a weary mind. It is also convenient. As the object of focus is breath, you can practice anytime, anywhere. Breath is with you day and night and you can never forget it at home when you go on vacation!
        Many people use breath awareness to manage serious conditions like depression, ADHD, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and anxiety. For some, breath awareness helps to lower blood pressure, minimize chronic fatigue, and balance mood swings. It can also be helpful for people who are trying to overcome a drug or alcohol addiction. Its calming effect can provide solace to those suffering from the loss of a loved one or dealing with other trauma.
        Breath awareness provides a way to examine one’s mind/body phenomenon. Some psychologists, scientists, doctors, and lay people use the technique to gain experiential knowledge about how the human mind works. Through actual experience, they can learn about mental conditioning, habit responses, instincts, brain processes, attention, and memory. They can gain understanding into how thoughts can trigger the brain to produce hormones, neurotransmitters, and other biochemistry, which in turn affect one’s emotions and physiology.
        Although breath awareness is neither a religion nor a belief, many people use it for meditation and spiritual development. Practicing not only calms and purifies the mind it can evoke profound spiritual experience. For centuries, breath awareness has been a way to awaken self-knowledge, instill compassion, and define one’s purpose. It dissolves delusional thinking and allows one to see reality as it really is; not how one thinks or believes it to be. Breath awareness transports a person to his or her peaceful center—to that safe refuge found within.
        Perhaps you are reading this book as a tool to help reduce stress and are not seeking anything profound or spiritual. Even if you are not looking for enlightening knowledge, when you practice breath awareness, you will invariably experience flashes of insight. Awakening of consciousness happens to anyone who works seriously. Even young children realize more self-awareness and knowledge. Because breath awareness offers so many benefits, both for adults and children, it is certainly a valuable skill to acquire. The purpose of this book is to present an easy-to-follow method that teaches this simple yet powerful technique so that optimum results can be achieved.

The Goal of Focus Training
Breath awareness is such a powerful tool that one must learn to practice it properly. Otherwise, strong, focused concentration could lead a person in an unwholesome direction. Merely developing the ability to concentrate well does not guarantee happiness or peace. To achieve long-term, wholesome benefits, breath awareness includes three other essential components. Breath awareness works best when practiced together with wholesome conduct, awakening insight, and sharing goodwill.
        The first component of breath awareness, wholesome conduct, refers to how a person lives, behaves, thinks, speaks, and acts. It means living without harming anyone, including oneself. Unwholesome actions, like taking intoxicants, stealing, killing, or lying can agitate the mind. A person whose mind is severely agitated will find practicing breath awareness very difficult.
        Living a wholesome life enhances the development of a person’s focus and inner peace. To grow physically healthy, you have to keep working at it by eating well and exercising. The same principle applies to mental health. You need to live a wholesome life and practice mind-strengthening exercises. Living in a wholesome way will help you progress steadily toward your goals of calm, focus and joy. By not harming yourself or others your mind will become more pure and you will have fewer personal obstacles to overcome. When your mind is pure, you will enjoy real happiness.
        Focus training should also lead one to more self-knowledge and the second component of breath awareness, awakening insight, fulfills this requirement. When you perform breath awareness you learn a great deal about your mind and how it influences your physical body and feelings. When you experience these connections and further investigate your body at its deeper levels of sensation, instinct, mental processes, and body chemistry, you will become more self-aware.
        Focus training should also foster love and kindness and that is why breath awareness incorporates a third component, sharing goodwill. If concentration exercises were performed only to serve oneself they would not lead to real happiness, nor would the result benefit the rest of humanity. When focus is used for selfish reasons the outcome might cause others to suffer. If what you do to help yourself in turn helps others, you will solve this problem. To ensure positive outcomes for both you and the rest of the world, breath awareness incorporates the practice of sharing goodwill. Sharing goodwill is the act of sending out a compassionate wish for all beings to share your happiness and peace.
        Those who practice breath awareness, while leading a wholesome life, grow in empathy, understanding, and generosity. With an abundance of goodness overflowing from within, sharing happens naturally. When you share your virtues you benefit hundredfold. Not only do your efforts help you, your goodness helps your family, friends, community, and world.

Work Worth Doing
Breath awareness requires work and to experience its transformative effect, perseverance, discipline, and patience will be needed. Mastering the distracted, restless mind is difficult for anyone. Nevertheless, those who work diligently enjoy wonderful rewards.
        One desirable quality that you will cultivate is equanimity. Equanimity is a person’s ability to calmly observe what he or she is experiencing, whether pleasant or unpleasant, and not generate craving or aversion. Equanimity gives a person the power and wisdom to refrain from wanting, either wanting pain to disappear or wanting pleasure to continue. Wanting indicates attachment and dissatisfaction, and is usually the root cause of why we suffer.
        Doing breath awareness helps you realize the truth about wanting. When you experience the transience of your thoughts and how bodily sensations keep changing, you understand why attachment to thoughts or sensations is futile. Attachment to that which is impermanent and changing leads to disappointment. Equanimity lets you embrace change with a peaceful mind.
        Although breath awareness requires work, positive results are usually experienced after the first session. When you practice regularly and lengthen your sitting times, transformation will be obvious. Not only will your disposition be more cheerful but your days will also unfold more positively. As you continue, deep-rooted and unhealthy conditioning like anger or depression will dissolve. When the root causes of your unhappiness are gone, you feel great!
        Another desirable quality that breath awareness develops is mindmastery. Mindmastery is a quality and state of mind that is self-disciplined and self-aware. A person possessing mindmastery will understand how the mind works, be proactive rather than reactive, and be effectual in all areas of life. Being the master of one’s mind is freedom; the kind of freedom that you can create within yourself.

Helping You Help Others
This book serves two purposes. One, it helps you to learn the breath awareness technique. Two, it mentors you in becoming a teacher for children. You can begin learning the technique on your own by following the ten Your Practice and Check-in sessions found at the start and end of each chapter. Simply read the guidelines and perform the exercise. The lessons become progressively more demanding, but you may take as long as you like to work through the whole program. It might take a couple of weeks to complete the whole program or it might take a few months. There is no advantage to rushing or jumping ahead as real transformation takes time. With time, you will be confident in practicing the technique and will experience positive transformation in yourself. When this happens you might begin to feel an urge to help others. To assist you with this noble mission, this book provides virtually everything you will need to facilitate a Mindmastery Program and to teach breath awareness to children.
        Included in every chapter are Teacher Tips, which provide comprehensive information about how breath awareness works and how to teach children the technique. To assist you while conducting your own program and delivering the lessons, the two sections Student Instructions and Student Practice Sessions, can be read aloud to students or retold in your own words. They provide you with step-by-step directions for teaching younger people breath awareness. Following student instructions and the practical breath awareness sessions, comes a light-hearted children’s story that illustrates how the technique works and how it may be helpful in life. After hearing a story, children often enjoy writing about their experiences. Journal suggestions are provided.
        When you feel inspired to organize your own program and teach breath awareness to children, either in your home, in a school, or at a community center, you will find useful guidelines and suggestions in the chapters: You, the Teacher, Facilitating a Mindmastery Program, Sample Application Forms, and Questions and Answers.