The Discipline of Attention

It’s hot in London, yet I laced up my shoes yesterday morning and ran 13km along the canal path. It’s my 43rd birthday and I feel I have an advantage, even over the heat: I spent ten days at over 2000m of elevation and trained whilst I was there. I am concerned about my timing in the heat but not so concerned that I check my watch for my pace very often. I allow myself to stop now and then, usually to adjust something like my sock or to change playlists. A cyclist is rude to me, I shout back (he didn’t ring his bell), he flips me off, but I don’t get angry. I laugh to myself. Fancy being in such a rush that cycle rage happens on a path like this with swans waddling along the edge. I’m running — actually for split seconds, both of my feet are off the ground — I’m flying! My breath and my heartbeat, the sun, the path with its unevenness and shadows and light, the smell of sunscreen and sweat.

Ten kilometres in, I discover I have legs. I run and breathe. My legs will just have to deal with it. I notice the path even more acutely, my awareness drawn to every uneven patch. This is where I could get injured. I focus on this step and only this step. I notice my attention narrow and then broaden again so I can take in the other people running or walking or sitting along the canal, the trees, the water, the animals. Two kilometres to go. I am thirsty. I notice my shorts and the sweat glistening on my torso. My thirst takes more of my attention, but it does not overwhelm me. I check my watch: I’ll be home in 10 minutes or less if I maintain my pace. I keep running.

I remember that I messed up last week’s long run. I miscalculated the distance and therefore didn’t leave enough time to complete the programmed set. This week’s long run is this week’s: I don’t need to do extra to make up for the missed few kilometres of the week before. A few years ago, I would have found that thought impossible and I would have made up the distance somehow. Yet I run because I enjoy it; I race sometimes too but even that I do for me as I choose not to join run clubs or teams. My training app doesn’t care, even if it ticks me off for not meeting the set goals. Before, I had to follow the plan to the letter. I did something to myself, created tension about performance that nobody was checking on, and noticed it in my body. I felt tighter, my thoughts felt tighter. Now I can let the miscalculations or missed paces go.

Maybe the miscalculation was my body telling my brain it needed a little slack. I often tell clients or yoga students to listen to their bodies, but I can turn a deaf ear to mine. When I sit with a client, I must listen with my whole body and to my whole body. What is the meaning when I feel tense when my client talks about his mother, or I feel my stomach drop when my client talks about her boss criticising her? In themselves, they mean nothing, but bringing curiosity to those sensations and exploring what they mean for the client can lead to insights that would not otherwise be possible. Those moments don't provide answers, but they do direct my curiosity. I notice the quality of my questions changes when they begin with something I have sensed rather than something I have thought. We don't experience life as disembodied minds carrying bodies around. We experience it through our breathing, our movement, the knot in our stomachs, the warmth of another person's smile. And before we ask ‘why?’ describing the feeling of what this anxiety is actually like lets the client’s body lead the way, rather than trying to find a ‘because’ in their mind.

When I’m not doing something with psychotherapy, I’m usually moving: running, lifting, in a yoga pose, spinning. I have become aware of how each of those activities supports the other, and how they have become tools for developing the awareness required for the here-and-now work of Gestalt psychotherapy. While I am interested in a client’s story, I do not need to do an archaeology (although I do occasionally say, ‘Tell me about your mother.’) because whatever you do in your relationships outside of the therapy room, you’ll do inside it.

In Gestalt, everything is important: running is as full of information about how I interact with my environment as how I talk to my partner is. Running has taught me that awareness is rarely dramatic. It is noticing the tightening in my shoulders before I work harder than I need to. It is laughing instead of carrying someone else's anger with me. It is noticing thirst without panic, tiredness without stopping, even feeling slower without assuming I have failed. In the therapy room, awareness often begins in much the same way: a flash of feeling, a sharp inhale, a tapping foot. When we learn to stay with those moments instead of rushing past them, they can become the beginning of something new.