– updated September 2026
The experience of physical breath depends on factors like air quality and the body’s state. By contrast, the experience of the empty breath relies on nothing.
Entering a state of not-knowing is simple. It only feels complicated if you believe you must stop thoughts. But you don’t need to halt anything. If you don’t suppress thoughts, they naturally accelerate until their unedited energy sparks a take-off into the empty breath – a gateway to a state of not-knowing. [Photo: Alexius]
From Duality Hack #9.6 in the free eBook Alexius’ Duality Hacks.
When you connect with the empty breath, you may initially feel as if you have two kinds of breath: the physical breath, experienced through outward-facing consciousness, and the empty breath, experienced through inward-facing consciousness. Instinctively, you may try to control the physical breath according to ideas of balance and wholeness, fearing the empty breath won’t provide the body with enough oxygen.
In this case, free the physical breath from your control by using the immortal sweetness technique to defocus (Duality Hack #11.2). As you release control, your body breathes naturally, guided by the brain to gently expand the lower abdomen, belly, and chest, then contract.
By not interfering with this steady cycle, the physical breath doesn’t seem to dwarf the empty breath. Therefore, you can devote yourself to the empty breath without worrying that it feels as if it makes the physical breath move slower. In the next section, Alexius explores this further.
The empty breath isn’t about striving for something better or higher. It’s about falling into the bliss of nothing, which occurs when not trying to achieve something.
Looking forward to something specific often leads to disappointment, as expectations rarely are met. By contrast, when we’re not seeking something, we naturally fall into the bliss of nothing, relieved of the burden of something. [Photo: Alexius]
Breathing through outward- or inward-facing consciousness
The medulla oblongata, deep in the brain, is the main control centre for breathing. It automatically regulates the physical breathing rhythm in response to carbon dioxide, pH, and oxygen levels in the blood.
While the lungs perform gas exchange, they lack their own muscles for breathing. They rely on brain-driven signals and the diaphragm, a muscle above the stomach and beneath the lungs and heart. The diaphragm is the key player in directing the physical act of breathing (see Wikipedia). It affects not only inhaling and exhaling through the mouth or nose, but also the body’s expansion. Without obstructions, that expansion starts in the lower abdomen.
However, forcing the breath through the mouth or nose tightens your shoulders and diaphragm, which in turn makes the stomach bloat and breathing become rapid or heavy. Thus, concerns about the body heighten outward-facing consciousness and diminish inward-facing consciousness, making the empty breath difficult to sense. Yet if you remain mainly with inward-facing consciousness, nothing changes your experience of the empty breath.
When surfing the empty breath, you’re barely aware of the body. Hence, it’s easy to overlook its condition and stay anchored in inward-facing consciousness, untroubled by physical sensations.
Yet you may find it hard to maintain an inward-facing consciousness because of concerns about your body. If so, surfing the empty breath (Duality Hack #9.4) is a good choice. When you do that, you’re hardly aware of the body, so it becomes easier to overlook its condition and remain with inward-facing consciousness.
The beauty is that when you’re not preoccupied with the body and, consequently, not trying to perfect it with mental constructs of wellness, the body is free to heal itself physically through its biological system. You can also utilise the empty breath to heal specific areas of the body. For instance, if your diaphragm is too tense to breathe freely, you can loosen it by surfing an elliptical entity in the empty breath that floats around the diaphragm horizontally (Duality Hack #9.4).
Another way to breathe freely and be with the empty breath is, as already mentioned, to use the technique for the immortal sweetness (Duality Hack #11.2).
Psychological problems don’t survive the empty breath. The differences that define them aren’t perceived as making a difference unless you insist on them. Even so, this is so frustrating that, if unedited, its uncontrolled energy sparks a take-off into the empty breath. [Photo: Alexius]
Breathing through the mouth or nose
Breathing through the nose is ideal because it moistens and filters the air before it reaches our lungs. It’s also helpful for connecting with the empty breath, as we can use the mouth for the immortal sweetness technique to defocus (Duality Hack #11.2), making it simpler to connect with the empty breath. However, if you have rhinitis or a blocked nose, breathing through your mouth may be more comfortable. Fortunately, this does not affect the empty breath.
The empty breath and the inward-facing consciousness
You can find endless facts about the physical breath online, for instance, here. However, since the empty breath consists of nothing, there are no facts about it. Fortunately, from personal experience, Alexius can describe how it feels when one prioritises the empty breath (Duality Hack #9.4)). It is so blissful that you cannot tell whether it coincides with the physical breath or whether the connection with the empty breath remains undisturbed by the body’s condition.
For instance, suppose you have a heart, lung, or kidney issue that shortens the physical breath. If you don’t worry about that but rely on the empty breath, patiently waiting for your lungs to be filled with the bliss of nothing, you remain indifferent to psychological and physical worries. Thus, you are released from expectation and fear.
Up and down with the empty breath
Though the dynamo of the empty breath is transparent, you may feel it in the lower abdomen. Start there, then follow the swing of the empty breath (see Duality Hack #9.4) upward to the chest and then to the top of your head, roughly aligned with the body’s expansion from the lower abdomen to the chest.
Along the way, acknowledge thoughts and feelings without suppressing them. Then let their energy spark a gentle burst at the crown, connecting you with the empty breath and dissolving your sense of separation. In this state of not-knowing, it feels as if your body is not there.
This state continues as the body contracts, while you follow the swing of the empty breath from the top of the head to the lower abdomen. Thereafter, you keep going up and down with the swing of the empty breath, remaining in a state of not-knowing, relishing the bliss of nothing.
