How to Practice Mindfulness Breathing

Despite what we see, mindfulness is unlikely to work effectively for those who need it most - people with a racing mind. You can do everything that mindfulness preaches but what is missing is changing respiratory physiology and achieving deep sleep. This is something that cannot be overlooked, if you experience a racing mind or anxiety, you need to analyse your sleep quality first.

You won't achieve a calm mind if you can't get a deep sleep. To achieve deep sleep, nasal breathing, light breathing, slow breathing, and deep breathing are all needed. The body and mind need to be calmed and this can be achieved through the breath. Get your breathing right before you move on to mindfulness as it is much easier to practice it when you have achieved deep sleep and improved your physiology.

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[DeniseMinter]

Brilliant! It's all about the breath.

[mikecross]

I've just turned 63 and have spent a lifetime getting to the bottom of what the Buddha meant by anapana-sati (= ana, breathing in + apana, breathing out + sati, thinking). Sati is not well translated as mindfulness. It's a verbal noun, an -ing word, and it means, for example, thinking, as FM Alexander used the word thinking.
On the surface, anapana-sati means "mindfulness of/thinking about breathing in and out" but FM Alexander taught that breathing is a secondary activity, not something that, in general, we should make into a primary object. With this in mind, and also in light of what the Buddha actually said in, for example, the Rahula Sutta, I translate anapana-sati as "thinking in the activity of breathing in and out." (If we translate sati as mindfulness, then "mindfulness while [not *of*] breathing in and out"). Because the Sutta is not originally about, specifically, how to breathe in a particular way. It's about how to let everything happen, freely. And, in its conclusion, the Sutta is about how to practise thinking as a letting happen.
In your video on Zen, the Zen practitioner talked in passing about posture, but neither you nor he really seemed to understand the implications of separating "posture" "breathing" and "mind-set" (or whatever the 3rd one was) into three separate things. That is not what the Buddha meant, in light of emptiness, by thinking, as a letting happen. Because, in light of emptiness, what happens is no kind of thing, no kind of an object. Rather whatever happens is empty of its own self-existence but is a function of everything else that is happening.
You could really help me to sleep easy, Patrick, if you could allay my anxiety by kindly understanding what I'm talking about here. There's no breathing exercise that can allay my anxiety at not yet having clarified, not only that the whole mindfulness thing is a racket, but also that you who knows it's a racket don't really yet understand, either, what the Buddha meant by anapana-sati, "thinking in the activity of breathing in and out." It's not, as commented below, all about the breath. It's all about learning how, in light of emptiness, to think. After I've done a good job of clarifying that for everybody's benefit, maybe I'll sleep easy, in spite of my many sins, and die happy.

[heroofhyrule]

His exercise for clearing the nasal passageways doesn't work for me no matter how much I do it. I can still barely breathe through my left nostril like I'm straining my body of oxygen when I try to breath through my left nostril. It's like someone filled it with clay and put a microscopic straw through the middle. PLEASE HELP I'M GOING INSANE

[kxrsuperstar]

Anxiety keeping you from sleeping? Fix your sleeping first…. 😢

Chicken or the egg problem here.