I find this series of posts fascinating. After reading the book inner game of tennis by timothy gallwey ~ 15 + years ago, I expanded on his suggested practice of intentionally bringing one's attention to focus on their natural breathing - between points in a game of tennis, to keep them in the present moment and minimalize a wandering thinking mind that could say follow a progressively destructive path like - I screwed up that last shot, i'm doing horrible today, i suck in general, etc. I understood his thesis that in sports performance, our own thinking mind can interfere with our performance - something about a cluttered / thinking mind interferes with performance, when people are "hot" or "in the zone" in the flow, etc, they are not thinking... The question I understood him to pose was how to maximize those peak performances... and minimalize our own destructive mental interference . I recall an exercise was to try not to think for thirty seconds. I recall the exercise being difficult at the time. I recall him saying he did not know how to have his ideal "empty" mind but instead would give the thinking mind a distraction to occupy it to prevent it from thinking. Between points he suggested intentionally focusing the mind on breathing, during points - intentionally focusing attention on the ball, the path, spin, etc to the exclusion of some mundane mental command like "lift the racket higher, follow through, etc" that would most likely result in a futile result, trying to consciously control one or a few muscles during a swing that in reality uses fluid coordination of perhaps hundreds of muscles. Anyways, after having success applying these exercises to playing beach volleyball(not too different to tennis) and experiencing having a much more rewarding time at the game - I ended up gradually applying the focusing the awareness on the breath intentionally outside of the sport to life in general. In retrospect, I was suffering from anxiety and depression but the practice of regularly stopping my over thinking mind by focusing on my natural breathing regularly I believe greatly treated my depression and anxiety to this day, ~ 15 years later....

I apologize if the above rambling text is unclear.. it saddens me to hear people post about the awareness of breathing as a curse to them, when it is the only blessing i have found in my life to give me peace of mind... just wanted to share thoughts/experiences with those that posted about their awareness of their breathing being an annoyance to them.

I wish you all mental health. I feel intentionally bringing my awareness to my natural breathing is the only thing that brings me mental peace.