We have a problem. As a society, our attention span is evidently now lower than that of a goldfish: 8.25 seconds, down 25% from 2000. A goldfish has a 9 second attention span.
This makes it difficult to really get to know anything beyond the superficial, including ourselves. We assign value to things based on how quickly things get our attention. In a world where everyone competes for our attention, our ability to be able to hold it ourselves has withered. The result is we no longer want to work at things, nor do we want to listen, to others or to ourselves. We consume what gets our attention and adopt those values as our own. It’s messing with our ability to discern and have peace.
While there are various factors that affect our ability to focus - like lack of sleep, nutrition, excessive alcohol, and stress - a pervasive one is technology. Our devices are a constant source of distraction. Our screens have us continuously “rapid task switching” (we famously call it multi-tasking), which dramatically lowers our quality of time and comes at a cognitive cost. We have a ridiculous amount of apps and browser tabs open, and too many notifications on. One notification can pull us out of concentration, which, according to research, takes on average 23 minutes to regain once interrupted.
It affects our ability to navigate our emotions. We may not see this in ourselves, but we can see it more clearly in our children since their behaviors are so much less filtered than ours: the more screen time they get, the more likely they are to break down when they aren’t on them; the more easily they get bored and unable to self-entertain or self-soothe; and the more likely we are to shove a tablet back into their hands to try and get some peace ourselves. We adults are affected in the very same way. We don’t need authority figures to place a device back into our hands. We submit to it ourselves.
Meditation will feel impossible then. It doesn’t offer the drama and rush of a headline or divisive editorial. On social media platforms, think how quickly multiple images in a post move from picture to picture; it’s a helluva LOT LESS than 8 seconds, that’s for sure. Even when we hate what we read, hear, or see, we get high on a false sense of purpose and (anti) belonging from them. We eat all of it up, including our attention span and, well, our dreams and desires for connection and peace.
There are a number of things you can do to get your focus and your brain back:
Make sure you’re getting enough sleep. The more sleep you get before midnight, the higher the quality.
Make sure you are moving your body and getting the proper exercise to keep your brain sharp.
Make sure you are consuming nutrient dense foods; and not too much food.
Turn off notifications on your phone. You are the boss of your life. Go into your apps when YOU want to rather than when the world wants to vampire-suck your attention.
We spend on average 3 hours and 16 minutes on our phone. Let’s decide not to be average. If it’s helpful, include a Time Screen widget to your phone. Measurements heighten awareness, and awareness supports change.
MEDITATE. And put focus on your drishti, or eye focus, which significantly impacts your mind, energy, memory, and how you process information and make decisions. Using drishti during yoga and meditation is often overlooked and especially easy to forget about during sitting meditation since you don’t need it to maintain physical balance. Drishti helps you cultivate your ability to focus during meditation and throughout your day. This is what we will talk about for the rest of this article (which, according to studies, you are likely to only read 20-28% of).
Let’s retrain ourselves to increase our focus. To sit in boredom and relearn how to draw strength, energy, and a higher sense of Self from somewhere much more sustainable and regenerating: the inside.
HERE’S YOUR FIRST EXERCISE:
Take a moment, right now, to let your eyes scatter all around your room. It doesn’t matter if you keep your head still or let your head move with it. Do it for 30 seconds to a minute.
How did that feel?Now, turn your gaze either down slightly towards your navel center, or gaze at a tree out your window or at a plant in your room. Make your gaze soft and hold it for 30 to 60 seconds (you can blink if you need to).
How did that feel?What was the difference energetically? What was your body doing with each exercise? Where did your mind go?
How we use drishti (eye focus) to affect our body and brain
In hatha yoga, for instance, we practice the tree pose.
If you try this while moving your eyes all around you, you’ll find it quite difficult to maintain balance.
If you hold your gaze at a point on the floor ahead of you, your chances at holding balance are much higher.
If you allow your thoughts to run wild while trying to hold this pose, it becomes nearly impossible. Not only will it be difficult to hold your gaze, but also your balance.
The more present you are with the here and now, the more success you will have holding both your gaze and tree pose. This is especially true if you have weak ankles.
Holding drishti allows for the mind to quiet and the body to be still. This is the power of drishti.
In life, we communicate
When you’re having a conversation with another person, and that person you’re talking to is looking all around the room, you won’t feel like they are paying attention to you at all.
If they are looking at something else in particular but not you, you’re wondering what’s happening over there, and you turn in that direction and become annoyed if it’s nothing.
Sometimes their gaze goes inward and you wonder where they are.
When they give you eye contact, how they gaze at you matters: sometimes, they are glazed over. Sometimes you can feel that they are totally with you, like no one else in the room exists but you (don’t take this for granted when this happens). Sometimes you sense that they can see deep into your soul. This is the power of drishti.
In meditation, there are a few dristhis that I have students focus on:
The third eye point: stimulates the pituitary
The tip of the nose: strengthens the frontal lobe
At an object: entrains with the energy of the object
Some meditations call for certain drishtis. When it’s not specified, you can choose your own. You also have the option of relaxing your eye focus; just know that when you do, you are more likely to fall asleep or get lost in your thoughts. The more you practice drishti in your meditation, the more you strengthen your ability to relax into focus rather than into oblivion. Holding gaze almost immediately instills awareness. It allows you to see beyond and within. It generates inner strength. And it facilitates good decision making.
