11

FLOODLIGHT OF ATTENTION

Like the mom I described in the chapter on mindful breathing who stopped meditating because she was overwhelmed by strong feelings, the dad who stopped meditating because he got lost in thought or zoned out, and me when I was learning to meditate, many kids are afraid they’ll fall apart if they give up trying to manage the thoughts and emotions that are bouncing around in their heads. What none of us were able to recognize at first was that we were chasing, overanalyzing, avoiding, and overidentifying with our thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. The activity in our minds wasn’t a problem, but how we reacted to it became one. In Turning Confusion into Clarity, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche wrote that his father taught him about meditation by comparing the behavior of a bad shepherd with that of a good shepherd: “A bad shepherd has a narrow view. He might chase after one sheep that strays to the left but miss the one moving to the right, so he ends up running in circles like a dog chasing its tail.” The master meditation teacher told his inquiring young son, “When we meditate we don’t try to control all our thoughts and feelings. We just rest naturally, like the good shepherd, watchful and attentive.”

In the last chapter, children learned that people’s natural tendency to pursue pleasant thoughts and avoid unpleasant ones makes perfect sense by playing Melting Ice and games using an Awareness Meter. They also learned that if they’re oblivious to what they’re doing, they can get stuck chasing or running away from their thoughts and feelings. That’s one of the reasons why awareness is so important. When kids realize that they’re stuck, they have an opportunity to step back and reflect on what trapped them. Remember the story from chapter 4 about the monkey who wouldn’t let go of a banana? Just as the monkey could have freed himself from the hunter’s trap had he been willing to leave the banana alone, older kids and teens can wiggle out of their psychological traps by relaxing and letting their thoughts alone. Finger traps (sometimes known as Chinese or Mexican finger puzzles or handcuffs) are a useful visual and experiential metaphor for how to get free. To prepare, give each child a finger trap and keep one for yourself.

finger trap

When we pull on finger traps, our fingers get stuck; but when we relax and stop pulling, our fingers are set free.

LIFE SKILLS Focusing, Seeing

TARGET AGES Older Children, Teens

LEADING THE GAME

1.  Place your pinky fingers in the two ends of the cylinder.

2.  Pull your fingers away from each other, like this, and try to pull your fingers out of the trap.

The cylinders will narrow, and children’s fingers will get trapped.

3.  Now stop pulling, relax, and breathe. Move your fingers back toward each other.

The tension will ease, and the cylinder will get wider, allowing children to take their fingers out of the trap.

4.  Talking points: What’s the best way to release your fingers from the trap? How is getting your fingers stuck in the trap similar to getting caught up in thoughts, emotions, and stress?

The games in this chapter call upon the floodlight of attention to help older kids understand their minds. The floodlight of attention is a wide, receptive beam that lights up a broad field of changing experience. Games that use the floodlight are called awareness games; in them, kids exercise contemplative restraint, one of the themes we’re exploring in this book, by noticing what shows up in their inner and outer worlds (thoughts, feelings, sensations, sounds, temperatures) without reacting to it. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche describes the benefits of contemplative restraint in Mindfulness in Action: “This approach is not cutting off the thought process altogether, but is loosening it up. Thoughts become transparent and loose, so that they can pass through or float around in our minds more easily. Thoughts are often very heavy and sticky, and they hang around, demanding that we pay attention to them. But with this approach, the thought process becomes relaxed and fluid, fundamentally transparent. In this way, we learn to relate to our thought process, rather than trying to attain a state without thoughts altogether.” When leading awareness games, it’s important for parents to remember that young children aren’t yet developmentally ready to hold back from reacting to their thoughts, emotions, and sensations. When I asked Mark Greenberg, Founding Director of the Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Health at Penn State, at what age this metacognitive skill first develops, he answered that it depends on the child but is unlikely to develop before the fourth grade. Awareness games can be easily modified to become anchor games that are appropriate for younger children, though, and I’ve included suggestions for how to adapt them.

It’s also important that parents keep in mind that the way kids relate to distractions when they play awareness games that use the floodlight of attention is different from how they relate to distractions when they play anchor games that use the spotlight of attention. In anchor games, anything that pulls children’s attention away from their anchor is a distraction. In awareness games, nothing is a distraction. When older children and teens stop chasing, over-analyzing, avoiding, and overidentifying with the activity in their minds, they’re able to relate to it differently. As a result, the grip of troublesome beliefs, thoughts, and emotions starts to loosen and ease. Then kids are able to see what is happening within and around them with more clarity and equanimity. I use a bobblehead doll to demonstrate this “heady” concept.

bobblehead

We shake a bobblehead doll to help us understand how to leave thoughts and emotions alone, rather than reacting to them.

LIFE SKILLS Quieting

TARGET AGES Older Children, Teens

LEADING THE DEMONSTRATION

1.  I sometimes feel like a bobblehead doll. When I’m excited, upset, or angry, my mind can start racing around in my head so fast that I feel like this.

Shake the bobblehead and keep shaking it throughout the demonstration.

2.  Have you ever felt like a bobblehead doll?

If the children don’t offer examples, give a few of your own: “The time I was caught in traffic and worried that I’d be late for class. The time I looked all through the house for the book I was reading but never found it.”

3.  It’s distracting when we feel like bobblehead dolls. The thoughts, emotions, and beliefs that are bouncing around in our heads feel like they need our attention. But if we try to pay attention to all of them, it’s easy to get lost, and it’s hard to think clearly.

Shake the bobblehead again.

4.  What should we do?

5.  Talking points: Should we try to get rid of our thoughts? How? What would happen if we did nothing at all? What if we left our thoughts alone and didn’t react to them?

