On day six this week, my mind became wider than my body. The flickers of light and
movement in the room triggered thoughts the same way the ideas in my
internal verbal diarrhea and imagery did. I experienced the obvious
connection between the stimuli, internal and external, and the thoughts
that arose. Outside or inside, the location of the stimuli made no
difference.
This week, when I focused on counting the breaths, it made it fairly easy to stay focused. On my first day I struggled with posture. I also kept finding my attention caught by the television in the other room. I could identify thoughts triggered by external stimuli, but thoughts triggered internally often snuck past my awareness.
Day two involved a lot of effort disengaging from Conan on the TV in the next room. My upper back, neck and head challenged my focus. Riding the breath counts helped.
I missed days three, four and five. I found my exhaustion levels too high over these days and felt sleep would serve me better than sitting still counting my breaths while my back and neck burn from discomfort.
The work I did with weights on day six seemed to make my neck and upper back problems worse. I did add a second pillow to change the angle of my legs, pelvis and back. That softened my sore spots. I kept my eyes open and aimed downward at a forty-five degree angle with wide peripheral focus.
I applied neurological theory to my distracting thoughts. If I tried to force them away, they bounced back up like a water mattress when you try to climb on to it in the pool. But, if I re-directed my thoughts, I trained them to smooth out. So I imagined picking up a large, soft, thin cloth on an inhale. Then I smoothed it out over the surface of a pool on the exhale. This worked very well.
After a break, I tried to think as many thoughts as possible, as fast as possible. I moved my inner and outer eyes over things quickly and labeled as many different parts as I could. This strategy worked.
On the final day of this week, I had to-do items rattle through my mind on every inhale. The focus on the breath number on the exhale cleared my thoughts, though. My posture with the extra pillow reduced the burning in most of my upper back. Afterwards, I captured all the to-do items to get them out of my head.
