Auto Focus

Deb: Barb’s quantum physics classes have brought many fascinating ideas to light and one of them is this idea of focus. Thank you, Barb, for Hocus Focus. My particular focus is that of a gadfly. It is not something I am particularly proud of, nor is it something I relish. But I struggle with my focus, which is why as I have mentioned my love for Transcendental Mediation and why it works for me. Trouble is, I keep forgetting to do it because every time I intend to, my mind flits to another idea or another task. I keep tons in my head. Tons. Really. Tons. I know that we all do so I am not setting myself up here as the busiest or the most pressured.

Although this is about me so...

The problem is, my brain is not orderly. My darn brain works as a catchall. Not a single filter in there. Every time I try to organize my brain into folders I will suddenly have a random thought and, as I turn my head to pursue it, all the ideas tumble out of my brain folders and onto my brain floor, scattered amongst the other grey matter (referring to my brain of course, not the fact that I am old). Although in fairness my hair is grey and I dye it. So full disclosure, from the neck up, I am technically all grey matter.

But, that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I lack focus.

A small example of this is that while I was writing the first paragraph, I got up four times: once to phone my parents, once to get tea, once to put the dry cleaning at the front door, and once to write down an idea for another blog. Actually, I lie. I really did all those things before I wrote the sentence, “My particular focus is that of a gadfly”, which is what inspired me to write that sentence. The real truth is that between that sentence and the end of the paragraph I also searched through my purse for a chocolate covered caramel that I knew I had put in there and wanted to have with my tea. It was there, as it turned out. I ate it and now I am on a roll.

Okay, now to the point of the blog. I have been focus experimenting. I have been making a point to think only of one thing at a time and seeing where it leads.

My first experiment went like this:

Last week, because spring/summer came early to Toronto I was walking along, with visions of phone calls, to do lists, ideas, worries and tasks in my head. As I walked I decided to clear my head of “shoulds” and focus on the day, the beautiful warm sunny day. So I did. My brain fought back for a bit, like it was resisting being squeezed into a bikini too early before it had a chance to use self tanner. But then ... then it relaxed and all it could see and all it could think of was the stunning rapturous March summer day. And then a feeling swept over me. And it was all encompassing. I was a teenager again and I was walking to school on that first really honest to goodness warm day after the winter. And my coat was tied around my waist and the sun was on my face and everything was new and filled with freedom and thoughts of boys, and I felt teenaged sexy and young, and the world was my oyster and all my dreams were possible, every single one of them!

Now the fabulousness of this focus experiment was that—and this is key to the understanding of it—I had none of these thoughts. None of them. But I had all of the feelings. I was transported. I was back there in that time!

But the really fantastic thing was that at the end of the focus experiment, I was left with the resulting buoyancy. I did not feel that these were memories of a state of being. I was left with a feeling of the possibility of me NOW. Sure it’s easy when you’re young to dump the tasks and worries and chores when you want to. Isn’t that what youth is? We always say that youth is wasted on the young. The idea, of course, is that if I had known when I was young what I could do and what I had going for me I would have done so much more bla bla bla.

But what I have realized is that youth is started on the young and finished whenever you want it to finish. If you’re smart, your youth won’t finish till you’re dead. What a revelation I had. I did the focus experiment to see if I could focus. That’s all. Focus. But the focus gave me a parting gift that I did not expect. It helped me to see that whatever is happening in my life, be it good or bad, it is not set in stone. I can change it, simply by changing it. I can prattle on and on about what could have been, or stress about issues I am grappling with till the cows come home.

Or, I can focus on something lovely and I can become anything I want.

Barbara: Okay, I love this post so much, I want to bite you. I want to squeeze your cheeks and kiss you. I want to laugh uproariously (which, by the way, I did several times while reading. Actual throw-my-head-back laughter) and I want to cry (which, by the way, I also did at the end there). This is just so so beautiful and true. True and Beautiful. And I think I’m feeling kinda freakishly euphoric right now because lately I too have experienced this amazing release of tension and fresh awareness of possibility. Lately, thanks to my recent exercises in focus, and thanks also to a lovely friend (waves at Shalaka) who sent me some guided meditations that I’ve actually been using, for the first time in my life I am practicing focus on a regular basis and it is all these things you speak of. Being in the clean, clear, wondrous moment. Being the best and sweetest part of yourself. Being here.

