jhāna tips: two bottlenecks most people aren't aware of, mouth and belly

Jhāna, once you know how to do it, is actually very easy.
You just have to do one thing: pacify (passaddhi awakening factor). 
Many suttas such as MN 19, MN 20 describe how to pacify the mind.
To pacify the body, not much detail is given.
The most detail, probably step 3 of 16 step breath meditation. 

https://lucid24.org/tped/g/goldcraft/index.html#16.3

Read that before proceeding.

People think they're relaxed, 
or think they know how to relax (physically).
But if you were relaxed (pacified, passaddhi awakening factor), 
you'd be able to do jhāna at will, turn it on like switch on demand.
Can you do that?
If not, you probably aren't doing step 3 of breath meditation thoroughly.

"Sabba kāya patisamvedi", as you breathe, you should be able to sense every part of your physical body.

Every part. Your hands, arms, fingers, toes.

The more years you put into the practice,
the more your body feels connected, 
like a single unit,
rather than feeling your body has distinct parts like hands, elbow, upper arm, shoulder, etc.
The more you practice (correctly),
the more your body transforms into subtle energy, 
a bag of gooey, magnetic energy, soft, weightless, 
undifferentiated (hands, arms, elbows, fingers don't feel like separate parts, it's all just gooey magnetic energy that's unitary, connected).

You feel more and more frictionless everyday, 

like if you just push a puck across the ice with a few ounces of force, 

the puck keeps moving effortlessly for super long distances.

When you walk, you feel light as a feather, weightless.

When I step on a scale, it says I weigh 150 lbs.

20 years ago I also weighed 150 lbs.

But I feel like I'm gradually approaching weightlessness.

I've been doing (the same) taiji forms and breath meditation for decades.

Feels totally different today than decades ago.

20 years ago 150 lbs felt heavy (relatively speaking).

I felt like the mass of fat, bones, muscles, etc. moving around.

It felt it required energetic exertion to propel myself around.

Now, the scale says I weigh 150 lbs still, but I feel like my stamina is much better,

that it feels effortless and frictionless to walk long distances, and hills, easily.

I often feel light as a feather.

You hear taiji masters and forest thai meditation masters describe that light as a feather and weightless feeling.

It's not a simile, not an exaggeration, not hyperbole. It's really how you feel.

If you practice breath meditation and jhāna correctly for enough years.

If you practice jhāna correctly, practice brahmacariya, practice sati and recite Dhamma frequently, 

and understand the meaning (sati, vitakka, vicāra, upekkha),

your mind will become light, agile, sharp, quick.

Your memory will become stronger even as you age into the later decades.

My memory is better now than it was 30 years go.

But I digress

I digressed intentionally because without that context,

without that detail and personal experience sharing of how my practice changed in the decades,

you won't take my advice seriously.

two energetic bottlenecks most people aren't aware of, mouth and belly:

1. the mouth

1. Only this year I fully comprehended how much tension we carry in our mouth in our normal daily life. 

If you fully release your mouth area, your mouth would be hanging open, 

you would have a dopey expression.

This is why people don't ever relax their mouth area fully.

Because humans and animals are so attuned to interpreting fine nuances of facial expression.

No one wants to look like a drooling idiot.

But check out people's mouth when they're sleeping sometimes.

They're mouth is open, gaping, drooling, looking like idiots.

So because of social conventions, no human, monastic or lay, is ever going to walk around with their mouth area fully relaxed,

when you're in a private place, experiment with completely releasing all the tension out of your jaws, your mouth.

Let yourself look like a drooling idiot, to remember (sati) and acclimate yourself to what a face, mouth, jaws without tension feels like.

And then when you do assume the regular face of everyday social living, 

do it with the least amount of tension possible.

And practice moving your mouth just slightly, subtly every so often to release the tension (without being visually obvious to outside observers), 

just subtly but enough movement that you can regain that sensation and contrast with fully relaxed and tension while maintaining the social face.

When you can relax the mouth jhānically, then it feels soft and malleable even though by outer appearance you have socially appropriate facial expression.

2. the belly

There are probably many reasons why people have tense bellies besides the one I'm going to list.

1. is accumulated lifetime (bad) habit, we just get used to sucking in our bellies, perhaps similar to sucking in our bladders and intestines so we don't drip urine, or fart.

2. vanity: people don't want to look fat.

Whatever the reasons, you want to learn to become sensitive to the sensations (vedana) in your belly, 

become aware of all the tension you carry,

and work on releasing it.

A great way to really see what a relaxed belly feels like,

is if you walk on a hike on uneven terrain.

You should feel you belly jiggling around like a huge bag of water,

you can feel the bounce and the contours of that belly.

Even if you don't have a big belly (I don't), it feels like a big belly.

When you cna do it relaxed, it even feels comfortable, the vibrations of all that jiggling,

like rocking a baby to sleep.

Especially when you first discover how much completely unnecessary tension you've been carrying in your belly for so many years of your life, (pīti, mental joy up to rapture)

the contrast between that tension and your newfound relaxation (sukha indriya is physical) is a marvel.

Remember that sensation of contrast between tension and relaxation in the belly. 

(sati = remember and apply all relevant dharmas).

Then even when you're walking on flat terrain,

even if you're walking slowly and gently,

you can still feel that belly jiggling, and it feels good because now that relaxed belly jelly is jhānic.

step 3 of breath meditation

there's no jhāna without passaddhi (pacification, deep relaxation).

In fact SN 36.11 describes the 4 jhānas as 4 successively higher degrees of pacification (passaddhi).

They deliberately omit the formless attainments from any association with the term passaddhi and kāya (3rd jhāna formula),

to make it absolutely unequivocal that kāya refers to the anatomical physical body in breath meditation and four jhānas.

You can't relax tension you're not aware of,

and you won't become aware of blind spots like the mouth and belly unless you do step 3 of 16 step breath meditation deeply and correctly.

If you're following heretical Vism. (visuddhimagga) and Ajahn Brahm school where they 

redefine kāya as "not a physical body, a collection of mind only components", 

then you're never going to be able to read the suttas and understand the Buddha's instructions for doing the Buddha's definition of jhāna and breath meditation.

Anyone can do jhāna.

If you can't, 

or you think you can't, 

and you continue to believe heretical teachers even after many (authentic) teachers have explained in detail and shown proof of why it's heretical,

you only have yourself to blame.

Don't waste a precious human life following heretics.