This doesn’t imply that bliss is confined to the breath’s flow. A state of not-knowing and its bliss of nothing are everywhere and nowhere. Yet this is regularly overshadowed by experiences of something specific, which convince us we’re a definite being in a specific space.
Suppose you assume there’s something better around the next corner. In that case, you may not notice the empty breath, as it’s not behind anything but before every experience of something. [Photo: Alexius]
Other ways of going up and down with the empty breath
In the example above, you followed the swing of the empty breath (Duality Hack #9.4), up and down. Alternatively, you might surf yin-yang-shaped waves that coincide with a vertical elliptical entity from front to back of the body, or vice versa, to move in an elliptical up-and-down motion (Duality Hack #9.4).
Furthermore, you could listen to the transparent sound of the empty breath (Duality Hack #9.4) as you move up and down, perhaps switching between this and surfing the empty breath, or doing both simultaneously, while in a state of not-knowing.
However, if you remain in a state of not-knowing for more than 20 minutes, 45 at most, at a time, the brain falls into a coma. See Duality Hack #9.10. Hence, you cannot return to the conscious experience of being someone. Therefore, if you wish to return to that experience, leave a state of not-knowing relatively quickly.
Fortunately, you leave a state of not-knowing with a clean slate, thus returning to the conscious experience of being someone, unconditioned. Consequently, launching a new take-off into the empty breath is easy. In the next section, Alexius reveals how you can quickly switch between a state of not-knowing and the conscious experience of being someone.
need to remember some of the explanations about the empty breath to feel it. [Photo: Alexius]
Everywhere and nowhere with the empty breath
In the following sample, you’re nobody in a state of not-knowing when you follow the empty breath from the head to the lower abdomen while the body contracts. Then, when expansion begins, set off from the lower abdomen and hold onto a memory of something, thereby returning to the conscious experience of being something.
Yet, with the help of the empty breath, you perceive being something as nothing. Hence, you arrive at the head as nobody, descend to the lower abdomen in a state of not-knowing as the body contracts, then go up again to the head as somebody, and leave the head as nobody in a state of not-knowing.
You don’t perceive the body parts you pass as compact when you’re with the empty breath.
After going up and down for a while, switching between being nobody and somebody becomes effortless. Eventually, you find that being nobody and somebody complement each other, so you’re in the duality flow, heading towards non-duality.
From the inward-facing consciousness’s single eye
In the samples above, you sensed the empty breath’s insubstantial dynamo in the lower abdomen. But if you prefer a more metaphysical approach, sense the ‘dynamo’ as a transparent force in the inward-facing consciousness’s single ‘eye’ between the eyebrows, unnoticeable to the outward-facing consciousness. From this calm space between the eyebrows, follow the empty breath onward.
First, defocus the single ‘eye’ and patiently await the empty breath to unfold as a transparent sound in the space within it. From there, sense the swing of the empty breath in your upper body, and with each inhale, glimpse the Enlightenment of that which is One.
Whether you connect with the empty breath through the abdominal ‘dynamo’ or from the inward-facing consciousness’s single ‘eye’, you hardly notice the constant stream of thoughts from the brain. Therefore, until returning to the conscious experience of being somebody, you’re in the bliss of nothing, feeling transparent, regardless of appearing as something.
Connecting with the nothingness of the empty breath can be easier if you link it to something you cherish. For instance, Alexius refers to it as Uma – his beloved cat who has passed on to nothingness. Hence, since she’s intangible, much like the empty breath itself, the memory of her, linked with the empty breath, is like a beam of nothingness piercing Alexius’ perceived world of something. Ergo, nothing stops him from feeling connected with the empty breath. [Photo: Alexius]
From the eighth chakra above the head
You can also sense the empty breath’s ‘dynamo’ in the eighth chakra above your head. There, begin in a state of not-knowing, then surf both sides simultaneously toward the heart in a vertical, elliptical entity that moves sideways. Next, contemplate the bliss of nothing. Then surf back to the eighth chakra, still on both sides of a vertical, elliptical entity that moves forward and backwards through your body.
But when you return to the eighth chakra, you’re back in a state of not-knowing until you surf down to the heart, where you again contemplate the bliss of being nobody – and so on. If you surf all the elliptical entities of the empty breath at once, the non-self journeys, without distance, to that which is One.
The rhythm of the empty breath is so mesmerising that you forget the world of something and slip into the bliss of nothing. [Photo: Alexius]
Forgetting up or down
Connecting with the empty breath is not about letting go or surrender. Doing so reinforces the belief that you are a specific person. That simply reinforces the belief that you are a specific person. Instead, use the intensity of your unedited desperation to take off into the empty breath, and the illusion fades.
It’s a matter of speech when Alexius’ Duality Hacks say that the empty breath fills you with emptiness. It doesn’t supply you with anything. Instead, it exposes the body as nothing, camouflaged by experiences of something. This applies to all experiences of something. Fortunately, you aren’t bothered by anything in the absence of something. That’s why it’s so blissful to be connected with the empty breath.
If you forget to follow the empty breath’s rhythm, there’s no reason to blame yourself, because there is no self. It’s make-believe. Of course, this also applies to being connected with the empty breath. Nevertheless, as it gives you nothing, it doesn’t establish you as something. Hence, what you believe yourself to be is exposed as unreal, thus not hiding what is real: the formlessness of Oneness
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