A Token Solution

Yesterday at work, dealing with the ever distracted nature of things - email comes, document attached, save the document, open the document in Word, notice another document opened earlier that needs looking at, attention diverted, phone call, meeting, back to the office, urgent email, etc....

I realized that it was difficult for me to keep my attention on one thing and finish it off, because as soon as I would move to a different application, even in the course of working on the original problem, it was out of view and something else would replace it.

I noticed some plastic bottle caps alongside my monitor that I hadn't taken to the recycling bin yet, and thought - I could use those as a reminder of my task.

The next thing I turned my attention to, I placed a bottle cap on the desk in front of the keyboard.  I was looking at a document, and recalled an email that had some information I needed.  Now the task had changed - find the email and get the information - and as soon as I started on that other emails popped into view that reminded me of more things that needed to be done.

But I had the bottle cap to remind me of the task I was on, and that helped me leave the distractions behind and stick with the task.  Once complete, I had the satisfaction of placing the cap back in its 'waiting area.'

Later in the day, there was a point where one of the distractions was truly compelling, and I pulled a second cap out and allowed a very short queue to form.  But when I completed the distracting task and put that cap back, I knew exactly what the remaining cap represented and directed my attention back to that.

Having a tangible token in front of me, regardless of what was front and center on the monitor at the time, helped me stay focused on what I needed to do.

Ten Breaths

The Ten Breaths practice came to me one day last spring on a walk home from work.  I was walking past a white flowering tree, with bright blue sky above, and thought "I should savor this, because the petals will soon fall."  The idea came to me to stop and pay attention to this one thing for ten deep breaths.

I found it to be a simple and effective practice.

Today - ten breaths for the spring breeze - part warm, part cool on the skin, moving the flowers and leaves gently, but persistently.

A Creekside Sit

I went down to the creek this afternoon to sit for the first time this spring.   As I entered the park, the energetic rush of wind through the new leaves in the tree canopy drew my attention.

The water in the main creek was still a bit high and cloudy from the heavy rain we had last evening, but the bright afternoon sun still sparkled off the surface with white hot intensity.

It's such a simple thing, to go place myself in this spot and sit for an hour, observing what occurs.

The rush of water over the log dam into the pool below is constant.  At times the wind though the trees was loud enough to be heard over the water's ambient music.

White petals float by, pick up speed and disappear over the fall into the foam below.  A cardinal flies from the tree overhead, gliding downstream over the pool before finding another perch.  Soon a grackle lands on the bank and makes its way toward me, now and then out of sight behind a boulder.  Suddenly it appears atop the boulder just a few feet away, feathers and eyes gleaming in the sun.  I am an unexpected sight that motivates the bird to fly up to a branch out over the middle of the pool.  A bit later I spy a wood duck swimming into the pool from downstream.  After exploring behind some rocks near the south shore, he swam back downstream and out of view.

The sun is warm, the playground across the creek is full, mostly young children and their parents.  A baby seems excited to be getting perhaps its first experience on the swing set, bouncing around, arms and legs wagging.

A small red ant and a larger black one make appearances on the rock next to me, and then I see a long legged, mottled brown spider hugging the rock, motionless and cryptic.  The spider sits even better than I do.  When I got up to leave, it was still in the same spot, nearly invisible.

The park can be enjoyed in many ways, as evidenced by the people walking, running, and cycling by, those playing in the playground and picnicking on the grass, and the four young boys who came wading downstream past me.  The experience of being still, and tuning in to what is happening around me, is especially rich and rewarding for me.

Sustained Attention

I've taken classes this spring from a teacher who identifies a benefit of yoga practice as the cultivation of sustained attention.  That seems right.

I've written before about distraction, and some ways that I work to minimize the impact of distraction, to recognize and pull back from a distracted state.  Sustained attention is the positive to distraction's negative.  Distraction compromises sustained attention.  Sustained attention keeps distraction at bay.

What is the value of sustained attention?  Why spend so much time working to cultivate it?
At a superficial level - day to day functioning in the world - sustained attention is important to being able to get things done.  Washing the dishes, doing the taxes, planning for an important meeting, developing a project plan - all kinds of things we want to accomplish require application of our mental and physical energy over a period of time - sustained attention.