Meditation: Candle Tratakum
Tratakum means to gaze or to look.
This practice:
quiets the mind
stills the body
strengthens eye health
improves your cognitive function
Turn off your screen and instead light a candle. You can also use this image above (no not the goldfish, silly, the candle). When you don’t have a candle or a good image of one available, you can look out the window at a tree (not towards a tree, but at the tree), or at a plant in your room. Nature lends powerful energy to meditation.
We already associate candles and nature with spa, relaxation, and calm. It creates an ambiance and energy that supports self acceptance, connection, release, and care.
Type of candle to use (as long as we’re here to improve sense of well-being…)
I recommend using a 100% pure beeswax candle. Not only are they the cleanest candle on the market, they improve air quality by releasing negative ions that attract the positively charged ions in the air (dust, pollens, mold spores). They bind together and effectively neutralize and remove contaminants from the air you breathe. They also emit a naturally sweet, earthy, honey-like aroma.
Synthetic fragrances negatively affect your nervous, endocrine, and respiratory systems and trigger allergic reactions and headaches. Our goal is to soothe and heal, not aggravate. They are usually labelled as fragrance or, for instance, lavender scented.
Pure essential oils, on the other hand, offer remarkable health benefits depending on plant source, and their latin or scientific names will be included in the ingredients list (i.e. lavandula angustifolia or officinalis for lavender). If you want a scented candle, choose soy wax candles that use essential oils; they burn clean.
The trataka meditation
Turn on the candle and sit in front of it about an arms length away.
Sit with your spine tall. While it can feel relaxing to do this sitting slouched and wrapped in a blanket, take this opportunity to learn to actively relax rather than to fall asleep or zone out. Sitting with a tall spine will strengthen your back and support better mood, thought, behavior, and energy. To learn to do this is to uplevel your baseline.
Begin with your eyes just slightly open, perhaps looking down towards the tip of your nose. In your periphery, you’ll notice the warm glow of the light in front of you. Notice your breath.
Now, look at the flame. Maintain a soft gaze. You can blink when you need to. Spine tall, everything else is relaxed: your breath, your mind, your muscles, with the exception of perhaps a slight smile behind your face. Notice how sometimes the flame dances and sometimes it holds still. Notice its shape. Give it your full attention, the way you’d want someone to give you full attention when you have something to say.
From time to time, if you find it helpful, look down at its base or towards the tip of your nose, bringing your gaze back at the candle when you’re ready.
Continue for 3-11 minutes.
To finish: take a deep inhale, taking your breath down past your diaphragm and expanding your torso. Then exhale the torso in as you lengthen your spine.
Stay seated for a moment as you relax your breath. Notice the shift in energy and quality of your mind and body. Register it in your psyche to teach yourself what it feels like to be still and in that quiet space. Eventually you will be able to access this space on demand.
This stillness and quiet space taps you into age old wisdom and both personal and Universal truth. It’s where you will move blocks, open up blind spots, and gain insight. Give it time and practice.
Even though you want answers, instead than looking for them, look for that quiet calm.
The more you look for answers, the more they elude you. The more you fill yourself with “answers,” the more you miss. Work on going deeper into that still space. If it’s “not working,” this may be a sign that you aren’t fully present yet, or that you are insisting on looking for answers. This is normal. Meditation will retrain your mind to be still and let things come to you (akin to when you finally stop trying to remember someone’s name it comes).
If prayer is when you talk to God, then meditation is when God talks to you. To hear God, you’ve got to stop talking.
Bringing tratakum into your day to day life
As you go on with your day, notice your eye focus and the quality of it.
When you’re annoyed, for instance, your eyes will be slightly rolled up. It will cause you to carry a certain attitude. We do this a lot, roll them up, or shift our gaze from thing to thing, mostly out of habit. The solution can be to either stop looking there, or to look at what you’re looking at differently.
Beauty, inspirations, and miracles cause you to hold gaze for much more than the average 8 seconds. Think newborn, sunsets, oceans, mountains, and falling in love. They help you stay in the present moment, reduce stress, and improve memory and decision making.
Let your drishti land respectfully and openly on what you want to grow, and give it the quality you wish to experience (i.e. appreciation over envy). Quantum physics says there is no objective reality, that the behavior of an object being witnessed depends on the observer. As someone who wishes to experience a more heightened quality of life, choose for your focus to land on the beauty that is around you… no matter how ugly things might have looked to you before, and no matter if others point to their ‘ugliness.’ It’s all in the eyes of the beholder. You get to choose what you see, and what you focus on. But focus.
Be-hold beauty, it’s in all things. And your brain and body will set itself the way you behold.
Love, Savitree
Well said, all of this! Grateful and open be-holding is indeed a helpful reminder. It reminds me of that quote that says: “if you don’t see God in all, you don’t see God at all.” Thanks for this lovely and insightful post. Love the candle tratakum! And yes, beeswax!! Yum! 🕯️