Conditioning the breath

[rabbit]

In one of my books, Breath by Breath, it says being mindful of your breath makes the quality of your breathing better. It talks abot Anapanasati Sutra. Anapana means breathing. sati means mindfulness. The technique is just to notice the breathing and not try to change it. How exactly does it make your breathing better? Does it train the nervous system? or does it reprogram your brain? or what is it?

I know when you control the breath through pranyama it is different. I think the body can tell the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide the body has and changes the breathing accordingly. This is how freedivers train to hold their breath for a long time by manipulating the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels.

What do you guys think?

 

[JadecloudAlchemist]

This technique is used to enter Dhyana.
My teacher said the symbolic numbers such as 9 27 36 72 81 are used to train the mind and fix spirit into its place. Once spirit is fixed in its place through focusing there will be no breaths to count this results in Dhyana.
This makes breathing better because breath and mind body are realted.
You may notice the breath become deeper longer and fine like a string. The thing with regulation of breath is that it is Quick fire. Meaning it is not the goal but a tool to use to achieve the goal. Once it is dropped because you obtained or put into motion correct practice than you can proceed to process the fruit of your labor. These things are hard to put into words which is why so much symbolism and metaphors and cryptic wording. It why learning from books can be so difficult without a teachers guidance to explain these meanings. But with determination you are bond to succeed.

That is all I have to say on this.