At a deeper level, sustained attention is what allows us to most fully experience and appreciate life's experiences.  Indeed, sustained attention fundamentally alters the experiences we will have.  This is the purpose and effect of my "10 breaths" practice.  Sustaining attention, for a period of 10 deep breaths, on some thing or experience - whether the song of a cardinal, the petal of a flower, the pattern of shadows playing on a window shade, the Pleiades in the night sky, sunlight playing off water flowing down a creek, a cat sleeping in a patch of sunshine - can bring a profound sense of connection, wonder, and appreciation.

It's the same flower if I pay attention or not, but my experience is fundamentally affected by my choice and ability to sustain attention.  That is why it is worth cultivating.

Hostas, Cardinals and Tulips

This week the hostas are coming up strongly, and cardinals are out early in the morning.  The dogwood flowers are growing, and the red buds are in full color.  Blooms are gone from the early flowering trees like the cherries.  Daffodils are fading, and tulips are blooming in their stead.  On the forsythia, green leaves have replaced most of the yellow blooms, and the red maples are leafed out.

It's a beautiful time of year.  Sometimes the sensation is overwhelming, and the new green leaves on a tree overhead against the bright blue sky is plenty to revel in.

Persistence and Progress

The way to become better at something is to do it regularly, working both at the current edge to extend it, as well as practicing careful and correct repetitions to ingrain and imprint proficiency.

I have experienced this in music and in yoga practice.  Regularly means daily, or nearly so, and the trajectory extends over time measured in years.

Progress certainly comes in spurts, but without persistent effort to build a solid base, the growth spurts won't happen.  This time of year, plants seem to spring from the ground, but only because of the strong roots laid down before.

Inhale, Meditate

I started off the day with yoga nidra instead of my normal meditation.

It was a beautiful morning to walk to work - cool with low humidity - but no jacket needed. The oak trees are laden with catkins, the maples have formed their soon to be helicoptering seeds, and the red buds are in full blaze.

When I sit in meditation, distracting thoughts arise in the mind.  A large part of the practice is to be aware of the thought, let it go, and come back to meditative awareness.

Similarly, during the day, as I recognized my mind had been pulled away from the focused and aware state that I desired, I needed only to inhale with conscious attention to return to the center.

I had a good day, and accomplished much.

Digging Down a Few Layers

Yoga nidra is a deep relaxation technique that I have been doing.  It's a guided meditation with the goal of achieving a state of "conscious deep sleep."  It's as if your body is asleep but your mind is awake, though at a deep level - the 'thinking' part of your mind is not running wild, but you're aware of sensation.

One effect for me is a sense of extreme heaviness in the body.  It is really quite extraordinary.  Sometimes I feel vibration throughout as well.  Coming out, my physical body is completely relaxed, much more so than after sleeping.

But the most interesting and significant thing is how the practice can affect my mind and behavior.  After a session on Saturday, I found myself working on some tasks, including cleaning up my dresser, ridding out unneeded things I had accumulated, as well as starting to process video files from a concert last January that I had committed to putting on YouTube.

These were not complicated things, but they were things that I knew I needed to do but had procrastinated about for months.  I attribute the yoga nidra session to taking my mind to a much more productive state - where I knew what I wanted and needed to do, and wasn't hindered by whatever part of my mind habitually diverts my attention from those things.

An Impressive Accomplishment

My yoga journey, going on 3 years now, has been filled with growth and progress in developing the strength, flexibility and coordination to do more challenging poses.

Q. What is a challenging pose?
A.  One that I can't do.  Yet.

Because each person's body is unique, what is a challenging - even impossible - pose for one person may be very easy for another.  So the accomplishment isn't in the body getting into a particular shape.  The accomplishment is in the work that leads past previous limitations and expands what is possible.

Yoga is so rich in forms - stretching every part of the body in every imaginable way - that no matter what your inherent strengths are - the qualities that make certain poses come naturally - yoga can challenge you.  When the limit is pushed back and a new pose becomes possible, there is immediately a new challenge revealed.

There are yogis who can do things that I find astonishing - things that are far beyond my current limits.  But I realize that those things are no harder for them than the things I am working on are for me.  And they are no harder than the challenge posed by downward facing dog to a new yogi with tight hamstrings and shoulders.