Thanks for playing, Deb, and for sharing your own experience with us! You guys???

PS a little fun sound-bite to you from Deb!

Hocus Focus

Barbara: So in a “perfect storm” of social messages lately, I’ve been bombarded with lessons about focus. Our lack thereof. And the possible life-changing advantages of learning how to get it back. First, there have been several messages about learning how to meditate. Whether it’s from beautiful blogger, Lori, or from our own sweet Shalaka. Then it was a newspaper article last week about Michael Phelps’ very particular training style. And then it was an informal conversation with my Quantum Physics teacher on our drive home last night.

Okay, okay, I get the message!!

Here’s the nutshell. Meditation is said to be good, right? I mean, we’ve all read/heard it a million times. And if you’re anything like me, you might be all, “Yeah, oh, I wish I could do it, but well, I have all these other things to do!” or, “I’ve tried it a couple of times, and well, I, you know, SUCK at keeping my mind quiet and focused!” I don’t need to go into further detail on the meditation thing, right? We’re same-paging it, I’m sure.

Which brings me to the Michael Phelps article (click on the link to read the article). Turns out that—aside from the genetically perfect swimmer’s DNA from which he’s made—he has a dedicated training program that focuses on, well, focus! He meditates on his swims, going over them in minute detail in his head, rehearsing them from the moment he arrives at the aquatic centre to what he’ll be listening to on his ipod to how he’ll hit the water to how his strokes will feel to the final reaching touch of the wall, over and over, until he can literally do them with his eyes shut (turns out he needed that skill—his goggles were leaking during one of his races: he closed his eyes, he swam like he’d rehearsed it, he won—not only the gold medal, but a World Record!) What really intrigued me about this article was the idea that in each of these thousands of imagined races, he, of course, won every one. So his days were filled with what they call “small wins”. These small wins have all the same positive effects on his psyche that come with an actual gold medal win, and these effects in turn feed his ability. It’s small-win/big-win—and it’s all thanks to uninterrupted focus.

And then last night, there was my drive-home convo with the teacher. Focus came up once again! I don’t remember how we actually got into it, but let’s assume we were trying to address my vague grasp on the stuff he’s teaching. Anyway, he pointed out that our minds want to take us in a million different directions ALL THE TIME and that this is not only exhausting but counter-productive. And that this mind-habit of ours is so engrained and “normal” that we don’t even realize we do it. He brought up an athletic comparison, as well. In his case it was the golfer: what’s the difference between an Average Joe golfer and a powerhouse star? Well, the powerhouse doesn’t let his mind waver for even a millisecond from the moment he raises his club through to contact with the ball through to the after-swing. The rest of us? Waver waver waver. Our brains divert for tiny little fractions of a second, not once but many times—and so we lose our focus and the shot is compromised.

And what’s more? All this mind-wandering, all this lack of focus, is exhausting!!!

We become depleted and drained by the meaningless world travels of our mind. (One other real-life reminder of this for me: my inability to write last week, remember?) Okay, in all of our defenses, of course not every mind-ramble is “meaningless”, many will lead to interesting thoughts or ideas, but it’s amazing how often they are counter-productive.

And maybe if we train ourselves to focus, a little bit at a time, we might be able to tap into that extraordinary energy we otherwise dissipate as we contemplate the mundane, the same-old, the inner-critic, the internal-bosses-of-us.

How? Well, back to square one on the meditation thing. Meditation has got to be a training ground for focus, right? But how about practicing focus when you’re doing something as simple as (to my teacher’s example) washing the dishes. Try applying all your focus to the task. Don’t let your mind wander. Or when you’re driving the car. Just look at everything you see and focus completely on that. Or when you’re getting ready for your day in the morning. Don’t think about the day ahead, just on how it feels (and looks) to lather that soap and comb that hair and brush those teeth.

If we can put ourselves in a “state of focus” for even just small snippets of time, maybe, just maybe, we will build up our focus muscles. And maybe, just maybe, our daily lives will be filled with much-deserved and darling “small wins” about which we can feel really truly pumped and which can take us to a whole other athletic level!

Deb: (trying hard not to blognap) I love this topic. It’s like you were a fly on the wall in a family discussion we had last night about focus and its many natural enemies. I adore the ideas you put forth here, Barb. And I am going to start simple. Brush the teeth, focus on the teeth, etc etc.

