My name is Dr. Amishi Jha and I am the director of contemplative neuroscience for the mindfulness research and practice initiative and an associate professor of psychology at the University of Miami. I’m a neuroscientist and I study attention in my lab at the University of Miami.
Wherever it is that attention goes the rest of the brain follows. And in some ways, I think it’s very important to consider this. What does this mean? It means that where you pay attention, makes up the moments of your life, it actually makes up your life’s experience.
In my lab’s work we really think about mindfulness not simply as a concept but mindfulness training as a cognitive training tool. To understand this more fully, we should understand what the workout is, what the exercises are that make it cognitive training. So, I want to review with you one very common and foundational mindfulness practice that’s probably present in every single mindfulness-based program available: something called mindfulness of breathing. This is what we call a focused-attention practice and let me just describe it to you.
In this exercise, the mindfulness of breathing exercise, we ask you to sit in an upright, stable, and alert posture. And for the period of time, we’re going to do this short practice (and you can do it for much longer than I’m going to do here), your task is to pay attention to the sensations of breathing, and be very specific about how you pay attention to the breath.
1) Tune into the breath-related sensations. So, once you get settled, with your eyes comfortably lowered or closed, you’re going to focus in on the sensation that’s most prominent to you tied to your breathing. Perhaps it’s the coolness of the air in and out of your nostrils, or the abdomen moving up or down, your shoulders, whatever bodily sensation tied to breathing feels most prominent, that’s what you will focus on for the period of this formal practice.