As I progress, the practice remains the same, and the same impressive accomplishment rewards my efforts as it does everyone who works to push back their limits.

Garlic Mustard

I am a Weed Warrior.

Shortly after moving here in 2004, we grew interested in working in Sligo Creek park near our house. We went to a county training session about non-native invasive plants, and left with a green Weed Warrior wallet card.

Every spring we spend a couple of months removing garlic mustard plants before they go to seed.  It's unrealistic to think we could eradicate the plants from the park, but the work has made a big difference, and there is much less now.

Today was the first day we'd been out.  The long, cold winter has delayed development of the plants, which may give us a slightly longer season to work.  After a couple of hours, we each had a large bag of plants and an idea of where to work next.

Garlic mustard is a very adaptable plant, brought from Europe for its edible leaves.  It loves sunshine, but can also grow in the shadiest parts of the park.  It tolerates a wide range of soil types.   The only habitat that it does poorly in is areas that are wet almost all the time, but even there, spindly, unhealthy looking plants can develop and go to seed.  

It was a lovely spring day - cool at first, but warming up.  The water ran clear in the creek.  The woods are bursting with green as the plants hurry to make up for the late start.  The shadow of a butterfly flitted by along the ground in front of me.  The air was thick with the energy of life.  It was good to be out in the middle of it.

Up the Down Escalator

Another entry in the "not mindful" category.  This time it was me, following, of all things, a yoga class that should have left me focused and undistracted.  But, no...

I waltzed into the Takoma Metro Station, through the turnstile, and headed for the right-most of the 3 escalators while looking at the status board to see when the next train was coming.  The board was showing a general message, not the train times, so I kept my attention on it expecting it to change any second.

Next thing I knew my foot was on the escalator, but I was attempting to go upstream.  I jumped off in surprise and collected myself.  They do change the directions of these escalators - sometimes having two up and one down - sometimes the other way - and it isn't always the same pattern.  All the more reason to "pay attention, dude!"

"I Think I Swallowed a Penny"

I put this one in the "not mindful" category.

I was getting a cup of coffee today, and two men - one I knew and one I didn't - were standing around chatting while waiting for their breakfast orders to be ready.

I said "Hi" to Dan, his order was delivered over the counter, and then I heard the other man say "I think I swallowed a penny."

Some conversation ensued, and then he said "I just grabbed my pills out of my pocket to take them, and I think there was a penny in there.  I felt it when I swallowed."

I thought... "pay attention, dude!"

In the Present Moment

As I continue to practice the saxophone piece for the concert coming up in a couple of weeks, the more obviously difficult parts begin to be tamed, and subtler challenges emerge.

Sometimes parts that have been smooth and easy to play suddenly begin tripping up the fingers.  It's a process of refinement and reiteration that will continue until the performance.  I've learned to expect that something will "go wrong" in the performance that has never been a problem in practice, and to not let that throw me off when it happens.

Performing music is simple:  play the right note at the right time.  I'm ignoring for the present the important nuances of dynamics and expression.  I know how to play all the notes, and I know the rhythms of the music - how to count time.  So why is it so difficult to get it right?

I think the challenge is that the "right time" is a tiny fraction of a second.  Some notes are held for a while - several seconds even - but the note has to be placed precisely or the music won't flow.  One note comes after another, a stream of challenges - right note? right time? - one right after the other.  If the mind lingers, it will miss the next note.  If it races ahead - anticipating a difficult passage to come, perhaps - it will miss the note that must be played now.

The only path to success is to stay in the present - in the flow of the music - playing each note in its moment and moving without hesitation or interruption to the next moment and the next note - until the piece reaches its conclusion.

The repetition of good practice refines the coordination of eye, breath and fingers and develops the ability to maintain attention in the present moment for, in the case of this piece, about 8 minutes.    

It's simple - but not easy.

Redbud Week

Last week the magnolias - one of the earliest of the flowering trees - bloomed quickly and then quickly lost their petals to the ground.  The late spring and sudden warm weather has compacted some of the blooming schedules.

As I rounded the first corner on my walk to work this morning, I noticed the emerging red buds covering the branches of a neighbor's tree.  The redbuds are unique because instead of flowing at the ends of branches, the red flowers spring from nodes all along the limbs.  The last 2 or 3 joints at the ends, where the branches will grow longer, sprout green leaves.  Both the buds and the leaves are just beginning to grow this week.

