So this practice is called dual attention,
And the intention here is to be able to notice rumination,
Repetitive thoughts,
Or perseverative thinking.
And to be able to redirect our attention elsewhere.
It's a short practice,
Maybe only a few minutes,
And I'm just gonna invite you to first start to bring your attention into your body.
So just notice where your body is in space,
Maybe where your feet are and where your hands are.
You can start to bring attention to where you feel your breath.
May it be your belly or your lungs or the slight rising and falling of your shoulders.
And so I'm just going to invite you to consider a recent stressor or repetitive thought.
And if we think about stress on a scale from zero to 10,
10 being the most stressful.
And zero no stress at all.
We're thinking maybe a four.
And as you bring that stressor or thought to mind,
Just pay attention to the subtle shifts in your body.
You might notice a little bit of tension.
You might notice the elevation of your heart rate.
And we're just noticing these physical sensations.
We're not trying to change them or do anything different.
It's just our body's way of communicating.
That we're experiencing a stressor.
And so we are going to use two sense doors or two sensory experiences.
To bring our attention out of our mind and into our body.
And so I'm going to invite you.
To firmly plant your feet on the floor and feel free to stand up when you're doing this or you can be seated.
That I'd really like you to notice.
The pressure of your feet on the floor.
Notice if you have socks or shoes or slippers or if you're barefoot.
Notice a temperature of your feet.
And really allowing your attention to be fully in your feet,
Fully in those sensations.
And now I'm going to ring my bell.
Several times.
And I'm going to invite you to try to focus your attention on both the sensations of your feet.
And the sound of the bell.
In just a moment,
You will notice and hear the sound of my bell ringing multiple times.
And again,
The intention is to focus your attention on hearing the sound and also the sensations of your feet.
Okay,
And now I'm going to invite you to just notice.
What happened when you were trying to put your attention in two different places to hear the sound of the bell and the sensation of your feet.
Maybe you notice that all of your attention was consumed by those two sensations or sensory experiences.
Maybe you notice the thoughts or the stressor.
Briefly,
We're not impacting you.
Perhaps they returned,
Perhaps they didn't.
We're just going to notice what happened for you.
Generally speaking,
It tends to be really difficult for our mind to focus on thoughts.
When we are using more than one sensory door.
And so the two I used were the feet and the sound of the bell,
But you could use.
Holding ice cubes and listening to something.
Or feeling another part of your body and sucking on a sour candy.
You could hold a hot mug of something and really notice how that feels in your hands and also listen to something.
It can be any two sensory doors.
And of course,
It's not impossible to still think about the stressor and have that be present,
But it tends to be more difficult,
Particularly when you practice this skill.
So if that felt helpful,
My hope is that that's something that you can use.
It does not take long.
And I'll just invite you to take a couple more breaths at whatever pace feels normal to you.
Perhaps there's a shift from when we started and now and perhaps that's a big shift,
Perhaps that's a small shift.
And I will ring the bell in about 15 seconds to signal the end of this practice.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Have a good day.