I have been a meditator since I was in my early twenties. T.M. to be exact. Shalaka and I actually had an online discussion about it. I loved meditation and, although I know this is an overused phrase, it saved my life. It turned things around for me at a tough and challenging time. The best part is, it was gift of love from my cousin Scott, the cousin I mentioned in an earlier post who helped out my Mom and Dad through this last period of time.

I kept it up for years, loving it and then ... it slipped away. It made a guest appearance during menopause and saved me again. I am getting the messages loud and clear that I need to resume. I keep using excuses like, “I don’t have two 20-minute periods a day to meditate.” Wrong. I do. I must find the time.

And in a funny turnabout, there are days I could not get through if it were not for split-focus, you know what I mean? Sometimes my brain has to serve many many masters. But of late it serves many masters all the time. I am inspired. Thanks, Barbara. 

Worried Sick

Barbara: Susan Sontag wrote a famous essay about “compassion fatigue” (I couldn’t find the essay itself, but this is an excellent article that discusses it). If you don’t know it, she talks about how there’s a real danger that we can become immune to the tragedies around us because we are so inundated with images depicting them. She calls this phenomenon “compassion fatigue”.

I don’t know about you, but I am not in danger of succumbing to compassion fatigue; I’m at risk of collapsing under the weight of fatigue brought on by my compassion.

I am virtually vibrating with my concerns and fears for Japan right now, never mind that those concerns are piling up on top of recent worries about New Zealand and renewed ones about Libya and Haiti, and on and on. I try to drown myself in my work, which helps in the moment, but I come out of it exhausted and inexplicably weepy. I feel powerless. I feel impotent.

Lori Landau posted an interesting article yesterday about her own thoughts on this. Lori suggests that in order to take care of the world, we need to take care of ourselves first. This is such a simple and powerful logic, I have to repeat it here. We’ve blogged a lot about personal trials and tribulations and how to lend a helping hand in times of need. But a unanimous consensus among us is that in terrible times, we are bound to “hit a wall”. This is when we most need a break to recuperate and heal. For each of us, this process will involve something different. Lori recommends meditation. Her point—and rightly so—is that through meditation, we can also increase our communal energy. And that communal energy can bind us together and give us an exponential healing power, even in the worst of times.

Now I am terrible at meditating. I’ve tried it to little avail. But I can see the beauty and truth in joining spiritual forces and BELIEVING. If there is one thing that exemplifies the best of the human spirit, it is our ability to prevail, adapt, and grow. We can’t give up now. We have to believe in ourselves, in each other, in good. Let’s not get so fatigued that we succumb to it, that we settle, that we give up. “Believing” might not be meditation in the classic sense, but it’s the kind of meditation I, for one, can grasp. It gives me energy when I most need it.

Deb: Barb, wonderful food for thought. I too have been struggling with this. I look at the photos and it looks exactly like a disaster movie. It looks unreal and surreal and as a result, it is hard to grasp. So I find myself instead focusing on the individuals.

I was struck by a photo in the newspaper of a little boy. He must have been around three or four. He was standing in front of a man in full radiation gear, as the man waved a wand over his tiny self. His eyes were wide and his little arms and legs were spread-eagle. He looked not terrified but aghast. At least as aghast as a tiny boy can look. And I sat staring at the picture of his sweet face and thinking that no matter what happens in the rest of his life, this is the defining moment. He will never ever ever forget this moment. It will shape who he is, and who he will become.

I have meditated since I was twenty. I kept it up for years and years. I picked it up during menopause and it was a great help, but since then I have strayed again.

So Barb, you have inspired me to slip into my Transcendental Meditation and send loving thoughts of peace and hope and healing to the Japanese people. And as I repeat my mantra, I will think of them, one human at a time, through the face of one tiny little boy. 

Skating My Joy

Deb: Swish swish swish. All I hear is the slice of my blade and the beat of my heart. Although I am the only person on the rink, I go as decorum dictates, counter clockwise, ever the good girl. The ice and I are married, linked by the steady rhythm of my amateur glissade. The ice supports me and propels my form as I etch my mark into its beautiful sleek self. Although I am skimming far and long, I reach no physical destination. But ohhhhh where my mind and body are going! 

I am thinking not about work or life or sorrows or successes. I just am. Spontaneous meditation. Joy. Joy. Joy. I am alive.