This week is also the week that the leaf canopy out over Rock Creek Park and the neighborhoods of the Northwest section of the District emerges.  The change from one day to the next is striking, as the scene from the office window turns from bare branches to a green blanket over the course of a few days.

What Direction?

I was driving home today.  As I approached the last corner I saw a cyclist paused at the intersection.  As I turned, he gestured, so I stopped and rolled down the window.  He wanted to know if this was the Sligo Creek Trail.

Sligo Creek Trail, coming from the north, follows the west side of the creek until our neighborhood.  Then it crosses over to the east side and continues south alongside Sligo Creek Parkway.  At the point where, to follow the main trail, you need to turn left and cross a bridge over the creek, the pavement also continues straight ahead, taking you over another bridge to an area with a playground and a couple of paved access trails, one of which leads to our street.  Not infrequently, I encounter confused walkers or cyclists that make it to the cul-de-sac at the end of our street and suddenly realize that the trail they thought they were on has abandoned them.

I knew how to direct today's lost cyclist back to the main trail, but to tell him which direction to turn I needed to know where he had come from and where he wanted to go.  I asked if he had come from the north.  He didn't know.  He said he had got on the trail at "the shopping center" and wanted to ride to the end.

Well, I happen to know that there is a shopping center a few miles upstream (north) where people access the trail, so I asked if he was coming from upstream.  He didn't know.  I wasn't sure if he didn't know which way the water was flowing (should be rather obvious because the trail is gently but obviously downhill all that way) or whether he didn't know what upstream meant.

Then he pointed off to the southwest - toward downtown Silver Spring, the District, and ultimately Virginia - and said he wanted to go that way.  I very much doubted that, but let it go, and assumed that he was headed downstream.  So I sent him back to the park with what I hope were clear directions to go over both bridges and turn right to continue on the trail.

As this discussion was going on, I was thinking that his confusion and inability to communicate where he was coming from or wanted to go revealed a lack of a basic awareness of his surroundings.  He had gotten on the trail and intended to go to the other end.  But that turned out to not be quite enough information to keep him on track.

Forsythia

warm sun, blue sky
crocus and daffodils
magnolias and cherry trees
  covered with blooms
birdsong wafting on the cool breeze
  fluttering the petals of golden forsythia

Here Come the Martians

Off to the east in the early night sky is Mars.  I don't suppose there are any Martians.  If there are, they've done a good job hiding from the rovers.

Standing out in the spring night looking at the small reddish light in the sky, and thinking about what was entailed in sending a robot craft to land there and explore on our behalf - it seems more amazing than ever.

And when I see a picture of Earth taken by the rover from the surface of Mars, the tiny scale of our planet in the universe is more tangible.

Perhaps most astonishing is that Mars is currently at a relatively close 55 million miles away.  55 million miles.  I walk about 2.5 miles most days going to and from work.  I could walk to Mars - in 60,000 years!  But I'd be pretty tired by then, and I'm not sure I'd want to stay - so need to allow another 60,000 years to walk home.

Soundscape

I got up this morning and went into the kitchen as I do almost every day.  First to feed the cats, and then to ready the coffee maker to be turned on a bit later.

I found my attention focused on sounds.  The sharp, steely sound made as I took a spoon from the drawer.  The softer tick of the aluminum can as I took it from a stack, and the tearing sound of the lid peeling off.  These sounds, which on so many other days had not even been noticed, were fascinating.

As I moved on through the routines, I began to anticipate what sound my next action - running water, opening a cupboard, dipping a plastic spoon in the container of ground coffee - would make, and enjoying the experience of the sound as it came.

How powerful is this ability to focus awareness like this?  It completely changed my experience - turning mundane events into something extraordinary.

The Practicing Process

Now that the music is composed, my task has switched to performance.  Often, the music I write is too difficult for me to play well at first.  Actually, this is true almost 100% of the time.  I've been through this enough times to know that if I practice regularly and am diligent about working extra on the harder spots, that I'll be prepared by the time the concert comes.

