Three Things I Believed About People Who Sit and Breathe, Before I Became One

I used to laugh at people who sat and breathed.

Not cruelly. It was only that whenever I saw someone with their eyes closed, sitting still in a coffee shop, I thought: too much free time, or something has gone wrong. I have been a bricklayer for nearly twenty years, and wherever a house needs building, rendering or plastering I turn up at seven in the morning. My hands know the trowel and the float, the smell of wet cement and the rattle of the mixer down the alley. Sitting and breathing belonged to another world.

Then one noon I tried it. For no grand reason: waiting for the mortar to set, my phone dead halfway through a video, and fifteen minutes ahead of me with nothing to hold. From that day I knew the three things I believed about people who sit and breathe were not what I had thought. This piece tells each one, in the order I dropped them.

This is not about telling you that you are wrong. The three beliefs below sound reasonable, which is exactly why they stayed in my head for so long. Nor is it about getting you to sit and breathe every day: people who sit and people who don't both get by, and what anyone does with their own breath is their business.

Is sitting and breathing just sitting around, and is sitting around just being lazy?

11:40, midday, Mr. Chín's house at the end of the alley. The lunch box was empty, my hands still grey with mortar. I sat on an upturned paint bucket, back against an unplastered wall, with fifteen blank minutes in front of me. Those fifteen minutes usually went by checking the time.

"Mr. Sáu, you sitting around doing nothing?"
"Yes, doing nothing."
"This morning you said a tradesman who sits around is finished."
"This morning was this morning."

Khoa, the nineteen-year-old apprentice, grinned and went to get a bottle of water. I stayed where I was, with my own sentence sitting between the two of us.

The easy explanation is that I had no time. True enough, and if you stop there then sitting and breathing is only for people with time on their hands. But those fifteen minutes were real. What I lacked was not the time but permission. There was an unwritten rule in my head: a hand that holds nothing is a hand that has walked off the job. The phone was the only way to sit around while still looking busy. So it was not time I was short of, it was a task small enough to let me sit still without feeling lazy. Three out-breaths are that task: they have a beginning and an end, and nobody notices.

There is a piece on this site saying plainly that you don't need an hour of stillness for it to count as meditation. Only after reading it did I realise that at some point I had put a price on this thing far higher than it was worth.

The first time, the three breaths felt strangely long, and my eyes kept sliding over to Khoa to see whether he was laughing. He was, a little. After a week, some days I forgot, some days I remembered, and some days I sat past three breaths without noticing. Some people feel their shoulders drop, some people feel nothing. At the start I was in the second group. The way to know you are doing it right is not feeling lighter, but finishing the three breaths and getting up to work without feeling you have just dodged something. On a really busy day, one slow out-breath as I set the trowel down.

Do it somewhere steady at ground level, eyes open. Not on scaffolding, not on a roof, not next to a running machine or at the edge of a floor with no railing. If you feel dizzy, short of breath, tightness in the chest or tingling in the hands while you breathe, stop, go back to normal breathing and rest. If it keeps happening, it is worth seeing a doctor to rule out a physical cause.

There is one habit that sounds very sensible: wait until you have a quiet place and a truly free afternoon, and only then start. It is tempting because it sounds like a requirement for breathing practice. But the truly free afternoon rarely arrives, and if it does the phone has already taken all of it. Instead, pick a wait that is already built into your day, like waiting for the mortar to set or for a lunch box to cool, and breathe right there in the middle of the mixer noise.

Do only people with troubles need to sit and breathe?

"What are you doing out there?"
"Breathing."
"Is something wrong?"
"No. Nothing's wrong."

Nine in the evening, the front step, mosquitoes whining around my ankles, the smell of fried shallots drifting over from next door. My wife stood in the doorway with a basket of damp greens, looking at me the way you look at someone who has just had bad news. I found that look tender, and also a little funny, because ten days earlier I had looked at another person in exactly that way.

