I've shared strategies for using movies to strengthen attention. Just as in ordinary life, what makes tending to the sensory components of a film so challenging is the pull of the narrative. But what would it be like to focus on the changing sights and sounds without having to resist the gravitational pull of story elements?
Starting today, you can find out.
Read More"I will not return to a universe
of objects that don’t know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent."
~ Lisel Mueller
Read MoreAny perception you can observe directly in real time can be used to train a variety of attention-related skills.
I like to make a game out of turning ordinary activities into opportunities for practice.
There are a number of exercises I use when watching a film — whether it’s one I enjoy, dislike, or have seen before.
Read More"When blind people learn to see, sighted people seem inspired to want to learn to see their way better, more clearly, with less fear, because this exemplifies the immense capacity within us all to navigate any type of challenge, through any form of darkness, to discoveries unimagined when we are activated."
~ Daniel Kish
Read Moreyù yī - 玉衣
n. the desire to see with fresh eyes, and feel things just as intensely as you did when you were younger—before expectations, before memory, before words.
Read MoreWhen you catch yourself absorbed by some immediate aspect of your environment, try to yield to the observation fully for a few seconds.
Read MoreI swoon and recoil at the tresses blowing
in an arbor without glow
or flame. These are reprieves. Respites
in the demands of sensation
and flow. Know this: you can you can
you can you can you can.
~ Margot Schilpp
Read More"How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such a fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself as anything less than a god?" ~ Alan Watts
Read MoreWhy should we grieve that we’ve been sleeping?
It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been unconscious.
We’re groggy, but let the guilt go.
Feel the motions of tenderness
around you, the buoyancy.
Rumi
Read MoreI think everything can be photographed,
it depends on how it's seen.
Everything that's photographed is photographed for pleasure.
~ Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Read MoreAll making is an act of attention and attention is an act of recognition and recognition is the something happening that is thought itself.
~ Ann Hamilton
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