We’re excited to share a guest post from Breathing Spaces team member, Katie Fleetwood this week. Katie is a Meditation and Mindfulness instructor and yoga teacher. You can learn more about her on our Team page.
Have you ever felt like your mind is wandering and you can’t pay attention?
Of course you have- we all have! Check out this quick and easy way to begin improving your focus RIGHT NOW!
We’ve all heard of the push-ups that you do to build physical strength. Let me now introduce you to the Mindfulness Push-Up….
According to neuroscientist Dr. Amishi Jha, mind wandering happens 50 percent of our waking moments. However, we can train our minds to focus on what we want, like the present moment. She shares that this can be achieved through practicing the Mindfulness Push-Up.
Here’s how it goes:
- Focus on something
- Sustain attention on that thing
- Notice when your mind wanders
- Intentionally redirect attention back to your point of focus
- Repeat
Voila! There you have the mindfulness push-up. Pretty straightforward, right?
The catch is, it only works if you do it. As simple as that sounds, it’s true.
Recently, I was working with a student who has a goal of increasing his focus. He felt he had been doing a poor job of practicing because he hadn’t set aside specific time to practice yet.
I helped him reframe that.
Here’s what we did:
I often define mindfulness as paying attention on purpose. Of course there’s more to that definition, but in simple terms, this is it.
Paying attention on purpose can be done in a formal practice, such as a focused awareness meditation. However, paying attention on purpose can also be practiced in informal practices like mindful eating or mindful communication. The key in these cases is that mindfulness is referring to a quality of attention more than a specific action.
What my student and I uncovered together is that he is engaging in many things every day that require his focus and concentration, which means his daily life is full of opportunities to practice the Mindfulness Push-Up!
We decided to make a list of all those things, and then his assignment was to bring awareness to the act of refocusing, aka doing a Mindfulness Push-Up, any time he’s doing one of the things on that list.
The intentional acknowledgment of refocusing over and over again communicates to your brain that you are practicing, which in turn builds neural pathways that strengthen this skill…your ability to focus.
In our current fast paced world, where so many things compete for our attention, how might the practice of the Mindfulness Push-Up benefit you?
I invite you to create your own list of what you are already doing in your life that requires concentration and focus. Then, with intention, add the Mindfulness Push-Up into that already existing activity.