1. “When you practice mindfulness of breathing, then the breathing is mind.” - Thich Nhat Hanh
2. “I am as confident as I am of anything that, in myself, the stream of thinking…is only a careless name for what, when scrutinized, reveals itself to consist chiefly of the stream of my breathing.” - William James
3. “As we discover, when we pay attention to its natural rhythm, the breath becomes calm. Simultaneously, the mind quiets down. It all happens naturally. … Any force is counterproductive.” - Bhante Henepola Gunarantana
4. “When the mind is agitated, change the pattern of the breath.” - Patanjali
5. “Breath is the king of mind.” - B.K.S. Iyengar
6. “When the Breath wanders, the mind is unsteady, but when the Breath is still, so is the mind still.” - Hatha Yoga Pradipika
7. “However, when the air is calm, so is the water. It is just so with the mind. The more often we breathe, the more agitated the energy of body and mind becomes. By breathing less frequently, we begin to achieve elemental harmony.” - The Tibetan Yoga of Breath
8. “By controlling your breathing, you can use a voluntary mechanical behavior to make a profound change on your state of mind.” - Emma Seppälä
9. “So get out of your mind and into your breath because the breath is the life-force. Not your mind, the breath. Follow your breath, and it will lead you anywhere in your brain—and thus the mind—that you want to go.” - Wim Hof
10. “Thanks to the regulation of breathing patterns, patterns in our thinking are not just affected, but revealed, together with their entanglement with respiration.” - Marco Bernini
11. "Messages from the respiratory system have rapid, powerful effects on major brain centers involved in thought, emotion, and behavior." - Dr. Patricia Gerbarg and Dr. Richard Brown
12. “In other words, by changing the breath pattern one can induce a chosen state of mind.” - Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati (found in Restoring Prana)
13. “The breath is free from greed, hatred, delusion, and fear. When the mind joins with the breath, the mind temporarily becomes free from greed, hatred, delusion, and fear.” - Bhante Henepola Gunarantana
14. "The breath is the intersection of the body and mind." - Thich Nhat Hanh
15. “Interestingly, the Greek word psyche, which we often use to indicate our mind or the emotional state of our mind, actually means soul or spirit, or most tellingly, the breath of life.” - Eddie Stern
16. “These practices demonstrate that the mind and the heart follow the lungs, not the other way around.” - Michael J Stephen
17. “The intrinsic link between prana and citta accounts for why the yogis insisted on breathing practices as the primary means to pacify the mind. Through the breath, the ANS is directly impacted. Breathing can effectively modulate the reactive loop, and restore us to a more coherent frame of mind.” - Robin Rothenberg
18. “I will breathe in, releasing the mind. … I will breathe out, releasing the mind.” - Mindfulness of Breathing Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 118)
19. “Just as your mind influences the breath, you can influence the state of your mind through the breath as well.” - Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
20. “When we focus on the breath, our breathing naturally becomes calm. When the breath becomes calm, the mind and body also become calm.” - Bhante Henepola Gunarantana
21. “If our breathing is light and calm—a natural result of conscious breathing—our mind and body will slowly become light, calm, and clear, and our feelings also.” - Thich Nhat Hanh
22. “The Tibetan language describes this relationship between the wind and the mind as the wind-mind (Tib. rlung sems). This compound word describes the wind energy and the conceptual mind as always, intertwined and moving together—a singular motion.” - The Tibetan Yoga of Breath
23. “‘[A]ccording to the Navajo conception, then, Winds exist all around and within the individual, entering and departing through respiratory organs and whirls on the body’s surface. That which is within and that which surrounds one is all the same and it is holy.’ Finally, and most profoundly, this invisible medium in which we are bodily immersed, is what provides us with the capacity for conscious thought.” – David Abram, with inset quote from James McNeley
24. “When the incoming breath is offered into the outgoing breath, the outgoing breath is offered into the incoming breath, or when both are offered into the retention, the mind is purified of self-interest.” - Baba Hari Dass (found in Restoring Prana)
25. “The ‘I think’ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‘I breathe’ which actually does accompany them. Breath is the essence out of which philosophers have constructed the entity known to them as consciousness” - William James