Personal Anchors for Attention
Feeling free to personalize and modify our practice can boost our motivation and ability to get out the door to go to class or to unroll our yoga mat at home. Knowing we have choices every step of the way can ease anxiety and serve as a reminder that our core Self can meet challenges with skilful care; we can learn to trust that we have our own backs, so to speak.
Exploring Personal Anchors for Attention
When I began practising yoga I would almost always choose to have my eyes open during meditation or in a class’s final resting pose. Maintaining a soft gaze on a single focal point allowed me to remain grounded and attuned to the teacher’s guidance because I was supporting my nervous system in feeling safe.
I still give myself permission to choose eyes open or closed to this day. Most often I close them, but it is the permission and freedom to choose that is therapeutic and supports my practice. When and whether to close the eyes is just one example of how you can personalize your practice so that your core Self can meet waves of experience and remain grounded, present, and capable.
Before engaging in any mindfulness, meditation or physical yoga practice, I encourage exploring what might be a helpful neutral anchor for your attention and a neutral shape for your body. You may hear suggestions such as focusing on the breath or taking child’s pose and, while you may wish to try these out, it is important to remember that what feels neutral or grounding is personal, and it makes perfect sense that each of us may need different options.
Once we know our own go-to anchors we can more bravely engage in yoga classes and sessions with the confidence that we have tools and options to self-regulate if feelings start to veer towards overwhelm.
There are so many wonderful focal points for our attention. Here I will share a few that I find most supportive in countering feelings of rising emotional overwhelm such as anxiety and dissociation.
As with all aspects of practice, the invitation is to be curious and to explore what works for you without any expectations. We conduct informed personal experiments with an open mind as to the results. In this way, we discover what works best for us personally, and we can slowly build our own tailored skill set with go-to resources for when bigger challenges come our way.
The 5 Senses
In many cases, anchoring our attention on what we notice in the external world with our 5 senses can be far more accessible than turning our attention inward (for example to the breath or the body).
For each of the 5 senses we can work with what is naturally present around us - a sound in the room or outside, a colour in our visual field, the smell of a space, the texture of what is in reach - or, we can prepare ahead of practice to ensure options for sense perception are obvious and work for us. Some of these may be usable in a group setting, some are more for personal practice to respect others’ sensitivities to things like scents and sounds.
Examples of prepared sensory anchors:
Sight: Practising near a window where we might focus on a tree or a cloud, having a simple picture on the wall, favourite quote at the end of our mat, or having a plant or other meaningful object nearby.
Hearing: Practising outside where there are nature sounds, playing nature sounds inside, playing neutral practice music in the background.
Smell: One might use an essential oil diffuser, a scented candle, incense, or a dab of essential oil on the wrists or on a cotton ball nearby.
Taste: One could have some cool water or herbal tea at hand.
Touch: One could keep a worry stone or other meaningful small object nearby, or wear a bead bracelet that can be removed and run through the fingers.
Body Based Anchors
Just as external sensory focal points can be more accessible than attending to inner experience, concrete body-based anchors (which often combine with sensory perception) can be more attention-friendly than awareness of feelings, thoughts, or specific breathwork.
Grounding through the feet:
Whether lying down in constructive rest, sitting in a chair or standing, root your attention in the soles of your feet. You might wiggle or raise and lower the toes, or gently press each foot into the ground with the option to mentally repeat “left foot”, “right foot” as you press. If standing, you might even shift your weight slightly side to side or forward and back. You might notice the texture of the surface under the feet: rubber mat, wooden floor, carpet, grass etc.
Just as with sensory anchors, you can attend to the feet with what is naturally available, or you can prepare some props that might help (again, depending on context).
Examples of prepared props:
Tennis ball: You can use a tennis ball or any similar sized ball. Either standing (feel free to keep one hand on a wall or chair back for balance) or sitting, you might gently roll one foot over the surface of the ball noticing sensation.
Texture: You might practice near something with a more unusual texture like a bathmat or throw rug, a pebble walkway, sand or grass. You can then stand on this novel texture, or sit with you feet on it, and then root your attention in the soles of your feet as described above.
You might also practice where you are able to take a few steps as in walking meditation, noticing changes in texture underfoot.
Grounding through the hands and fingers:
The following can be done from almost any position whether lying down, seated or standing.
Fingertip Tapping: You may wish to explore bringing the thumb to meet each fingertip in sequence and then the reverse (second finger to little finger and then back), noticing the sensation of the finger pads meeting.
Resting hands on body: You may wish to place one hand on the belly and one hand on the heart, or both hands over the heart, and simply notice their warmth, gentle weight, and outline. You may want to create a little extra warmth by first rubbing the palms together and then placing them on the body.
Rhythmic tapping: You may wish to cross one wrist over the other, resting each palm over the heartspace just under the collarbones, softly tapping the chest in a steady rhythm one hand at a time. Or, cross the forearms so that the hands can rest on opposite upper arms and again, gently tap switching from side to side.
Hand mudras: You can explore traditional shapes made with hands and fingers and find a few that resonate with you and that offer grounding, clarity and calm.
Focusing on the Natural Breath
You may wish to anchor your attention on your breathing with the intention of noticing its natural rhythm without judgment or manipulation. It may be helpful to mentally repeat “breathing in” and “breathing out” as your breath cycles.
You might find it supportive to focus less on the internal subtle sensation of breathing and more on where you perceive movement in the body as you breathe (if you do). Examples might be the abdomen or chest rising and falling or the ribs expanding and softening. To make this even more concrete and tangible, you might place your hands over the area where you feel movement.
If you are lying down, there is also the option to place a small pillow, folded towel, bag of rice or stuffed animal on your front-body (lower abdomen or diaphragm) to support connection to movement in the body as you breathe (and maybe you find a little weight comforting in of itself).
Explore Orientation and Gaze
Often our orientation can have a big impact on how at ease we are, so you might explore how any of the practices above feel in different positions. For example, breathing while lying down might feel very different than breathing seated with your back against a bolster or the wall with your feet on the floor and maybe a blanket over your lap or wrapped around your shoulders.
Skilful Titration of Mindfulness and Interospection
When we use one of our go-to personal anchors as a response to rising overhwelm, we are not simply distracting ourselves from our discomfort. Instead, we are skilfully making an intentional choice to shift our mindfulness practice to a focal point that allows us to stay present and engaged, and which grants our nervous system a felt sense of safety. We tend to our go-to anchor with as much care and curiosity as we would any other practice such as a body scan, breathwork, or physical flow, that simply may not be appropriate for us right then.
We are not ‘taking a break’ from the practice, we are embracing the very heart of the practice: noticing what is arising or present, checking-in with compassionate curiosity, and making skilful adaptive decisions as to what supports us best in any particular moment.
Especially when practising from a trauma-informed lens, we learn to titrate mindfulness and interospection focused on challenging aspects of experience to avoid emotional overwhelm, dissociation and activating the defensive circuits of our nervous system.
I think of it like slowly making our way into a cool lake: first dipping a toe in to get a sense of the water, then taking it out and noticing how we feel, maybe putting the foot in up to the ankle the next time or recognizing we need more support before trying to dip the toe in again.
We aim to remain dynamically flexible rather than rigid and forceful. We try practices knowing that we can pause, stop, or modify them at any time. Creating our tailored tool set of go-to anchors can empower us to persevere in trying more challenging practices, as we know we have the means to stay present and to re-set when needed. This process of attempting practices on the edge of our comfort zone, pausing to re-set when needed, and then returning to explore the challenge again when ready or with professional support, nurtures our resilience on and off the yoga mat.
