Archive for the ‘Attention’ Category

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Release Hidden Tensions

February 7, 2014

Neighbors called the rescue squad. There was something unusually quiet about the apartment of the old woman. They entered, found her in distress, and took her to the hospital. She had one hand tightly clenched into a fist. They could not get her to release. Finally, a doctor in the emergency room pried open her hand. Inside was a quarter.

Henri Nouwen tells this story in the beginning of his book “With Open Hands.” It is an image that has stayed with me for many years. The image of someone desperately hanging on to something valuable. So incredibly tensed up. Hanging on.

Jesus told stories about people trying to hang on to things. And he taught about the futility of that. Today I’m told there is a TV series (maybe more than one) about “hoarders” who can’t bear to throw anything away.

I’d like to relate this to the mindfulness discussion I started with this week. And prayer–which is where Nouwen took the story.

Part of being mindful is to open up. Become open to the world around you. Become open to God. You cannot walk around and really be with people if you are tensed up with worry about things which are of no value to God and actually impede your relationship with God and people.

In Yoga, I put people into positions where they hold a pose designed to stretch and strengthen a  particular muscle or muscle group. Then I will suggest that they do a mental scan of their bodies at that time. If we are working the upper leg muscle (say in Warrior pose), we discover often that we are holding tension in our shoulders. We should not be holding tension there. We should only be working the leg muscle. We remind ourselves to relax.

While warming up, I will have the class in sitting position cross-legged on the mat. We sit erect, stretch our arms out straight, then bring the palms of the hands together in front. Breathing deeply, we bring our arms back until we are pinching the shoulder blades together. We put the thought in our minds that we are opening ourselves up to greet the day. Then we bring our arms forward on the exhale and put the thought in our minds that we are releasing all the tensions of the day. Repeat about 4-6 times.

We have our minds and bodies intentionally working together alert to the moment–and only the moment. Now we can pray.

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Give the Gift of Your Attention

February 4, 2014

Give whatever you are doing and whomever you are talking with the gift of your attention. Jim Rohn

My thoughts on mindfulness resonated with many yesterday. There are three words, or concepts, that play well together–attention, focus, and mindfulness.

In my youth, I loved the murder mystery series by Earle Stanley Gardner about the legendary attorney, Perry Mason. There was a comment Gardner made about Mason’s personality that stuck. “He had such great power of concentration that he could move from the murder case he was on to complete concentrate on another case.”

Our current age is marked by “multi-tasking.” That’s a term borrowed from microprocessor hardware developement. Chips can be so designed that they partition off parts and can therefore support many tasks running simultaneously. Humans think they can do the same thing. (Actually, the chips usually use “time slicing” where moving at an extremely rapid speed, they work on each task a little at a time and it only appears to the much slower humans that the tasks are accomplished simultaneously.)

Humans cannot multi-task. Period. Humans can try time-slicing. Doesn’t work well.

When you are at a task, give it the gift of your attention. When you are in conversation with someone, give that person the gift of your attention (ouch, my weakness at times).

There is a mindfulness diet. It’s not what you eat (but please make good choices). It’s how you eat. What was the taste of the last thing you ate? The texture? Are you like so many humans who eat so quickly that the flavors and textures are lost in the speed of eating?

In the mindfulness diet, take a bite of food. Stop your hand and arm motion. Chew the food with attention. Notice the flavors, aromas, textures. Enjoy it. Then, and only then, take the next bite. By slowing down and becoming aware of the food, we actually eat less. For most of the people in the world, that’s a good thing.

Don’t fall into a trap thinking this is only a Buddhist or New Age concept. If you carefully read the stories about Jesus, not for what he said, but to gain a sense of how he acted and related. He had marvelous powers of concentration and focus. Remember him being startled by the woman who touched him seeking healing? He was concentrating elsewhere when he felt energy leaving him.

Thank you for your attention 😉

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