I do a similar practice, especially when I'm feeling disembodied recently. love the "see, hear, feel" framing – so often we forget that the reason we're gritting our teeth at our desk is because we forgetting to connect with our bodies
The disconnection/dissociation that can happen with computer work is more profound than most people realize. With our attention on our work (or scrolling), we totally lose track of what we're doing with our bodies: posture, breathing... have you heard of "laptop apnea?"
I've heard of email apnea so I totally get laptop apnea – the clenching of our body and holding our breath as we go about answering emails & doing knowledge work
I wonder how different the experience of having convos that might send us into activation is on our body when we're in Zoom vs in-person
Thanks Chris. I played with this just now as you instructed, and the shift is palpable. The noting opens an invitation to an inner observer, creating some distance from the experience. It's interesting to me that greater mindfulness can be accessed by changing the aperture of our attention. Focusing in is one effective way to interrupt the attention pattern than leaves us unaware, and I've also used a more diffuse, or the practice of "field attention" - opening awareness to the field surrounding the object of my attention for a similar benefit of becoming more cognizant of the present. Someone who taught me a version of this years ago called it "wide vision." Practiced by looking something, but at the same time, noticing everything that is the full periphery of your attention even while tending to the object in the center.
Awesome, Rick! Glad you gave this technique a try. I think the "field attention" or open awareness practices (which I also use) are a bit different from this, which is more object-focused. But I've also tried using "see" to note my entire visual field rather than a single object, and that seems to bring it more in the direction of open awareness practices.
I do a similar practice, especially when I'm feeling disembodied recently. love the "see, hear, feel" framing – so often we forget that the reason we're gritting our teeth at our desk is because we forgetting to connect with our bodies
The disconnection/dissociation that can happen with computer work is more profound than most people realize. With our attention on our work (or scrolling), we totally lose track of what we're doing with our bodies: posture, breathing... have you heard of "laptop apnea?"
I've heard of email apnea so I totally get laptop apnea – the clenching of our body and holding our breath as we go about answering emails & doing knowledge work
I wonder how different the experience of having convos that might send us into activation is on our body when we're in Zoom vs in-person
Thanks Chris. I played with this just now as you instructed, and the shift is palpable. The noting opens an invitation to an inner observer, creating some distance from the experience. It's interesting to me that greater mindfulness can be accessed by changing the aperture of our attention. Focusing in is one effective way to interrupt the attention pattern than leaves us unaware, and I've also used a more diffuse, or the practice of "field attention" - opening awareness to the field surrounding the object of my attention for a similar benefit of becoming more cognizant of the present. Someone who taught me a version of this years ago called it "wide vision." Practiced by looking something, but at the same time, noticing everything that is the full periphery of your attention even while tending to the object in the center.
Awesome, Rick! Glad you gave this technique a try. I think the "field attention" or open awareness practices (which I also use) are a bit different from this, which is more object-focused. But I've also tried using "see" to note my entire visual field rather than a single object, and that seems to bring it more in the direction of open awareness practices.