The online etymology dictionary never ceases to provide delightful insights into everyday words, most recently for me, attention in who’s origins I discovered this hidden gem: The notion is of stretching one’s mind toward something [from ad- "to" + tendere "stretch" (tenet)]. The act of paying attention has been on my mind in so many contexts lately I’m having a hard time keeping track. I believe the ball began rolling and taking on mass when I stumbled on an article in Psychology today that describes Nora Volkow’s new theory suggesting that the neuro-hormone dopamine is a key in directing attention rather than a mechanism of reward. In the article Nora Volkow suggests that dopamine alerts us when there is something important to pay attention to whether it’s the muscular firings of a new motor skill, the curves of a potential mate, a lurking predator, or our next dose of crack.
My self-directed attempts at learning about the chemical soup of the body’s communication system have not gotten much beyond wikipedia but I have learned enough to be fascinated by the neural mechanisms of attention. I am also astonished at how often the topic of attention is now coming up in my day to day life. Most of us have experienced the phenomenon of being totally oblivious to something only to see it absolutely everywhere once it is brought to our attention. In this case the experience is a little like looking into the infinite reflection of two mirrors since the thing in question here is attention itself.
William James wrote that “Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others[...]” But what does it feel like to pay attention and what happens to our brains and our selves as a results of paying it daily? Conscious attention paying practices are legion: everything from learning to play piano to meditating. My own experiences would most certainly warrant the inclusion of rock climbing in that category. For me, climbing is an activity so demanding of my focus and attention that all other elements of self fall away. Unfortunately, this includes important sensory signals like the pain and so, in the end, I decided to give my torn up shoulders a break and so now choose a less physically demanding attention practice: yoga nidra (undertaken lying comfortably on your back!)
As I gain experience teaching and practicing yoga nidra I’m starting to think of it as something of an extreme attention sport. During the practice we are directed to attend to areas of the body, sensations, thoughts, images, emotions, and awareness itself. Usually these objects of attention are suggested sequentially but the practice takes on real power when we attempt to hold two objects in awareness at the same time requiring the exhausted brain to relinquish it’s illusion as the only witness to our experiences.
My uneducated picture of what’s happening in the brains of all of us: healthy, addicted, or traumatized, is one in which synaptic ruts begin to develop in the communication highways of our neurotransmitters. By attending (and by attending I simply mean directing awareness, not thinking) to whatever is arising in the present moment we are, in affect, intentionally devolving – emptying out of all assumptions, perceived facts, beliefs, knowledge. This is the beginner mind of Zen meditation, dropping down the ladder of inference of Peter Senge and the radical empiricism of William James. Whatever we call it and by whatever means we achieve it it provides us a venue in which to collect new data, possibly unseating old data, and in the process, developing new synaptic paths – popping out of the ruts, if all goes well. If my armchair hypothesis holds any validity then the attention exercises of yoga nidra could turn out to be a valuable tool in helping people with all kinds of compulsive and addictive behavior as well as those of us simply hoping to become better people.
