By practising awareness of your breath you will begin to understand your mental and physical processes and develop mindfulness. You will know what is happening as it happens, and you will be able to recognize a hindrance and turn it off. Spiritual regret for past unwholesome actions can develop and you will be able to abandon them and let go of a lifetime’s accumulation of baggage. A talk given at a 10 day Ottawa Buddhist Society retreat at the Galilee Centre, Arnprior, Ontario, Canada.