My blade hisses sweet grateful tingling taps that resonate deep within my  body and soul. The cold air snapping my cheeks and my tingling toes are my only reminders that this is real. This is happening now. It’s a celebration and I am the only guest.

I came to this party in the beginning prompted by a desire for winter exercise and as a reminder of my youth. What it has come to mean to me is something I could have never dared dream. I am in heaven. This is prayer to me.

Barbara: What a beautiful ode to your mode of prayer, Deb. You have brought me right into the zen of meditation just by reading this (which is good because I have so little equivalent outlet, save my weekly yoga).

Deb skates virtually ever day, even keeps her skates in her car because, to quote her, “Then I can just stop and do a few minutes on my way to the grocery store. Skating doesn’t always have to be an event I plan for.” I was stunned by the simplicity of this logic. You know, you have to plan to go to the gym or do yoga or meet your friends for a run, right? But if there’s no sense of responsibility to the event, then you can sneak it in anytime it fits. And you maybe get to enjoy this kind of dream-like, meditative, beautiful awareness of life almost by accident, unplanned for.

Deb took me skating the other day. We have a new outdoor rink in my neighbourhood that she had to try. It had been a while since I’d skated, but I was game. I can always handle winter if I’m embracing it somehow. And she was right, the rink was gorgeous, a large figure eight around naturalized hillocks. And she was right again—despite the fact that we were chatting as we skated (not usually associated with zen or prayer) and having to avoid rambunctious 10-year-olds who did NOT respect the rink “decorum”––it was soulful and rejuvenating. I think we both could have stayed out there for hours if we didn’t also have “stuff” to do.

Maybe I’ll keep my skates in the car and go meditate on my way to the grocery store.

Starey

Deb: This is something I have wanted to blog about for a while now. Staring. Ever since I was a kid I’ve been a big starer. I have always called it my “staring thing” and I can remember saying with some urgency “don’t wreck it!” whenever someone caught me in the throes of my stare.

When we were young, my brother would delight in wrecking my staring things and I would curse him round the bend for it. And as soon as he realized how much I loved a good “stare” he made it his life’s work to ruin it for me. Then I would desperately try to “fix” my eyes again, to no avail. The spell was broken. I realized early on that the staring thing controlled me, not the other way around.

When I was researching “staring thing” and “stare” and “fixed stare” online to give it a proper clinical name for this post, the answers scared the stare right out of me. MAN ALIVE, was it scary! From mini-strokes to mental disorder, it was enough to make me run to the safe haven of the Anthropologie website! As a result, got a really cute pair of booties (cream and brown with contrasting laces). But I digress.

So try though I might, I just can’t seem to find an official name for that thing we all do, that stare of solace, that fixed fixation. But I do know this. I love my staring things and, as God as my witness, I am actually staring right now as I type. I guess it was just enough to mention it and my brain said “stare!”.

As I get older, my staring time increases. I use an electric thumper for my bad neck and shoulders and I now find that I stare the entire time I am thumping (said the actress to the bishop!). Rigel left a comment on our blog a while ago about thinking and said that experts tell us that at no time are we thinking absolutely nothing. I would tend to agree, but for the deft skill of my friend, “staring thing”. I can stare and think nothing for minutes on end. Nothing. Nada. Not a thought. And I love it.

I feel that Starey is my pal. Starey slows me down and gives me a break from frantic thought. So, despite the internet warnings about what it could possibly be, I have decided exactly what it is––my buddy. I know that they say this is something all humans do at one time or another, so I would be curious to hear from any among you who don’t have the starey experience.

And btw, if you ever catch me fixed and staring, I would ask just one thing of you. DON’T WRECK IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Barbara: Well, let me weigh in first. I envy you!!!!!!! Oh, for a blank stare, a “stare of solace”, a “fixed fixation”, as you so deftly put it. I do the stare-thing, which is different in nature from “starey thing”, which sounds sweet and soulful and free. No, the stare-thing is a sidelong look at the sky, wide-eyed, intent, yearning, behind which is a veritable hamster-wheel of whirring, solving, dissecting, unraveling, despairing. It is my genie-in-a-bottle. It is my go-to when I need to thinkthinkthink.

But after so many decades of whirring brain, I want desperately to find a peaceful OUT. A blank stare. Deb, it sounds so like meditation to me, this thing you do. It IS a gift. A very precious one. I, for one, would never dream of wrecking it.