Consider this: for about 95% of our existence – for 200,000 years up until the agricultural revolution 12,000 years ago – we homo sapiens lived hunter-gatherer lifestyles. In the words of Yuval Noah Harari, homo sapiens:
mastered not only the surrounding world of animals, plants and objects, but also the internal world of their own bodies and senses. They listened to the slightest movement in the grass to learn whether a snake might be lurking there. They carefully observed the foliage of trees in order to discover fruits, beehives and birds’ nests. They moved with a minimum of effort and noise, and knew how to sit, walk and run in the most agile and efficient manner. Varied and constant use of their bodies made them as fit as marathon runners. They had physical dexterity that people today are unable to achieve even after years of practising yoga or t’ai chi.
Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
One of the key characteristics of early humans was hence the ability to be flexible in how they paid attention. Darting between an outward, keen watchfulness for predators, a narrow focused precision for sharpening flint stones, and a heightened body-sense while hunting prey – the mind as well as the body of early homo sapiens was clearly extremely agile.
Now compare this flexible attention to the trap of end-gaining which I described in detail last week. End-gaining, with its narrow focus on some future goal, is really our default way of interacting with the world in modern societies. Have you perhaps had the experience of perching for hours in a chair absorbed in a task, such that your sense of your physical self all but disappears? If you have, then your experience ties in with what neuroscience now tells us: that a narrowed attention is linked to poor body awareness (a ‘disappearing body’), and that a wide open attention that includes peripheral vision is linked to our fullest body sense. Only when you allow your attention to widen out can you:
- allow your kinaesthetic or proprioceptive (‘body’) sense to function best
- perceive spatial relationships accurately
- learn new movement skills
- understand body orientation with respect to gravity
And so in early humans – with their varied, dexterous way of attending to the environment – such faculties would have been constantly nourished. In contrast, these skills atrophy in modern humans because our way of attending has become fixed. And since attention is the lens through which we see the world, we can become completely unaware that we’re caught up in a narrow form of it (that is, perhaps, until our back starts to ache or we catch sight of our diminished stature in a mirror).
So, what’s to be done? Well, firstly, knowledge is power. Just knowing that flexibility of attention is important for your overall health is a tremendous help. It means that you can allow yourself the luxury of a wide, soft gaze at your surroundings more of the time. Time spent in nature is very valuable in this regard, since this wide open form of attention has evolved for our interactions with the natural world.
Secondly, apply the principles of the Alexander Technique as often as you can – Inhibit your habitual end-gaining attitude and Direct your Primary Control. You’re already getting well versed in this approach.
Thirdly, get good at ‘foregrounding’ your body sense more often. For example, when seated, notice your sitting bones on the chair and your feet on the floor. Ask yourself, ‘Where is my head in relation to my spine, and where are my arms and hands positioned?’.
The technical term for this body sense is the body schema, which is a kind of 3D map through which your brain knows the location of all body parts in relation to each other, and in relation to the world. It’s the map which tells you that you’re holding an arm above your head even if your eyes are closed (you can try that now). So get to know your body schema: become intrigued by it, nurture it and bring it ‘to the front’ of your experience more often than you usually do. It’s the felt sense through which your body perceives its being and acting in the world, and sensing it and fine-tuning it is inherently pleasurable.
This week, your task is none other than to set aside some time to savour and absorb three of my favourite quotes on the subject of attention. It is rare to find insightful writing on this theme, and so I hope you will find these passages as enjoyable and enlightening to read as I have.
Attention is not just another ‘function’ alongside other cognitive functions. Its ontological status is of something prior to functions and even to things. The kind of attention we bring to bear on the world changes the nature of the world we attend to, the very nature of the world in which those ‘functions’ would be carried out, and in which those ‘things’ would exist. Attention changes what kind of a thing comes into being for us: in that way it changes the world. … A mountain that is a landmark to a navigator, a source of wealth to the prospector, a many-textured form to a painter, or to another the dwelling place of the gods, is changed by the attention given to it. There is no ‘real’ mountain which can be distinguished from these, no one way of thinking which reveals the true mountain.
– Iain McGilchrist (2009) The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.
… in playing golf, for example, pleasure arises not only from the camaraderie, the walk and being outdoors but also in the feel of the club and feeling the movements during the swinging of the club. To be sure, part of the pleasure in golf comes from the experience of a successful executed result—the ball in the hole. But pleasure is also found within and during the execution of a good stroke and even, possibly, in the realisation that a successful stroke has been chosen—in the successful translation of intention into action. We frequently overlook a prime element in these forms of exercise: the simple ineffable pleasure of, and of being in, action.
– Cole, J. and Montero, B. (2007) Affective Proprioception
[I]t occurred to me that there must be two quite different ways of perceiving. Only a tiny act of will was necessary in order to pass from one to the other, yet this act seemed sufficient to change the face of the world, to make boredom and weariness blossom into immeasurable contentment.
(1) Narrow attention. – This first way of perceiving seemed to be the automatic one, the kind of attention which my mind gave to everyday affairs when it was left to itself. The psychology books seemed to agree in this. They said that you attend automatically to whatever interests you, whatever seems likely to serve your personal desires; but I could not find anywhere mentioned what seemed to me the most important fact about it, that this kind of attention has a narrow focus, by this means it selects what serves its immediate interests and ignores the rest. As far as I could see it was a ‘questing beast’, keeping its nose close down to the trail, running this way and that upon the scent, but blind to the wider surroundings. It saw items according to whether they served its purposes, saw them as a means to its own ends, not interested in them at all for their own sake. This attitude was probably essential fo practical life, so I supposed that from the biological point of view it had to be one which came naturally to the mind. But since it saw everything in relation to something else, as a means to some end, contentment was always in the future.
(2) Wide attention. – The second way of perceiving seemed to occur when the questing purposes were held in leash. Then, since one wanted nothing, there was no need to select one item to look at rather than another, so it became possible to look at the whole at once. To attend to something and yet want nothing from it, these seemed to be the essentials of the second way of perceiving. I thought that in the ordinary way when we want nothing from any object or situation we ignore it. Or if we are forced to attend to something which does not offer us any means of furthering our desires, then sheer habit makes us attend in the narrow focus way, looking at separate details and being bored. But if by chance we should have discovered the knack of holding wide our attention, then the magic thing happens. This at least was how I explained what had happened to me.
– Marion Milner (1934) A Life of One’s Own.
