It seems that some things are best done carefully and deliberately while others are best performed with the conscious mind turned off or onto other things. Timothy Gallwey in "The Inner Game of Tennis" uses the example of two friends crossing a street mid-block while talking to each other. Each eyes the traffic coming this way and that and calculates when to slip through the moving vehicles without impeding them, nor causing sudden braking or being hit. I watched a video of Gallwey hitting a tennis ball over a net with a student who had trouble timing the ball's flight and striking it just as it rose from the court. He asked the student to shout "Bounce" when the ball struck the ground and "Hit" as her racket hit the ball back.
He feels that the conscious, deliberate mind can get in the way. Gallwey often uses the strategy of giving the conscious, thinking mind something to do, such as count at a given time. A friend mentioned the other day about his poor performance in piano lessons until his teacher asked him to try to let his fingers do their job with less oversight and more natural response.
The book "Thinking: Fast and Slow" by the Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman emphasizes that our rapid response system is very quick and relies on unconscious processes while our deliberate, contemplative minds may see things quite differently after having enough time to think things over.
We can pretty well control what we put our attention on and we can select for attention something related to our task, such as a fleeing rabbit, or an intentionally selected side issue such as when the tennis ball strikes the court. Training our attention by keeping it fixed on some neutral point or object for a short time regularly increases our awareness of what we have allowed to be the focus of our attention at all hours day and night. These short times can vary from 6 seconds ("QR: The Quieting Reflex" by Charles Stroebel, MD) to 24 minutes or longer ("Genuine Happiness" by B. Alan Wallace).
We can pretty well see in many situations whether we need to concentrate on a task or should instead put our attention off on some side track for a while. Sometimes, calling on our unconscious by writing or talking to another (including speaking to a tape recorder for ourselves to listen to later – "What You Practice Is What You Have" by Cheri Huber) helps us find hidden or unwelcome feelings and convictions that we need to work on or with. Sometimes, it helps to get as much into the feelings and personality of another person we want to understand as we can (as in method acting).
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
He feels that the conscious, deliberate mind can get in the way. Gallwey often uses the strategy of giving the conscious, thinking mind something to do, such as count at a given time. A friend mentioned the other day about his poor performance in piano lessons until his teacher asked him to try to let his fingers do their job with less oversight and more natural response.
The book "Thinking: Fast and Slow" by the Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman emphasizes that our rapid response system is very quick and relies on unconscious processes while our deliberate, contemplative minds may see things quite differently after having enough time to think things over.
We can pretty well control what we put our attention on and we can select for attention something related to our task, such as a fleeing rabbit, or an intentionally selected side issue such as when the tennis ball strikes the court. Training our attention by keeping it fixed on some neutral point or object for a short time regularly increases our awareness of what we have allowed to be the focus of our attention at all hours day and night. These short times can vary from 6 seconds ("QR: The Quieting Reflex" by Charles Stroebel, MD) to 24 minutes or longer ("Genuine Happiness" by B. Alan Wallace).
We can pretty well see in many situations whether we need to concentrate on a task or should instead put our attention off on some side track for a while. Sometimes, calling on our unconscious by writing or talking to another (including speaking to a tape recorder for ourselves to listen to later – "What You Practice Is What You Have" by Cheri Huber) helps us find hidden or unwelcome feelings and convictions that we need to work on or with. Sometimes, it helps to get as much into the feelings and personality of another person we want to understand as we can (as in method acting).
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
