--- title: "Knowing which nostril the breath passes through | Vipassana.Life" description: "Left, right or both: from day eleven you also know which nostril the air takes, without changing it. That gives a drifting mind something precise to do." url: https://vipassana.life/notes/which-nostril/ lang: en author: Ocean DYNN site: Vipassana.Life modified: 2026-09-23 --- # Knowing which nostril the breath passes through *Practice note · 19 October 2026* On the eleventh day of the breath practice the instruction gains one detail: know which nostril the air is passing through. Left, right, or both. Nothing is added to the breath itself — only to what you know about it. **By Ocean DYNN** · 3 min read Sit as usual. Attention goes under the nostrils, at the upper lip. The breath stays natural: you are not deepening it, slowing it, or evening it out. Then, with each breath, know its path. - If the breath comes in through the left nostril, know that the breath is passing through the left nostril. - If it comes in through the right, know that it is passing through the right. - If it comes in through both, know that it is passing through both. - The same on the way out: left, right, or both. That is the whole of it. No counting, no closing one side with a finger, no trying to balance the two sides. By the second week most people have stopped fighting the practice and started drifting in it instead. The sitting passes, the breath is somewhere in the background, and the mind is elsewhere. Knowing the path gives attention something precise to do without giving it a second object. You are still working with one object only: the breath at the entrance of the nostrils. Which side it favours is part of knowing that breath, not a new thing to watch. Learning to focus on one object, only one object, is [the whole task of these weeks](https://tounknown.com/learn/thirty-days-of-anapana/). The dominant nostril shifts through the day, and it can shift inside a single sitting. Sometimes both are open and the air divides evenly. Sometimes one side is almost closed and you can barely tell whether anything moves there at all. Do not read anything into it. Do not try to change it. You are reporting what is happening, the way a witness reports, not managing the body. Breathing in, the whole depth of the breath is experienced. Breathing out, the whole depth of the breath is experienced. Look at how long the in-breath lasts and how long the out-breath lasts; look at how deep each one is. Concentration is built this way — through knowing observation of the breath, not through effort applied to the breath. Keep the posture through all of it. Spine straight, chest slightly forward, the weight resting on the hip tissues rather than on the legs. Do not distort the breath; take it as it shows itself in this moment. Sometimes the breath simply stops. A pause arrives on its own, with no holding on your part. It is accepted and known: the breath has stopped for a while, and I will watch how long the break lasts. Nothing has gone wrong and nothing needs restarting. Sitting through a pause without reaching for the next breath is exactly where humility and steadiness are trained. Do not follow the breath into the body, and do not follow it out into the room. Concentration will not develop that way. Stay right at the entrance of the nostrils. If the mind is pulled to something outside that area — a pulse, an itch, tingling, numbness, pain — do not get involved and do not chase it. Note it plainly: there is numbness, there is an itch. Then bring attention back to the breath, knowing how it comes in and how it goes out. At the end of the sitting, thank yourself for the time and the effort. Then, through the day, keep noticing the breath more and more often. That is how remembering the breath is built — not only on the [cushion](https://vipassana.life/notes/setting-up-the-seat/). New here? Start with these - [What is Vipassana meditation?](https://vipassana.life/what-is-vipassana/) - [Practising Vipassana at home](https://vipassana.life/vipassana-at-home/) - [Thirty days on the breath, and what they look like](https://vipassana.life/notes/why-thirty-days-on-the-breath/) ## Related - [Part 2 · 25 Days of Ānāpānasati](https://vipassana.life/course/part-2-anapanasati-25-days/) - [Ānāpānasati: the breath practice everything starts from](https://vipassana.life/anapanasati/) - [Thirty days on the breath](https://vipassana.life/notes/why-thirty-days-on-the-breath/) ## More practice notes - 15 Oct — [Doing Time, Doing Vipassana, the film from Tihar Jail](https://vipassana.life/notes/doing-time-doing-vipassana/) In 1993 Tihar Jail in New Delhi held ten thousand prisoners. A 1997 documentary shows how ten-day Vipassana courses came into it, and what the men said of them. - 14 Oct — [Stillness: why not moving is most of the work](https://vipassana.life/notes/stillness-in-meditation/) The course allows one movement: straightening up when drowsiness makes you slump. An itch or an aching knee is what the sitting is there to watch. - 12 Oct — [The lapse after the first course, and what brought the practice back](https://vipassana.life/notes/the-lapse-after-the-first-course/) After a ten-day course the technique stays; the decision to sit is what goes. A fixed time chosen the night before and ten minutes you can finish bring it back. [All practice notes →](https://vipassana.life/notes/) - ← Older note: [Jaw, tongue and face: the small details that decide a sitting](https://vipassana.life/notes/jaw-tongue-and-face/) [Open the course →](https://vipassana.life/)