Attention: Key to Improved Movement

In the realm of movement, there are many reasons we don’t notice things:

• When movement is painful, we may shut off awareness of discomfort, just to get through the day.
• We’re moving automatically, thinking about something.  Habits are crucial, of course, but without periodic check-ins, they may confirm patterns of effort that don’t serve us well.
• We lack the “vocabulary” and don’t really know how to make distinctions.

Perhaps the flip side of not noticing is hyper-attention, which often means attention to our discomfort.  Getting stuck noticing discomfort may lead to not noticing, as noted above.  And to not moving.  And to giving up some of the things we enjoy doing.

It often takes awhile to get into a less-than-optimal movement pattern, or we get there fairly quickly due to an injury or illness, but then we stay with that pattern long after we need to.  So it makes sense that change will take time.

Key to movement improvement and changing habits is attention.

• If we don’t know what we’re doing, and in some amount of detail, we can’t make a meaningful change.  We have to start somewhere.
• If we don’t know, we won’t know when we’ve made progress.
• If we lack a means of categorizing sensations, of naming what we feel, our progress will be somewhat random and we won’t be able to get the change we want on a regular basis.

How can we develop kinesthetic attention?  Here are a few ideas we explore in class:

  1.  Make comparisons – here’s a few ideas:

• Sitting or standing, compare the sensation of weight on each foot, or each sitting bone. 
• Notice how far you see when turning to look to the right and to the left.
• Purposely change the hand you use for a simple task like putting away the dishes or the foot you step out on first when walking.
• Notice the differences in lying on your right compared with you left side when you go to bed

  2. Expand your sensory or kinesthetic “vocabulary”.

      These are the signposts to differences. Here are a few to get started:

• Do you feel heavier or lighter?
• Longer or shorter?
• How do you sense your volume —  full, three-dimensional, flatter or variable in different places?
• What is you contact on the surface — are you “floating” above the surface, “sinking” into the floor, or perhaps “relaxed resting” on the floor or chair?
• Is your movement smooth or stuttering, jerky or fluid?
• Is it easy or does is require effort?  How much effort?
• Are you breathing easily throughout or are there moments when you hold your breath, interrupting its rhythmic flow?
  

Take the time to determine the specific differences you feel.  Although we sometimes don’t have words, making the effort to find a description of a felt difference, even saying it aloud or in our minds will build our movement intelligence

3.  Consciously move your attention within yourself.

Lying down or sitting, pay attention sequentially to various part of your body: your right foot, left knee, right shoulder,lower back, how your lower ribs move when you breathe in or breathe out.

4.  Shift your attention back and forth between different parts of yourself.

Notice the contact of your left heel when lying down. Then notice how your left calf rests on the surface.  Move your attention back to the heel, return to the calf, a few times. Could you expand your attention to include both?  Play with comparing places that are further “away” from each other: e.g. a heel and the pelvis, the leg and the arm.  Gradually your ability to shift attention smoothly will improve.