Follow and live, sleep and collapse — breath, posture and voice in a guided meditation of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia, measured against the tradition it wears
Fatima C. Spisländer
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) November 8, 2026 preprint DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.24060377 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Case study Case report |
|---|---|
| Population | A single recorded guided meditation session led by Ajahn Brahm before a live hall audience |
| Duration | Four and a half minutes of spoken guidance followed by fourteen minutes of recorded breathing |
| Topics | Buddhism Meditation |
| Key findings | Argues that the recorded session departs from classical meditation instructions: the author reports a slumped posture, 303 audible breaths at 20 to 23 per minute with a rising 5.1 kHz whistle, and minimal belly and shoulder movement, rather than the upright body, wakeful mind and quiet breath the cited canons request. |
Abstract
On 30 October 2026 the Buddhist Society of Western Australia recorded a guided meditation with its spiritual director, Ajahn Brahm, and published it on YouTube. The paper measures this recording frame by frame and sample by sample and reads it against the oldest instructions on posture and breath in India, China and Japan. For four and a half minutes the monk tells a full hall that he never does anything in meditation and that everything is silent. For the next fourteen minutes his microphone carries every one of his breaths into the hall: 303 breaths, 20 to 23 a minute, each with a whistle at 5.1 kHz that grows louder and higher as the session goes on. His belly moves about half a millimetre per breath, his shoulder about one. The canons, from the Pali canon, the Bhagavad Gītā and the Yogasūtra to the Warring States jade inscription on circulating the qi, Dōgen and Keizan, ask for an upright body, a wakeful mind and a breath no one hears. The recording shows a slump instead of an upright body, a heavy breath instead of a quiet one, and a joke about powers instead of the teaching. The subject of the paper is a public performance of a tradition and whether it accords with the sources to which the robe lays claim; the personal attainments, sincerity and character of Ajahn Brahm lie outside its scope. Methods: detection of breath sounds, motion tracking by phase correlation against a fixed reference, spectral analysis of the whistle, voice analysis and local transcription of the quotations; scripts and data are documented.
Comparable studies
Other case reports and case series on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brain sources of EEG gamma frequency during volitionally meditation-induced, altered states of consciousness, and experience of the self Advanced meditator | 2001 | Case study | n = 1 |
| Mindfulness Meditation for Alcohol Relapse Prevention: A Feasibility Pilot Study Adult alcohol-dependent graduates of an intensive outpatient program | 2008 | Prospective case series | n = 19 |
| How does it feel to lack a sense of boundaries? A case study of a long-term mindfulness meditator. A single long-term mindfulness practitioner (S) with 40 years of practice in... | 2015 | Qualitative case study | n = 1 |
| Loving‐kindness meditation to enhance recovery from negative symptoms of schizophrenia Individuals suffering from schizophrenia-spectrum disorders with persistent negative... | 2009 | Case study | |
| Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Problem Gambling A female problem gambler | 2011 | Case study | n = 1 |