Counting breaths (susokukan)

How to do it

1. Sit upright on a cushion or a chair, hands in your lap. Close your mouth and rest your tongue against the roof of it.
2. Keep your eyes half open, gaze lowered and still on the floor a couple of yards ahead. If that's hard, close them.
3. Breathe in through your nose for 4 seconds. Let the air drop down to your belly.
4. Breathe out through your nose for 6 seconds, long and loose, and as the air leaves say "one" to yourself.
5. Rest on empty for 1 second, doing nothing, and let the inhale come by itself.
6. Keep going: "two" on the next exhale, then "three," up to "ten." Then return to "one."
7. If you lose your place, doubt the number, or find yourself at fourteen, go back to "one" without scolding yourself.
8. Continue for 10 minutes, about 54 breaths. When you finish, drop the count and stay still for a moment before you get up.

What counting breaths is

It's an attention exercise that uses the breath as a thread and numbers as markers. The point isn't to breathe in some special way; it's to know, on every exhale, which number you're on. The count runs from one to ten and repeats.

In most of the breathings on this site, the work is in the rhythm. Here the rhythm is only a support: 4 seconds in, 6 out and 1 of rest, much like any easy breath with a long exhale. What you practice is coming back. Each time you notice you've drifted and return to "one," that's the exercise, not a failure.

Where it comes from

Counting the breath is a very old Buddhist practice. In Pali it's called ganana, "counting," and it's one of the steps of mindfulness of breathing. In Japan it's known as susokukan (数息観), the contemplation of counting the breath, and it's practiced within zazen, Zen's seated meditation.

The two major schools of Japanese Zen treat it differently. In the Rinzai school it's a foundational practice: Myoshinji temple in Kyoto teaches it in its zazen instructions in the same words this page uses, count each exhalation from one to ten and return to one. In the Soto school, the official instructions say not to control your breathing and to let long breaths be long and short breaths be short. They quote Dogen (1200-1253), the school's founder, for whom counting was an elementary beginner's method that belonged to what he called Hinayana, different from the practice of his own teachers. Even so, Keizan (1268-1325), a master of the same school, wrote in his Zazen Yojinki that when the mind wanders you should place attention at the tip of the nose and the lower belly and count the breaths.

An honest note: the seconds are this guide's, not Zen's. No temple sets how long an inhale should last.

What people use it for

In Zen it's part of a religious practice learned in a community and from a teacher, and relaxation isn't its purpose. Outside that setting, many people use it as a simple concentration exercise: before studying, at the start of the day, or to stop turning something over and over.

It has one advantage over other ways of meditating: the count tells on you. If you reached ten clearly, you were there. If you don't know where you are, you left, and you find out on the spot.

What the research says

The most direct work is from 2014, by Daniel Levinson and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, published in Frontiers in Psychology. Across four studies with more than 400 people, they used breath counting as a measure of mindfulness. People who counted more accurately mind-wandered less and reported better mood, and 14 long-term meditators were more accurate than 25 novices.

One of those studies was a four-week training. The group that practiced counting, 22 people, mind-wandered less and reported more mindfulness than the two comparison groups. The authors name the limits themselves: small groups, dropouts, and participants who were mostly young and from a university community. Their task counted one to nine, not ten.

As for the pace, a 2018 review of slow breathing, covering 15 studies in healthy people, found changes in heart rate variability and more reported relaxation. It didn't study zazen.

What it feels like and what to notice

At first it's surprising how hard it is to get to ten. You lose it at three, or keep counting on autopilot while thinking about something else. That happens to everybody.

Over the days, the exhale lengthens on its own and the number weighs less. Restlessness, sleepiness or sore legs are normal. If you get dizzy or feel short of air, stop following the pace, breathe the way you always do and, if you like, keep only the count.

Variations

• No guided pace: let the breath go however it wants and just count. This is closest to how it's taught in temples.
• Counting ins and outs: "one" on the inhale, "two" on the exhale, up to ten. Some people start this way because it leaves fewer gaps.
• Counting only the inhales: another of the forms found in Buddhist texts.
• Shorter (5-minute variation): the same pattern for half the time, for your first days.
• Dropping the numbers: once the count is no longer needed, you follow the breath without counting it. In Zen that step is taken with a teacher's guidance.

Common mistakes

• Treating it as a score. Getting to ten isn't winning. What you're training is noticing and returning.
• Scolding yourself when you lose count. The scolding is one more distraction. Go back to "one" and that's it.
• Sailing past ten. If you're at fifteen, you were counting on autopilot. Go back to "one."
• Forcing the breath to fit. If 4 and 6 seconds feel long, breathe shorter and keep the count.
• Saying the number with your mouth or throat. The count is inward and silent.
• Fighting your thoughts. You don't have to push them away. They pass, and you stay with the number.

How often and how long

Ten minutes a day, at the same time and in the same place, do more than an hour now and then. If ten seems like a lot, start with five.

If this practice calls to you and you want to go past the exercise, the right move is to find a Zen group, of whichever school. Zazen has a posture, a form and a meaning of its own that a web page can't pass on.

Before you start

• If you get dizzy or feel short of breath, let the pace go and breathe normally. The count works just as well with your everyday breathing.
• If sitting in silence brings up strong distress or hard memories, open your eyes, move around and leave the practice for today. If it keeps happening, talk with a mental health professional.
• If your knees or back hurt on the floor, use a chair. The posture shouldn't cause pain.
• This page describes an attention exercise. It doesn't replace the teaching of a Zen community or the care of a professional.