A little practice every day is much better than a lot of practice now and then.  When I encounter a rough spot, the best technique is to immediately slow down - to whatever tempo I can play the passage smoothly.  Sometimes it is very slow, but there is always a tempo that works.  Once I find that, and work through the passage a few times, I can usually speed it up significantly - though the next practice session will send me back to a more moderate pace to start.  Before long, the passage doesn't seem difficult at all.

I find the same techniques - regular (i.e. daily) practice - and working at a level that is possible - so I'm practicing success rather than failure - work for almost anything that I want to improve at.

What's New?

What do you do when everything seems like a repeat of something that has happened before?  When a day goes by and nothing stands out as fresh and new?

That's how I was feeling about the day.  Then I remembered the walk to work this morning - more green starting to appear - the birds and squirrels bustling about in the light spring rain - raindrops on bright yellow daffodils.

It's all new, every day.  The only reason it may seem stale is our failure to pay attention.

Composing

I finished the musical composition for two saxophones today.  In the last couple of days I had two separate musical ideas that I added to some of the material I already had.  After working one of the ideas out on the piano today, I sat down at the computer and worked on the piece until it seemed ready.  Then I printed it out and played through my part on the baritone sax, to see where the difficult bits are that will need more practice time.

In the end, the piece settled in place not by adding more, but by editing out some parts that had become superfluous.  More than half the ideas I was working with are set aside - most of them deserve more attention, and could easily be worked into another piece.

I learned (re-learned... again) about the process that works for me.  I have to capture ideas when they arise, and work on them regularly - if only for a little bit at a time.  If I keep myself in it, eventually the pieces will fit together, and the final composition often emerges from a final burst of focused work.

Spring Explosion

The spring explosion has started - within just a few days, flowers are popping up from perennial beds and blossoms have burst out on the flowering trees, with a surge of energy that is contagious.

Gridlock

I had to go back to Alexandria, Virginia, today for a meeting.  After my early morning yoga class and a cup of coffee at Starbucks, a friend offered me a ride downtown, where I could pick up the metro.  It wouldn't save any time, but would give us some more time to talk and cut the train ride in half.

We headed down Georgia Avenue in typical morning traffic - heavy, but flowing well.  But eventually we reached a long back up.  Charlie had been pointing out places where he could turn onto alternate routes - I got the sense that it was a bit of a gamble - you never knew if the choice you took would turn out to be better.  Eventually, we took one, as the traffic ahead wasn't moving.

The plan was to go over a couple of blocks and go down 11th street.  But that was similarly contested.  As was 13th street.  As was the cross street that we were on - backed up for several blocks. Way up ahead, at 14th street, a small number of cars, perhaps 2 or 3, would make the left hand turn each light cycle.

Eventually we got to 14th street, which was as far as we could easily go.  We had used up all the Plan Bs.  It was plugged up as well, but after a few blocks traffic thinned out to merely very busy - albeit with some traffic weaving cyclists that were, probably unwisely, putting themselves at the mercy of our attention and reaction time.  Another 15 minutes or so making our way down 14th and then back tracking to Charlie's office and the adjacent metro station, and we went our separate ways.

According to Charlie, this was unusually bad.  I've been downtown a number of times, but never commuted and generally avoided rush hours.  I'm amazed that people will put up with it on a regular basis.

April Fools

My April Fools' Day was completely free of foolery.  Up early to start a long day in Alexandria attending and helping facilitate a couple of breakout sessions at a large meeting, bracketed by morning and evening yoga classes.

Walking to the metro before dawn, Venus was bright in the east, well above the horizon, and directly in line with Dale Drive - a noticeable shift from a few weeks ago as Earth continues its seasonal movement.  Even before first light in the sky, the robins were vocalizing strongly as they stake out their nesting territories.  A cat crossed the street, warily watching me as it headed home after a night out.

No freak snow storms - nothing unseasonable about the weather at all.  Cool in the early morning, in the upper 30s, but warming into the 60s during the day.

Everything about the day went well - my movement across the city from Maryland to Virginia and back went without a hitch, and the meeting was well organized and productive.

Well, there was a little humor after yoga when, carrying my dress shirt (rather than wearing it), I managed to drop two pens and a comb out of the pocket in a sequential scattering, and while retrieving one of the items, spilled a couple more out of my tote.  But no items were harmed in the making of the movie, and Pam was amused, so I can't even consider my clumsiness to be a problem.

No Plan Bs needed today.