Taking Attention Away from the Self Talk.
Funny exercises, how you can drop your awareness out of your head, breathing in a bit of freedom and do a Dad talk.
I was getting nervous before a talk with my dad. There is a distinctive quality noticing how you are in the head, rehearsing all the lines you would like to tell, and postponing the actual talk. The anxiety keep rising, and you walk around him like one walks around a milk on a floor. Not knowing what to do first.
That’s when I recalled to do this simple trick of getting out of my mind and breathing a bit of freedom from this tension. I recalled what Taika Waititi was doing when he couldn’t stop thinking. He started touch his thumb to all of his fingers on his hand like in this ted talk video.
I remember it because it was this funny, small thing. And Taika kept saying: “I hope you can take one or two things from this talk, and that’s great.” I did. I took this and tried it before and it did some magic of transferring the attention away from perpetual talk.
Tried it again and it worked. It’s so strange. It’s almost like bring me down from my head to be present in my whole body. Okay, maybe not that profound but it was a bit funny. Almost like my mind was: “Hey what is he doing, what’s that there in his fingers,” moving my attention out of my head. Which feels great because you are not longer trapped thinking about what to say.
The talk went, well, it went. Let it put it that way.
I don’t know how long could this connecting fingers to thumb work, I just tried it for today. There are other tactics that I found useful.
Like the one from Loch Kelly if I remember it correctly. You take your hands and put them next to your waist, and start to take them up to the air making a big circle like from da Vinci’s famous image, around the body. Then when having the hands over your head, you connect them in this roof shape and slowly putting them down. Feeling if you can notice how you are taking the attention down from your head to your hearth space.
Sometimes, you can feel almost like a balloon of energy over your hearth space. Where you can rest your hands. I don’t know about the explanation but if you do this one before a dad talk, yeah that might be fun. “What are you doing son?!” “Taking attention down, to be a nicer human, father!”
And maybe the last one is from Mingyur Rinpoche. You just go and take the hands in front of you, palms facing each other. Then you start to rub them one against the another, like crazy for a one minute. Rubbing, rubbing, rubbing, your arms may even hurt, and then you stop and put the palms away from one another. Try to connect them slowly again and feel the something, is almost like in between when doing so.
Physics professor: “That’s static energy what you feel, son” or whatever. I am just don’t care. Don’t involved the mind again professor, okay? We want to go away outside from our minds.
Sharing a small fun exercise you can take yourself out of the mind and more into the presence. At least for a bit.
Rub your hands, make da Vinci’s circles around your balloon hearth space and touch fingers. But not all at once that would be strange.
I sound like some spiritual whatever. No it’s just try it, or let it be.
See ya,
Luke
