Hi,
It's Giles.
This is a short piece for you to take time out with and reflect on.
A light-hearted story that points to something that's true for all of us.
As such,
There's no effort required while you're listening.
Only something to realise.
Something that can lead to profound,
Permanent change.
So get comfortable,
Relax,
And listen quietly for insight.
The healing power of focus.
The mind runs because you are giving it the power of your attention.
Withdraw your attention and the thinking mind falls away.
Michael A.
Singer One way or another,
My whole medical career has been concerned with understanding how these mind-bodies of ours work.
The various ways they can get out of whack,
And what we,
As practitioners,
Can do to help them regain their natural balance.
Back when I was practising orthopaedic surgery,
In the simplest of terms,
Our job was to keep two broken ends of bone together,
Stop wounds from getting contaminated with bacteria,
Step back,
And let life do the healing.
My work with the mind these days is not that dissimilar.
There's such a wisdom to life itself that when contaminated thinking is removed from a predicament,
And we step back from our urge to manage our experience,
Healing tends to occur quite naturally.
In terms of how we let go of this very human compulsion to obsess about the details of our thinking,
As I've continued to explore and learn about the workings of the mind,
It's become clear that,
In the simplest of terms,
It's all a matter of focus.
In his pioneering book,
The Master and His Emissary,
Professor Ian McGilchrist examines the two halves of the brain.
Not in the hackneyed,
Left does this and right does that manner,
Which has since been disproved,
But more how they offer two different ways of attending to the world,
Two ways of being,
Both of which play out in our lives constantly.
Using pigeons to explain how the left and right hemispheres work,
They discovered that a pigeon's right eye,
Left hemisphere,
Is involved in separating out objects,
Sees everything in terms of its usefulness and does things like hones in on individual details such as seeds on the ground to peck at.
Meanwhile,
The left eye,
Right hemisphere,
Is scanning the sky for predators and is aware of the bigger picture,
How it all fits together,
The whole interconnected nature of experience.
It's a really nice demonstration that came to mind when I was out walking and talking with a client recently.
Our route took us from wandering freely through beautiful forests on a wide,
Unobstructed path where we could widen our focus and marvel at the bigger picture around us,
To a twisty,
Turny,
Narrow,
Overgrown path where we had to choose every step carefully so as not to trip over the brambles stretching from one side to the other.
It was like a metaphor itself for those two different ways of being,
Big picture,
Right hemisphere,
Versus detail,
Left hemisphere.
And while we were concentrating hard on the details of our progress through the undergrowth,
We didn't get to experience any of the big picture beauty of the forest we were in,
Until we stopped and looked up to discover it was still there.
Just like our forest walk,
In life there are times when the path is wide,
We can breathe easily,
And it's very obvious that life is a beautiful,
Wondrous adventure.
Then there are times when life's path is twisty,
Turny,
And strewn with brambles.
Sometimes it's appropriate to focus on detail,
But we can slow down or stop and appreciate the big picture at any moment.
Because it's a constant in our lives.
It's free.
It's just part of who and what we are,
The bigger part,
Much bigger.
And it's the space from which we heal.
McGilchrist posits that as a species,
We have become too enamoured by the left hemisphere's focus,
Detail,
Usefulness,
Separation,
To the exclusion of the right,
Oneness,
Being,
Connection.
It's natural and very human to get sucked into the intellect's stories,
But remain mindful of what is always available to you in life,
Before the left brain analyses all the juice out of it.
Take some time to shift your focus in this way,
And let healing commence.
With love,
Giles And as with all my talks,
A deeper appreciation for what I'm pointing to can be had with repeated listens.
You'll hear something different next time.
