I try to be the kind of teacher who practices what she preaches, but when concentration rolls around I realize how little practice I have at it outside of a yoga class. I am always doing two things at once. It's hard to have all of my mind in one place at one time. We are not encouraged to sit still, sit quietly. Well, we may have situations which require stillness and all of our attention but we're not really taught any techniques that can help us do that.
Unless you do yoga. I know there are other techniques, but none of them really helped me until they were linked with my body. I've always been more body oriented than mind. It's been in working with the two in tandem that I've learned about myself and the way I distract.
Even writing this proves challenging when the light hits my screen and I notice finger prints and water spots. There are so many things that can trigger memories and take you away from what you're doing.
One way yoga suggests to keep yourself present is to pay attention to the breath. This works only if you have begun to be aware of your breath and its' movement in your body. If you are trying to be present without a baseline for breath awareness, noticing it will take you even further away from what you're trying to concentrate on.
Lately, asking myself a simple question helps to pull me back to where I need to be. "What are you doing?" Now take any accusatory tone out of the inflection. Make it a genuine question of curiosity. What are you doing? Are you submitting to a craving? Are you subtly unhappy about your current circumstances and therefore running from them mentally? Whatever the circumstances, asking the question (even if you can't immediately answer it) helps to alleviate the pull of whatever it was. You'll be able to draw yourself back to your task.
As you clear out noise from your mind (the things you hold on to which are distractions) you'll have more of your mind to use on the processing of any given moment. It is said that dreams are the way your mind integrates all the stimuli you're subjected to in a day. According to yoga texts, advanced yogis don't dream. They are so present that they don't need to. They are already integrated.
In a yoga class you're asked to notice so many things at once. Sometimes it seems counterintuitive to try to pay attention to so many different parts of your body at once. And then the breath on top of it all. But as you practice you'll find this becomes easier because you'll no longer see each part as separate.
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