The obvious view is that sitting and breathing is for mending whatever is broken, so only people who are broken sit down. I believed that for more than ten years. Underneath it was something else. I treated my breath like a medicine box kept around the house, opened only when there is a wound. But anything that only comes out when there is trouble is something your hands do not know by the time trouble arrives. One day I was in a rush, sat down to breathe, and it felt awkward, like the first time holding a trowel: my hands did not know where to go. Sitting on an ordinary day is where the hands learn, not where anything gets mended.

To be fair about it: if sadness, worry or exhaustion goes on for weeks, or starts to affect eating, sleeping or work, sitting and breathing cannot replace talking to someone with the right training. The two do not rule each other out, and you can do both.

The first time I felt embarrassed, though no one was watching. After a week, some people find sitting on an ordinary day harder than sitting on a bad one, because there is nothing to hold on to. I found the embarrassment shrinking, and my wife stopped asking whether something was wrong. Some people find it boring, and boring is information, not a mistake. On a busy day, just one out-breath before pushing open the door to the house. The way to know you did it right lies elsewhere: afterwards you can say what you heard. If you want one more anchor for ordinary moments, six moments a day you hold your breath without noticing is about exactly those moments.

There is a quick way of thinking that spoils everything: sit only when something is wrong, and if you do not feel better afterwards, decide the whole thing is useless. It is tempting because it hands you proof straight away, one try and one verdict. Instead, do not measure it by whether it solves the big thing. Just count how many times you sat for no reason at all.

After a hard day of labour, do you still need to sit and breathe?

Try one thing first: next time you lie down after a heavy day, put one hand on your belly and notice where your head is.

The first time I tried it was a Thursday evening. Eight o'clock, my shoulders so sore I could barely lift my arms, the old fan turning in the corner, a trace of medicated oil on my neck. I lay down on the mat, hand on my belly, and found I was not in the house. I was standing on the building site, counting how many bags of cement we were short for tomorrow, then remembering something the homeowner said that afternoon, then worrying about rain before the slab could be poured. The body was lying down. The head had not come home.

I used to think tiredness was one thing: after heavy work the bed takes care of all of it. It turns out there are two. Body tiredness is done with when you lie down. But the part of me that pays attention does not know how to lie down. It keeps pricing materials, keeps replaying that afternoon's remark, keeps fretting about tomorrow. The bed rests the muscles, and nobody tells the attention a thing. It needs a task smaller than the one holding it, and two minutes of sitting and breathing is a task like that.

The first time, my answer was always the building site, and knowing that was all I needed. After a week, some evenings the answer changed to "here" about halfway through, some evenings it was still the site, and some people notice no difference at all. No need for more. On a really tired day, just sit on the edge of the bed, ask that one question and lie down.

What goes wrong most easily is demanding that your head stop thinking about the site. It will not, and the more you demand it the louder it gets. What to do instead is ask where it is, then bring your attention to your two feet on the floor, and that is all. There is one more snag: using these two minutes to replace lying down. If you are so tired you cannot sit up, just lie down. This exercise is an extra, not a substitute. For something longer for those sore shoulders, there is ten-minute meditation for end-of-day aches.

If you tried it and it came to nothing

The first common reason: you sat down to breathe while worn out and expected it to do something it cannot do. Two minutes cannot change a long day. It only gives your attention a small task. Expect to feel lighter at once and you will probably be disappointed, but if all you expect is to find out where your head is, that is usually enough.

The second reason: the embarrassment is bigger than the exercise. Some people feel watched the moment they sit down, even when nobody is there. If so, stop sitting. Breathe out once while holding a glass of water, or waiting for the lift, or washing your hands. Nobody knows, and the exercise is still the exercise.

And if it still does not suit you, that is fine too. Some people do physical work all day and by evening just want to talk to someone, and for them one good conversation with the right person beats ten sittings. If you feel tired or low for a long stretch, that is a reason to talk to someone with the right training, not a reason to sit and breathe more.

Yesterday Khoa dragged an upturned bucket over and sat down next to me. He did not say anything, and I did not ask. We sat looking at the bare brick wall, the mixer down the alley rattling away.

The mortar was still setting.