Focusing Exercises

By Dr. Tan

The goal of this exercise is to develop a sense of awareness of what is going on: in our body, in our thoughts, in our mind, in our emotions, and in the world around us.

This awareness is necessary for our survival, for our health (reducing the harmful effects of stress), for our self-control ability, for the efficacy and accuracy of our thinking and life’s important decisions.

First we need to stop the invasion of our mind by all the waves of thoughts, of feelings, and worries that deplete our mind from its ability to concentrate and focus.

This ability to focus is vital for our good health, for our daily decision-making and actions. When our mind is disturbed by feelings of fear or anger, our body cannot focus on digesting the food or on resting at night; it cannot focus on our work or studies or on the road while we drive.

A daily 10 to 15 minutes of focusing exercise helps us learn to stay focused when necessary, as we will become more aware of our thoughts and feelings. Regular exercises give us the ability to concentrate on what we need to focus on, to be aware of what is happening in any moment. That would help us react correctly or appropriately to any situation. That’s called self-control or the ability to stay calm, to think clearly, and have good response to any challenge. Biologically, what we are trying to do is to move our focus from the right brain (which is busy with emotional feelings like fear or anger) to the left brain by focusing on things that really need our attention (like how to answer correctly to an interview question).

How to practice this concentration or focusing exercise? You don’t need any equipment, you don't need a special room or relaxing environment. You do not need to sit with a certain position. You can even do it while driving or sitting in a noisy and busy place (with technique #2). Just do it for 10 to 30 minutes a day, every day.

1. Closed-eye technique: We can sit anywhere (on the floor, on a chair, in a park, in our car). Keep our eyes closed but relaxed. Try to relax all our muscles by focusing first on our forehead, then on our shoulders, our tummy and our legs. All the muscles have to let go the contraction and tension. If we have difficulty, it’s OK, when we could control the thoughts in our mind, our muscles will relax.

Next step: turn the focus to our brain: try to stop our mind from thinking. Every time we are aware of any thoughts simply tell our brain to stop thinking. Fear, worries, or anger are thoughts. Learn to stop all unproductive and negative thoughts that make us worry, angry, depressed or sick. That’s the goal of meditation. With time we become more expert in detecting and stopping those negative thoughts anytime they pop up in our mind. If we succeed, we can keep our mind sane and our body healthy. Some people have difficulty to stop thinking. Their thoughts keep going on and on. They think and think of one problem over and over and over if they sit still or close their eyes. For those people, they need the next 2 techniques.

2. Walking meditation: We have the same goal here: stopping our mind from thinking all day or from having negative and unproductive thoughts. We go out for a walk. It’s a good exercise for our heart if we walk briskly for 30 minutes a day with good breathing. We can use the walking time to meditate with our eyes open. We will do the same thing: tell our brain to stop thinking if we know that whatever we think is useless and is hurting our health.

How to do it? Try to focus on the reality of the world around us. Open our eyes and look at the beautiful things, children, flowers, birds etc. Pay attention to our nose and smell the coffee, the flower fragrances, the smell of food, etc. Open our ears to listen to the birds singing and the kids laughing. Observe everything (cars, people,…), focus on every details (size, colors,…) without judging thoughts (like getting upset by someone who drive by unsafely). Act as if you are a policeman who has the duty to write a detailed report when going back to the office.

The result? We will forget to think about our problems, learn to wake up to appreciate the beautiful world around us. Our mind and senses become sharper, clearer. We start to feel better about our-selves and our body will regain its vitality.

3. Open-eye technique: This is an exercise for rainy or cold days. Instead of going out to focus on our surroundings, we will sit in front of a nice landscape painting. The more colors and details it has the better. Open our eyes and focus on every detail of the painting. Even though it’s the hundred time, we still study it with the eyes of a detective. The beautiful piece of art has a positive and uplifting effect on our mind. But the fact that we are busy with our observations, we forget our fear and worries.

As I said in the beginning, with daily practice, you get use to controling the focusing ability of your mind, you will be able to switch you brain from the stressful thoughts (right brain) to the more objective and peaceful left brain and feel calmer, more in control of your life in stressful situation.

These techniques helped me a lot. Go try it and let me know if they help you or you get better at it.

(Look for more similar exercises to come, i.e. Best focusing exercise to help falling asleep)

By Dr. Tan Nguyen