Anchor Your Awareness

Circumstances for learning this attention exercise

• having a few minutes to yourself

• feeling rested and alert

• preparing for something challenging

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Most people think of mindfulness meditation as a way to recover from stress, but a landmark study conducted fifteen years ago by Amishi Jha, Elizabeth Stanley, and others found that mindfulness training improved working memory in military personnel preparing for deployment.

The researchers hypothesized that strengthening attention and emotional regulation before going into high-risk combat situations would better equip these individuals to respond effectively.

As Vanessa Gregory explained when reporting on the study, working memory goes beyond recall.¹

"Working memory capacity powers complex thoughts. It’s what we call upon to figure out restaurant tips, break down spreadsheets, or even settle ethical dilemmas like whether or not to pull a trigger.

The level of this resource can be depleted throughout the day. A morning disagreement with a co-worker — or a roadside bomb for that matter — can make it harder to solve a problem that requires math skills a few hours later in the day.

In the battlefield low levels of working memory capacity might mean the difference between life and death."

Their research found that soldiers who practiced mindfulness consistently before deployment showed "better preservation of their working memory under stress" compared to a control group.²

Instead of providing participants with just one attention anchor to focus on, such as the breath, they were encouraged to explore a few different "contact point" options and select the one that felt most accessible to them. By concentrating on the sensations in their hands, buttocks, or feet for a few minutes each day, they established a physical point to anchor their attention when they found themselves in dangerous situations.

This illustrates the essence of an attenitonal fitness approach to mindfulness: not trying to avoid life’s challenges and discomforts, but exercising your attention to prepare for them.

The exercise instructions didn’t include any religious or cultural elements. Instead, soldiers learned methods to focus on ordinary perceptions, which helped strengthen their attention skills. Practicing these methods regularly resulted in significant and noticeable improvements.

You can test this out in the laboratory of your own life by finding attention exercises that develop your skills before you need them.³

Just as the keel stabilizes a sailboat in the water, keeping in contact with neutral body sensations enhances your psychological stability. This allows you to stay on course during challenging social and emotional situations.

Today's exercise is a version of the one used in this study. I learned it during a teacher training course for a program developed by Elizabeth Stanley, called Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFIT), which trains people in various military, first responder, and civilian settings.

To learn more about evidence-based ways to strengthen attentional capacities, check out her book, Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma, and Amishi Jha's book, Peak Mind: Find Your Focus, Own Your Attention, Invest 12 Minutes a Day.

Exercise

This exercise allows you to explore three potential anchors in your body for focusing your attention. It consists of four segments, each lasting five minutes.