[This is a “back-post”; it is a work-in-progress, so it may change partially or completely, with materials added or taken away, over the next several days or weeks. This is “day 1(b)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat. For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]
The focus of this first day is to watch our own respiration. Not control it – simply observe it. Feel the air moving in… out… in… out. Is it deep breath? Shallow breath? Is it through the left nostril, or right, or both? Contrary to our uninformed intuition, we almost always are breathing more through one nostril than the other. I never thought about this before.
So, the question becomes: which nostril? Today… mostly the left.