In my last entry, I focused on zazen (seated Zen meditation) as one of the traditional ways of developing hara. In this post, I will focus on another traditional way to train hara: martial arts. Since “martial arts” is a very broad term, I will describe one particular technique that has tremendous importance in the Chozen-ji tradition: “Ah Um” breathing.

As I explained in earlier posts, the traditional ways to develop hara are training in zazen and training in the martial arts. In this post, I will concentrate on aspects of zazen that can be helpful in developing hara whether or not someone wants to formally study zazen.

In the first installment of this blog, I described my experiences trying to learn to hara breathe. As should be clear to the reader, it was a long and frustrating experience. Years later, after I started teaching Zen, I saw many of my students struggle in similar ways. In fact, I have been struck by how few people can quickly learn to breathe from the hara.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I view hara as the unification of the physical, psychological and spiritual dimensions of the human experience. I have already covered the first two in previous installments and will now focus on hara from a spiritual perspective.

Now that we looked at it from a purely physical perspective, I would like to focus on hara from a psychological standpoint. In so doing, I want to shift from whathara is to why it is worthwhile to develop it in the first place. To begin this discussion, it is helpful to look at the importance of the term in Japanese language and culture.

In my last blog post, I described hara from a purely physical point of view. My original intent was to follow that with a post focusing on hara from a psychological perspective and, in so doing, go from what hara is to why one would want to develop his or her hara in the first place.

In my previous post, I explained that hara involves the intersection of physical, psychological, and spiritual elements. Perhaps a better way to express this is that hara is unification of those three elements. As such, hara is an organic whole, in which these three dimensions are interrelated. However, it is still helpful, for the sake of explanation, to consider these three elements separately.

When I began my Zen training in 1977, I was given basic instruction in zazen (Zen meditation, literally “seated Zen”). In addition to being taught how to establish my posture and concentration, I was told to breathe with my hara, not with my chest. My teachers explained further that hara is a Japanese word that refers to the lower abdomen and that I should always feel pressure in that area. Try as I might, I could not breathe with my lower abdomen, let alone keep pressure on it whether I was inhaling or exhaling.