Welcome,
I'm Katie and today we're going to explore a practice to help us focus.
We often ask ourselves to focus on demand,
Like I need to sit down at 10 o'clock and work on this particular thing for two hours.
So we sit down,
We try to work and we find that we're having a hard time focusing on the task at hand.
And when I say the term focus on demand,
It sounds a little ridiculous because it seems obvious that we can't just snap our fingers and focus,
But somehow we have led ourselves to believe that we can indeed just make focus happen the second we want it to,
Just because we have to.
And when that doesn't happen,
It can be really frustrating.
But if we build in a little bit of transition time between whatever we were doing before and when we need to do some focus,
This little bit of transition period or a warm-up period can be really powerful in terms of our ability to focus on the work we're doing.
And it's worth noting that when we really need to get down and dirty and work on something and get something done,
We often try to do things to set ourselves up for success,
Like we clear our calendar and we schedule time to be uninterrupted to do work and we might turn our notifications off.
And in a way,
This is really setting the stage for us to be distracted by all of the thoughts in our head.
We quiet down other stuff and the thoughts in our head come up.
So it is really natural in some ways to have difficulty focusing when we set ourselves up this way.
So in our practice today,
We're going to work with a technique that I really love.
And it works by drawing our attention specifically to one thing that we're doing.
So we're giving our mind something to focus on and we're helping it learn to focus.
We're helping it practice focusing in this really kind of low stakes environment.
So let's just get right to it.
We'll practice it together and we'll start by just finding a comfortable position.
And I recommend arranging yourself in some way that feels supportive.
So that might mean sitting or lying down with something behind your back,
Your legs,
Using any pillows or props to feel comfortable.
And we are going to be using our arms in today's practice.
So just ensure that your arms are free to move in the space directly in front of you.
And we'll take a few breaths together to help us ease into practice.
And you'll find that many mindfulness practices begin with breath in some format.
And if you consistently do these more intentional breaths at the start of your practice,
You can start to train your brain to use this as a relaxation cue.
You'll start to recognize that a few deeper breaths is a signal,
Hey,
It's okay to relax.
So let's take an inhale together and an exhale.
And another inhale,
Maybe a little deeper this time.
And another exhale.
Take another two or three rounds of inhales and exhales at your own pace.
You might allow the breath to either deepen or just slow down a teeny bit more with each round.
Using this as our transition period between talking and practice.
So bring one hand out extended directly in front of you at eye level and stick your thumb out like you would if you were hitchhiking.
It doesn't matter which hand you start with.
And allow the focus of your vision to sit on the thumbnail or the very tip of the thumb.
And you'll slowly start to draw an infinity symbol in the air in front of you.
That's like a figure eight,
A little number eight,
But turned on its side.
So you'll continue drawing some figure eights slowly,
Keeping the visual focus at the tip of the thumb or the thumbnail.
And noticing as you do,
If your eyes want to skip ahead a little bit,
If you speed up or slow down naturally,
You don't need to keep the same speed or the same size of your figure.
You can shift and see what changes as you do.
And we'll draw maybe another two or three figure eights following your thumb in space with the eyes before slowly allowing that movement to slow down and stop in the middle.
And just bring that arm down and slowly bring that arm back up again.
You might want to give it a little shake or roll the shoulder after holding the arm out like that.
And we'll just switch sides.
We'll bring the other thumb out in front of us.
Make your hitchhiker's thumb and then allow the figure eight motion to begin on this side.
Following the thumbnail or tip of the thumb as it moves through space.
And noticing again the speed and the size of your shape and anything else that sort of comes to the attention.
Maybe that's soreness in the shoulder or that the eyes want to skip ahead or track behind a little.
Or maybe since this is the second side,
There's some recognition of something that looks or feels or seems different on this side.
And we'll take another two to three figure eights on this side depending on how quickly or slowly the thumb is moving.
And there's another two or three in the bank.
Just slowly allow the movement to dwindle and come to a stop.
And allow that arm to come back down,
Giving it a little shake or roll of the shoulder.
And crossing our visual midline back and forth like this,
Following a moving object,
Focusing in our visual midfield.
Not looking far,
Not looking close.
Practicing our depth perception and giving our mind something specific but constantly changing to attend to helps us practice focusing.
So take an intentional inhale here,
Maybe a little deeper,
And a slow exhale.
And then one more inhale,
Noticing what may have shifted during this practice,
If anything.
And as you transition to whatever you need to focus on today,
Just notice if what you've done here has made any difference.
Thank you for joining me.
