ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a summary and descriptive sketch of therapeutic experiences of breathing during the course of psychotherapy in which various body experiences were drawn into focus. It focuses on the patient's less conflicted experiences which tend to distinguish breathing from appetite and calls attention to some of the effects this awareness has on ego formation and the I-feeling. Eastern forms of meditation make use of body experiences outside the appetitive realm as a matter of course, especially breathing. As the experience of breathing is slowly distinguished from the flux of changing body states it is perceived as a safety zone, a gentle regularity in the midst of unpredictable momentary or periodic fluctuations. In time the self-feeling evoked by an awareness of breathing becomes one of a set of identity experiences, although a very important one.
