Everyone knows that you can calm down by taking a deep breath. “Calm out man, take a deep breath.” We have all heard or said something like this, sometime in our lives. Breathing itself is actually a main focus in many forms of meditation. For the Taoist, breathing is used primarily at the beginning to keep the meditator awake and focused.

After I had been meditating for a while, I noticed that my breathing and my heart rate would both change pace and intensity, seemingly without rhyme or reason. Later on, I figured out that it was my feelings that were responsible for these fluctuations. I also figured out that I could make use of this relationship between my breath and my heart. I could consciously slow down my breathing, and my heart would slow down too.

The Taoists adepts were aware of this reciprocal relationship between heart and breath. They were aware too that both are susceptible to the feelings, and that breathing, by being somewhat under the meditator’s control, can mediate between the feelings and the heart and can help the heart to stay steady and calm.

The Taoists say that they use hearing to help monitor the pace and intensity of their breathing, but it is not the outer hearing that is used, no more than it is the outer eyes that see the light that is being circulated during meditation. This particular hearing is the awareness associated with the ears, turned inwards towards the breathing, and through the breathing, to the heart. “What does hearing mean? It is hearing the Light of one’s own ear. The ear listens only within and does not listen to what is outside.“ “It has nothing to do with actually listening to what is inside. In this sort of hearing, one only hears that there is no sound.” (The Secret of the Golden Flower, p. 48)

When no sound is heard, we have left our ordinary world of feelings behind, and with a calm and steady heart, we have opened ourselves to the Light and to the Compassion that is always felt in such a heart.