Attention in Meditation

This meditation guides you through 4 different types of attention focus in meditation. Understanding how meditation shapes attention is important if you wish to understand and personalize your meditation practice to your specific needs. Shorter formats of this meditation are available on my profile as well.

If you have struggled with specific meditations before, please listen to my Science Insight on how Meditation shapes Attention to understand why this may have been the case.

Transcript

Hello and welcome.

My name is Inge and it is my mission to bring you science-based insights about health,

Psychology and meditation,

So you can gain a deeper understanding about your practice.

We have never been more distracted than we are today,

And so to control your attention and to understand how meditation can help you do this,

Has become more important than ever before.

Welcome to this meditation where we explore four forms of attention in meditation.

Introceptive,

Extroceptive,

Broad and Narrow Attention Meditation.

Introceptive meditations focus attention on internal sensations.

Introceptive,

Internal.

These can be internal sensations such as emotions,

Thoughts or simply sensations in the body such as tingling,

Cold or warmth.

Extroceptive meditations focus attention on external sensations.

Extroceptive,

External.

These can be anything you see,

Hear,

Smell,

Taste or touch.

Narrow attention meditations focus your attention on very detailed and specific objects that are close by,

Such as the feeling of the inhalation in the hairs of your nose,

A candle right in front of you,

The timing and quality of a very specific sound close by,

Such as the ticking of water on a flat surface.

Broad attention meditations focus attention,

You may have guessed it,

More broadly and further away,

Incorporating more sensations into your awareness.

This can be the feeling of breathing through your whole body as opposed to on specifics such as the hairs in your nose.

It can be visually gazing into space or towards the horizon,

Far away from you,

Getting every aspect of the view into your awareness.

A short disclaimer before we begin.

Depending on your personal preferences or on your temporal state of mind,

You may find one style more comfortable and useful than the other.

This is totally normal and okay.

We have personal preferences,

But we also have temporal preferences and needs.

Particularly when you feel overly stressed,

Anxious,

Jittery,

Numb,

Depressed or tired,

Be aware that these four distinct styles will have different effects on your state of mind.

I find it exceptionally important that you understand why,

But the explanation is nuanced and lengthy.

So I highly recommend you listen to my Science Insight on Meditation and Attention,

Either before or after doing this meditation,

So you may learn about the different styles and their psychological and physiological effects.

This meditation guides you through all four styles,

So that you can experience the different effects and how they fit your personal preference and temporal needs.

You may use the knowledge from the Science Talk to better understand your personal experience and adjust your future practice accordingly.

Next to helping you experience the differences between these styles,

This meditation is also suitable to help you flexibly switch between all attention dimensions,

So you may learn to control your attention better,

As opposed to being drawn into rabbit holes created by companies who are on the hunt for your attention.

Knowing how to switch attention from external to internal,

From broad to narrow and from narrow to broad,

Will help you control how you want to use your attention throughout your day.

Are you ready to dive in?

We start with an extra-oceptive meditation,

Meaning we keep our eyes open and focus attention outside our body.

We start with simply focusing externally and then we add different scopes of attention,

Namely narrow and broad focus.

When you are ready,

Let's begin.

Gently open your eyes if they were not yet open.

Allow your eyes to rest on the objects in front of you and take your time naming them.

You can say chair,

Lamp,

Laptop,

Tree.

Take a moment to name all the colours or shades you see in the objects in front of you.

Allow your attention to rest on one object rather close to you in this space,

The closest one you can see.

Notice the play of light,

Colour,

Shape.

Keep your gaze fixed on the object.

No matter what happens around you,

You stay locked and explore every tiny little detail of this object.

And if your attention wavers,

No problem.

Simply bring your attention back to the object.

The practice is to focus and refocus.

Slowly shift your attention away from the object towards the space in between you and the object.

Gaze at this space.

From there allow your attentional field to widen and expand into the widest corners of your oval visual field,

Looking at everything all at once,

But nothing in particular.

Allowing everything,

Colours,

Light,

Objects to be received in awareness as a cloud of sensations.

And if your attention gets grabbed by something,

No problem.

Notice when it happens and then shift your gaze back to the space between you and whatever you're looking at.

And from there on,

Widen your gaze and allow everything into your broad view.

Close your eyes and focus your attention on any sounds you hear.

First focus on sounds nearby and then on sounds further away.

Name the sounds you hear coming in.

Now focus on a very specific reappearing or continuous sound in your environment.

Focus all your efforts at keeping your attention on this one sound.

Filter out any other incoming sound.

And if your attention wavers and you get distracted,

No problem.

Simply guide it back to that one sound.

Now broaden your attention to the experience of everything as one big sea of sounds.

Noticing everything,

But focusing attention on nothing in particular.

Allow your attention to freely float in this sea of sounds.

Sometimes sounds will shortly surface,

Only to disappear again in the big sea of sounds without you having to do anything.

Just allow this process to unfold without actively anticipating anything.

Just letting it all happen and be open to receive.

