Thanks for reminding Steve, I'm about to do my Hong Sau now.
Yes, watching the breath and be aware of it, no voluntary control on it, although the relaxed awareness should cause a decrease in the frequency of breathing cycles.
Unfortunately, in my case frequency decreases but breath never stops altogether.
Human being (and even animals) works by motivation, so it's not easy to go on with enthusiasm when you have no results from actions, even if carried out correctly.
This is my personal complaint related to techniques, they give little or no results compared to the time you devote to them. It's not easy to go on for hours when there is no feedback.
Of course that's my personal case, hope it is different for other devotees.
The latest reminder was from Scott;
"Hong Sau works to
make dynamic (visual) to our conscioiusness,
the "automatic" (autonomous nervous and organ systems) attunement
-- physical breath, sympathetic/parasympathetic, etc. --
of the Ida Pingala making the breath moving..."~ from Scott's last post.
Perhaps, as Scott has mentioned, much of the practice is to develop awareness... awareness of the breath and more subtle processes...however long it may take.
I appreciate the candid honesty. Hong Sau is like a constant prayer and affirmation in which we are affirming 'i am he'. i believe it is diificult for most of us to go on praying but this gives a physical method. The motivations i have recieved are not so much in the practice but rather in the spiritual experiences that happen in life's day to day activities. If we look for a logical sequence of events it just doesn't always appear forthcoming like 'a' produces 'b'. This may b one of the impediments we experience in placing a
criteria for sucess on spiritual progress. We may have to evaluate it differently.
