It seems to me that the most basic training for the mind is attentional. Sitting for 10 minutes with my attention devoted to one thing gives me training in noticing when my attention shifts. It is going to shift. I am a live animal and my attention is built to shift. Watch a bird at the birdbath. One sip and a quick look around, just to check on the environment and possible predators. Checking out the surroundings just makes sense. When waiting for the timer to ring, I can practice keeping my attention on one target and training myself to notice when the old attention has slipped off the target and gone wandering.
As you may know, breathing is an old friend as a place to put one's attention while training greater awareness of what is being attended to. Breathing is an odd duck in that we can watch our breath and observe how we are breathing but we can forget about breathing while the basic body processes take over and keep the breath going. Besides watching the breath as an attentional focus and ignoring it, say, while talking or sleeping, we can consciously elongate and deepen our breath.
There are those who are convinced that deeper breathing with slower, more complete breaths can benefit both the body and the mind. In many yoga classes, one part of the session is deep, slow, conscious breathing in a relaxed physical position, say lying on the back and totally relaxed. When we read "The Body Keeps the Score" by Van Der Kolk, we read about yoga as a practice to help people who have suffered trauma regain their mental and emotional balance. That book led me to "Yoga and the Quest for the True Self" by Stephen Cope. The book "Cure: a Journey into the Science of Mind over Body" by Dr. Jo Marchant and others make clear that the current emphasis in Western medicine on the physical and impersonal investigation of the body and its health miss some important (and inexpensive) tools for better living while at the same time, finding useful methods and tools that would not be uncovered without scientific investigation.
The book by the popular therapist Dr. Mark Epstein "The Trauma of Everyday Life" shows that we can be hurt deeply or frightened deeply by events and ideas that on other days get ignored or accepted without a problem. My friend, Prof. Arthur Herman, made a history of yoga decades ago and explained that yoga can consist of tightening and relaxing each muscle in the body progressively over the whole and not use any of the well-known yoga stretches. A useful key seems to be paying attention to the exact use of and feeling of the body for some time each day.
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