We have practiced narrow and broad focus in two forms of extraoceptive meditation.

Visual extraoceptive meditation and auditory extraoceptive meditation.

And we've narrowed and broadened your scope of attention.

Notice whether it feels differently to either focus your attention fixed and specifically on one object or broad and wide on nothing at all.

Probably fixating on something close by feels more alerting and engaging and broadening and widening feels more relaxing and releasing.

Let's move to an introceptive meditation,

Meaning we close our eyes and focus attention inside our body.

This can be very relaxing for some and it can be stressful for others.

So please just allow whatever comes up,

Take mindful note and then use the knowledge from the science talk to understand what works and does not work for you.

Allow your eyes to close.

Pay attention to the start of your breath.

Feeling the exact moment your lungs start to expand and the inhale is initiated.

Feel the exact moment of the release of the exhale.

Keep your focus at the beginning and ending of each inhale and the beginning and ending of each exhale.

Place all your attention on your belly button.

Feel its movement millimeter by millimeter.

Feel how it coordinates with your inhales and exhales.

Moving away from the spine on the inhale and towards the spine on the exhale.

Keep your attention there on the belly button,

Feeling the exact switch of moving away and towards the spine.

If you lose focus,

No problem.

Simply bring your attention back to the belly button.

The practice is to focus and refocus.

Now shift your attention to your chest and locate your heartbeat.

Feel every beat in your chest.

Feel the difference in intensity and speed with every beat.

Perhaps notice the difference in speed when you inhale and when you exhale.

If you lose focus,

No problem.

Simply bring your attention back to the beat.

Allow your attention to grow wider so you may feel the rise and fall of your belly,

The expansion of your ribs and the heartbeat in the chest in full synchrony with the intensity of your breathing.

Experience the whole process of breathing like waves on a shoreline.

Feeling them roll in on the inhale,

Break and pause in between and retreat on the exhale.

Allow your attention to grow even wider,

Letting your breath be felt in your whole body,

Feeling the inhales like waves of sensations in your arms,

Legs,

Hands and feet.

And feeling the relaxation of the exhales in your shoulders,

Hips,

Face,

Allowing all sensations of the breath to be present and move in and out of awareness,

Without trying to focus on any aspect in particular.

Keeping your awareness wide and open and feeling the waves of sensations as they roll in and out of your whole body.

Focus your attention on your thoughts.

Thoughts can be visual,

Auditory or verbal.

It can be any idea or story or song that plays out in your head in images,

Words or sounds.

Perhaps now your task list comes up or a discussion with someone or simply just a face.

You may ask yourself what the purpose of this meditation is or you may feel a pain in your knee that makes you wonder how much longer you have to sit.

See if you can notice the precise beginning of a thought.

Where does it pop up?

Can you stay with it until the end?

Where does it lead you?

How does it dissolve?

If you lose focus and any particular thought takes you on a train ride,

Just notice that your attention has wandered and bring your focus back to noticing the precise beginning and ending of each thought.

Now release your focus and just allow any thoughts to come up without paying particular attention to them.

They just come and they go,

Perhaps in synchrony or in a train.

Allow them to surface without focusing on any one thought in particular.

Just let thoughts surface into your awareness and sink back underneath your subconscious.

Perhaps experiencing a constant sea of images,

Words and sounds popping in and out of awareness.

Not trying to make sense of them,

But simply being open and aware and experiencing them all at once.

Like watching a sky full of birds and clouds,

Widening the view to all,

Being aware of all of them but focusing on none.

When you are ready,

Draw this meditation to a close.

Notice whether it felt different to either focus your attention on one sensation or on many sensations all at once,

And on one thought or the fuzzy sum of your thoughts,

And whether it felt different to focus attention internally or externally.

Please know that whatever your preference is,

There is nothing wrong with you.

Some people find it difficult to locate internal sensations,

Others find it comforting and easy to focus inside.

Some find it overwhelming to focus internally and find comfort in focusing externally.

Knowing your preferences and understanding why they are your preferences will help you to personalize your meditative journey.

If you notice differences between broad,

Narrow,

Introceptive and exerceptive meditation and you want to learn more,

You have several options.

First,

You can listen to the science insight on attention and meditation that explains the psychological and physiological effects of these four styles.

This is useful for your practice because these four styles are often used interchangeably on meditation tracks without explaining their profound differences.

Not understanding those differences may leave you more anxious after a meditation as opposed to more relaxed,

More activated after meditation while you thought it would help you sleep,

Or more fuzzy while you thought it would help you perform better at work.

Knowing more about this topic will help take your meditation practice to another level where you can use it to tune attention to your specific needs.

Second,

If you want to get better at specific practices from this summary meditation,

I've created separate tracks for you so you can listen to each type individually.

Thank you for being curious.

Have a lovely rest of your day.

Reviews

Ty so much for this summary of mental scopes(?).

Where will i find the article mentioned in this track?

Thank you and be well!

Great to experience these together in sequence. Unclear on space between but overall very interesting and helpful.