---
title: "Part 2 · 25 Days of Ānāpānasati — Building Concentration (in production)"
description: "Twenty-five days of longer sittings on the breath that steady the mind before insight practice begins. Part 2 of the Vipassana.life course, in production."
url: https://vipassana.life/course/part-2-anapanasati-25-days/
lang: en
author: Ocean DYNN
site: Vipassana.Life
modified: 2026-09-23
---

# Part 2 · 25 Days of Ānāpānasati — Building Concentration on the Breath

Longer sittings on the breath that steady the mind before insight practice begins.

This Part is in production. The curriculum is written; the guided sittings are being recorded in English, Spanish and Russian. It will open to students who have completed the Part before it.

- **Part**: 2 of 5
- **Length**: 25 days · 2 sittings per day
- **Practice**: Ānāpānasati (mindfulness of breathing)
- **Training**: Samādhi
- **Level**: Beginner
- **Prerequisite**: Part 1
- **Status**: In production
- **Languages**: English, Spanish, Russian
- **Cost**: Donation-based
- **Teacher**: Ocean DYNN
- **Tradition**: Theravāda

## Why twenty-five more days on the breath

Five days establishes the technique. Twenty-five days of sustained breath work is what makes concentration steady enough for insight practice to observe anything finely. Most self-taught meditators skip this step, and it is why their body-scanning stays shallow.

## How the twenty-five days progress

Part 2 continues exactly where Part 1 stops, with the Buddha's instruction: if the breath is long, know that it is long; if it is short, know that it is short. Then the instruction narrows, a little each week:

- Attention stays at the point below the nostrils — the breath is not followed into the nostrils, into the body or beyond; sensations elsewhere are left alone.
- Which nostril the air passes through: the left, the right, or both — and the natural pauses between breaths.
- Like a gatekeeper: attention stays at the gate and knows each breath that passes, without going after it.
- Finer still, as if the breath were passing through the eye of a needle.
- The beginning, the middle and the end of each breath.
- Towards the end, the breath can become so subtle that it seems to disappear. That is not a problem to fix; it is the concentration deepening. Stay at the same point.

It is never controlled. This is not prāṇāyāma: the breath is only known.

## The sittings lengthen

Two guided sittings a day, morning and evening. Day 6 is nineteen minutes; the sittings then grow by about two minutes a day, to half an hour by Day 12, three-quarters of an hour by Day 21, and a full hour on Day 30. Days 14 and 24 are rest days. Once you are sitting half an hour, try an occasional sitting without the audio.

The aim is not endurance. It is a ladder: stillness for the whole sitting, the spine straight for the whole sitting, staying through the first strong discomfort without moving, then the hour. Straighten up only when drowsiness comes. A chair is a legitimate seat at every rung.

## Themed days

Some days carry one extra practice for the day around the sittings — a walking day, a day of silence, a day away from screens, an activities day, a cleaning day, a creative day, and a light day of fruit and vegetables. They are invitations, not requirements, and none of them asks you to go without food or water.

## Small instructions that decide a lot

Keep the face soft: lips relaxed, jaw loose, the tongue resting lightly against the palate. Sit an hour or two after eating — more food, more thoughts. And watch how the night before shows up in the morning: tiredness turns into dullness or restlessness on the cushion, rest into clarity.

## The talks

Short daily talks through the core of the teaching: the four noble truths and the eightfold path; sīla and the precepts; attachment and its cause — contact, feeling, craving; how the sense of "I" arises; dependent origination; right samādhi and the kinds of calm; the defilements (kilesas); and joy and happiness (pīti and sukha) as concentration grows.

## What the Part contains

The five precepts kept throughout, two audio instructions a day, the discipline prompt and the evening check-in — how the day went, what helped, what to develop tomorrow — and five new lives for the twenty-five days: missed sittings are counted honestly, and nothing is lost. A sitting opens when the one before it has been sat.

[Before you begin, read the safety page.](https://vipassana.life/safety/)

[← Part 1 · Ānāpānasati Essentials](https://vipassana.life/course/part-1-anapanasati-essentials/) · [Part 3 · 35 Days into Vipassanā →](https://vipassana.life/course/part-3-into-vipassana/)