Let’s discover a very important program to improve your concentration. Over the last few decades, studies have shown that the average duration of our concentration has deteriorated sharply. This is due to a number of factors.
Stress in the first place, which is linked to all the new demands that have appeared in our living environment. And of course, noise pollution, light pollution, the fact that we carry our cell phones with us all the time: calls, text messages, emails, social network notifications, and other things of course.
Our brains are no longer used to resting in peace, and yet they need it. On average, it is disturbed every eight seconds. And you may know that nine seconds is the maximum attention span of a goldfish. So, the good news is that we can train our attention to improve our meditation concentration course, training it like a muscle.
Concentration is, of course, sustained attention and the intention to put that attention into action. This may sound complicated, but it’s actually very simple: either we remain in automatic mode, and let ourselves be carried away without acting; or we decide to become active. And by training our attention, we once again become the pilot. To understand these mechanisms, we need to ask ourselves: what distracts us? Quite simply, anything that moves.
Our attention is drawn to everything that moves in all the senses perceived by all our senses. There are many distractors of our attention. Sometimes internal, such as thoughts that disturb us, urges to eat, drink or move; and external distractors, such as noise, our phone, things to do, and many other examples that you could come up with yourself. Let’s try to identify what’s specific to us, what systematically disturbs us when we want to accomplish any task.
Realizing this will help us to reduce the duration and frequency of this distraction. There are two main types of attention: focused attention, the kind we decide to concentrate on while remaining centered and concentrated; and open attention, also known as defocused attention, which invites us to take in everything around us. In this program, we’ll be experimenting with meditations that will enable us to discover and experience, for ourselves, these essential mechanisms. With these mindfulness meditation sessions, little by little, your attentional capacities will improve, enhancing your concentration.
