Today I have a challenge for you.
Now,
I'm not gonna lie,
This challenge can be quite tricky for some people,
Even adults.
It's called the Focus Challenge.
And it's an internal practice,
That means it happens inside your head and inside your body.
And the way you do this challenge is to see how long you can focus for.
We're gonna practice in this session,
But you can play this game as long as you like,
As often as you like,
And see if you can beat your high score.
The way we play this game is this,
We're going to choose a meditation object,
A practice object,
A focus object,
And we're going to sit and focus our full attention on it.
And the way you win is this,
If you lose focus,
If your mind wanders,
You stop the timer,
Yeah?
And your goal is to stay focused for as long as possible.
And what we're going to do is practice focusing our attention on our breathing.
So,
I want you to do a big deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth,
And just focus on what that single breath feels like.
While I'm talking right now,
Focus on that breath,
Focus on your breathing.
Maybe you notice your belly going out,
Or your chest,
Or maybe you notice the breath leaving and entering your mouth or your nose.
What does your breath feel like?
I'm going to go quiet for like five to ten seconds,
And I just want you to focus on one or two breaths.
Don't think about,
Don't worry about anything else.
You ready to give it a try?
Let's do it.
Focus on the sensation of the breath.
Go.
Okay,
Did you lose focus?
Did you stay focused?
Either way,
It's okay,
Because this is a game,
This is a competition against ourselves.
Sometimes you're going to do better than other times,
But our goal is to get better with more practice.
Maybe you can last one breath,
Maybe you can last 100 breaths.
The truth is though,
The more you practice,
The more you play,
The more you experiment with this,
The better you are going to get.
Let's try a little bit longer.
You can close your eyes if you like to,
Just draw your attention to the breath,
And if you find your mind wandering,
That's okay,
You bring it back to focus,
You focus back on that breath.
You ready?
We're going to sit a little bit longer now,
And I want you to do your best to stay focused on the feeling of your breath,
Either at your belly,
At your chest,
Or entering and leaving your nose.
You ready?
Don't lose focus.
Let's give it a try.
All right,
So how was that?
How was that longer session?
Did you do it?
I hope you did,
Because we're going to go even longer this time.
You ready?
Now this one,
This one's going to be a big challenge.
We're going to try to focus on our breath for one whole minute.
Now,
This is how we're going to do it.
If you're there doing this meditation with someone,
You're going to do it together,
And what you're going to do is,
When I say go,
You're going to focus your attention on the breath,
Either at your belly or at your nose,
And if you lose focus,
If you realize that you've started thinking about other things,
You've started shifting around,
Moving around,
Doing something else,
You're going to go take another breath,
And put your hand up,
And then turn your focus back to the breath.
The little hand up is just you acknowledging that you lost focus,
And remember it's okay,
We're not competing with anyone else,
We're just doing our best to stay focused for a minute this time.
Okay,
So when I say go,
You're going to focus your attention on the breath,
And if you lose focus and you recognize that,
You put your hand up,
Take another breath,
And get back into it.
You ready?
Go.
Okay,
So how'd you go?
How'd you go with that one minute of focus?
If you're anything like me,
I stay focused for a little bit,
And then my mind wanders,
And I'm like,
I was thinking about what I'm going to do later,
I was thinking about dinner,
I was thinking about playing with my friends,
I lost focus.
That's okay,
We're practicing focusing,
Because do you know what?
You'll get better and better at this game,
And this game will help you with everything.
It'll help you stay focused at school,
It'll help you stay focused on games that you play by yourself or with friends,
It'll help you stay focused on artistic creations,
Because if your mind wanders,
If you lose focus and change tasks,
You'll never get anything done.
So I want to leave you with a way to play this game by yourself.
Now,
Of course,
You can listen to this track any time you like,
But this is the way you can play it by yourself.
You're either going to count breaths,
How many breaths can you stay focused on?
You focus on a breath and you think to yourself one,
You get to the second breath,
You think to yourself two,
And you keep going three,
Four,
Five,
Six,
Seven breaths,
See how many breaths you can focus on.
And when you lose focus,
That's okay.
You just remember the last breath you remembered,
Maybe you got up to breath number seven,
And you write that down,
That's your high score.
And then do you know what you do?
You try and beat that high score.
Pretty good game.
See how many breaths you can get.
And let me know,
Let me know how many breaths you get.
And the other way to play this game is to do a countdown timer.
You set a timer for one minute like we did,
Or maybe two minutes if one minute's too easy for you,
Or three,
Or four,
Or 10.
If you can do 10,
Super focused,
But you keep upping that time to see how long you can focus for.
And once again,
You write down your high score.
If you can only focus for 30 seconds,
That's fine.
Get that 30 seconds,
And the next time,
Try to do 35 seconds,
Just a little bit more.
If that's all too easy for you,
Maybe do two minutes,
Whatever it is.
Work out your high score,
Work on it daily.
Tell the people around you,
I got a high score.
I focused on my breath for three minutes today.
That's a pretty good accomplishment.
The more you practice,
The better you're going to get.
Have an amazing day,
And let me know your high scores when you get them.
Catch ya.
