I'd say breathing is sort of a two-way binding mechanism.
When you're at peace, it's slow and deep. And when you're stressed, exhilarated or angered it's turbulent and erratic.
So when you're, say, stressed, you can transition to a peaceful state by deep-breathing; and as you are relaxing you find yourself not needing that much focus/energy to keep the breathing that way - the binding automatically happens.
One can use almost any object to meditate upon - visual image, mental image, sound, music, whir of a motor, randomness of objects around you, tick of a clock; just about anything; the more rhythmic, the better. But for us inexperienced ones, breathing works the best.
Also, we should not think about breathing, rather feel it, granted it starts with thinking :) Thinking is what meditation shuns, at least when we're practicing
When you're at peace, it's slow and deep. And when you're stressed, exhilarated or angered it's turbulent and erratic. So when you're, say, stressed, you can transition to a peaceful state by deep-breathing; and as you are relaxing you find yourself not needing that much focus/energy to keep the breathing that way - the binding automatically happens.
One can use almost any object to meditate upon - visual image, mental image, sound, music, whir of a motor, randomness of objects around you, tick of a clock; just about anything; the more rhythmic, the better. But for us inexperienced ones, breathing works the best.
Also, we should not think about breathing, rather feel it, granted it starts with thinking :) Thinking is what meditation shuns, at least when we're practicing