Focus Methods in Mindfulness - Advantages and Disadvantages

When we look at the whole field of mindfulness all the different ways that mindfulness is taught and so forth you know by different lineages teachers.

In general, we can classify.

The focus methods in terms of.

Are they just letting the attention sort of go? Wherever it goes? I call that free floating and then you know being aware where it is going.

Are they saying OK? We're going to systematically sort of scroll through the possibilities and then start again. I call that inventory or are we going to try to cover all the possibilities at once. I call that even coverage.

Easiest to understand with regards to the body but can be generalized to any sensory experience.

I have a technique that I call, noting body locations, so here. The categories are body locations. And it's just OK let your attention go wherever it wants to go and no knee face stomach probably 95% of the people in this room have done that with me up on occasion well. I would say that's a free floating strategy. You just as it comes up. Yes, you can exercise some control.

But it's basically what pulls you.

And the elements here are the various locations of sensation.

By way of contrast, a systematic inventory is OK. We're going to go through the body part by part and sample? What's there and then maybe repeat that cycle, which could be done in any one of dozens of ways. You could go sort of like band by band or you could go like let's take the right leg. The left leg the right on the left line or if you want to be fancy and get down to release subtle levels of sensation and really subtle levels of flow.

You can attempt to continuously sweep the awareness, either over the surface of the body or even like a cat scan right through the body that could be up and down.

Right to left left to right front to back back to front that's a continuous inventory.

And you can even get fancier if you want you can go in spirals as all sorts of stuff you can do, make it continuous inventory of the body.

By way of contrast to that OK hold all the locations simultaneously in awareness.

Even coverage I called?

The advantage to the systematic inventory is that it make sure you cover all the everything.

And so it brings a lot of sensitization and a lot of detail.

The disadvantage might be that there's not much to detect.

But of course, if you have the categories of restful states. Then you can detect the absence is a presence but sometimes People that do the body sweeping sort of Get Lossed 'cause. They can't detect sensations that can be a possible difficulty with that.

Even coverage is sort of at the opposite end it. It integrates and gives you the big picture and ultimately you know since sensory events. Do tend to spread. It's good to be able to cover large pieces of sensory experience to have the ability to do that. Most People if you say the word concentration. They assume it implies a narrowing of attention, but Sasaki Rosi is adamant that there's 2 flavors of concentration.

Not surprisingly, contractive where you restrict the range of focus and expensive where you get a flavor of being highly concentrated precisely because you're holding all parts of a large object, either at once or.

You know more or less at once so the even coverage builds that flavor and it gives you the big picture and it leads to integrations.

Things have to be integrated before they can be Anaya lated Ann.

Their annihilation takes them to their source.

So.

That's something to be said for the even coverage, but it's challenging because, like you lose contact with pieces and so forth so my language for even coverage is hold it as broadly as you can without straining typically. I'll say something like that, so the advantage now to the free float is it's natural it's not as hard work as the inventory or the even coverage that People can typically do it right away and find it more fun.

Then the other other two I would say typically I don't know that there's any disadvantage to it specifically.

But I can't think think of right off hand but that would be briefly some sort of to compare and contrast, the strategies.

Or let's say, Let's say focus in focus out.

And focus on rest are based on a free floating.

In general.

The however, remember even when you're free floating you are allowed to zoom out so those are sort of brief moments of even coverage. If you zoom out to fill touch space or something so there is in the zoom in zoom out option. There's like brief sort of coverage available, but essentially in focus in focus out and focus on rest your free floating.

Among the categories.

Anne if more than one is present, you just choosing one in focus on change when you're noting flow.

You are not making distinctions between where the flow is.

At all, I mean, you're not intentionally making distinctions so it's wherever the flow is meaning if the flow infects somatic visual and auditory and at the moment of note flow. You elect to zoom out. You are doing the ultimate even coverage. You're covering all sensory spaces at once so it fits in there.

I use systematic inventories at during special exercise is actually quite a bit now focus on positive your.

You do evenly cover, whichever 1 two or all three of the spaces that you're doing.

You can attempt to hold the positive in all 3 at once if you want.

Or you can sort of I don't know so sort of hold it in all 3 but not work. Too hard and it's sort of free floats, but it's always going to positive in any one of them you could do it as a kind of free float.

Or you could do it as an even coverage strategy.

In general, it's dividing conquer right so if you're trying to work with a big piece of experience and you can't then.

Then you work with smaller stuff, so if you're trying and even coverage and it doesn't work, then try free floating or probably better still systematic inventory and then you could build to coverage.

OK, good.