Set the bobblehead doll down on a solid surface; the movement of the head will slow and eventually stop.

6.  Our thoughts and feelings don’t go away entirely, nor do we want them to. But when we leave them alone, they eventually settle, and we can think clearly again.

7.  Talking points: What would happen if we started to mull over our thoughts again?

Shake the bobblehead.

8.  If we’re in a difficult situation, it makes sense that our minds will get busy again, even after we’ve been able to quiet them. When that happens, if we relax and notice what’s happening without reacting to it, our minds tend to settle down naturally.

To change the way they relate to their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, children must first become familiar with them, and that requires concentration. That’s why visualizations and anchor games that develop concentration (the spotlight of attention) are taught before the awareness games in this chapter that develop the floodlight of attention. Remember, it’s a misunderstanding to consider the spotlight and floodlight as separate ways of paying attention, even though it’s helpful to present them that way. To use a college metaphor coined by the American Lama Surya Das, awareness games are “like majoring in panoramic attention [the floodlight] and minoring in concentration [the spotlight].”

There’s no better way for older children and teens to practice this relaxing, spacious, floodlight-like way of paying attention than by Stargazing. To prepare, find a comfortable spot from which to gaze at the sky and set up chairs or a blanket. Young children like gazing at the sky, too. The instructions below explain how to adapt this game so that it’s appropriate for them as well.

stargazing

We relax and gaze at the sky to explore what’s happening in the moment.

LIFE SKILLS Focusing, Caring

TARGET AGES Older Children, Teens (with a modification for Young Children)

LEADING THE GAME

1.  Sit or lie down comfortably and settle into the natural rhythm of your breathing.

2.  Look toward the horizon and lightly rest your gaze there. Keep your eyes soft, not focusing on any particular object.

3.  Notice any changes that you see in the sky, moon, or stars.

4.  When thoughts or feelings bubble up, you can just let them be. If you don’t analyze or think about your thoughts and emotions, they tend to come, stay for a while, and then fade away on their own.

When leading young children, replace step number 4 with this: “If you notice you’re distracted and thinking about something else, that’s OK—just feel your breathing for a few breaths and then go back to gazing at the sky.”

5.  Talking points: What did you see? Were you surprised by what you saw? Did the sky stay the same? Did it change? Can you describe how you felt? How do you feel now?

TIPS

1.  Start by practicing Stargazing for a short time and build to longer periods.

2.  In the daytime try Cloudgazing. Grab a beach chair or towel and find a shady spot outside. Encourage children to notice the leaves blowing in the wind, drifting clouds, and other changes in their environment.

3.  Stargazing and Cloudgazing are great ways for children (and adults) to rest and take care of themselves when life is hectic and they feel stressed.

Stargazing is not about spacing out. It’s about teaching older kids to let whatever bubbles up in their minds rise and fall naturally. It’s fine for stargazers to let their minds roam freely, provided that they’re noticing what’s happening in their heads. Even the most accomplished of meditators get lost in thought, though. To come back everyone, regardless of age, returns their gaze to the horizon.

This open, receptive method of meditation requires strong concentration, and many new meditators, young and old alike, find it to be difficult. Another, more structured way to work with thoughts is to label them “thinking,” as older children and teens do in the next game.

resting and noticing

While relaxing and paying attention to the sensation of breathing, we note when thoughts and emotions distract us by silently saying the word “thinking.”

LIFE SKILLS Focusing, Caring

TARGET AGES Older Children, Teens

LEADING THE GAME

1.  Sit with your back straight and your body relaxed, resting your hands gently on your knees. Close your eyes if that’s comfortable for you.

2.  Let’s find our breathing anchor again, just like we did in the Mindful Breathing game. Take a moment to see where you feel your breathing the most—near your nose, your chest, or your belly.

3.  When you breathe out, see if you can lightly rest your attention on your exhale and stay with it all the way to the end. Let’s do this for a few breaths.

4.  Now, don’t pay any special attention to your breathing. Just rest.

5.  When thoughts and emotions bubble up, try not to think about them too much. The next time you notice a thought or emotion, just say the word “thinking” silently to yourself, and then rest while feeling the natural rhythm of your breathing.

6.  The next time you silently say the word “thinking” notice your tone of voice.

Continue guiding this meditation as long as children seem comfortable and engaged.

TIPS

1.  The words “gently” and “lightly” are used in these instructions to prompt children to relax and take it easy on themselves.

2.  These instructions encourage kids to rest their attention on the out-breath and stay with it all the way to the end. This steadies their attention and many kids find it to be relaxing and calming.

The last instruction in Resting and Noticing (step number 6) introduces a simple, straightforward way for older children and teens to practice self-awareness and self-compassion by noticing the tone of voice they use when they speak to themselves. When an inner heckler whispers insults in a child’s ears, the difficult emotions that come in their wake feel real and can be overwhelming. Kids find freedom in knowing that their negative self-judgment isn’t real while practicing compassion toward the part of them that believes it is. For older kids and teens, noticing the tone of voice they use when they speak to themselves, and considering whether it is the tone of a helpful friend or an unhelpful heckler, creates an opportunity to practice self-compassion. Silently saying the word thinking and noticing their inner tone of voice can be helpful to older kids when Stargazing, too.

Resting and Noticing and Stargazing facilitate rest and relaxation. Rest and relaxation are pretty great on their own, but they also offer many more benefits. When children and teens are relaxed and rested, they’re able to investigate what’s happening within and around them with a clear head and more ease. One of the first things they’ll notice is that everything changes. Gazing at the sky, they’ll observe that the quality of light and colors change; resting and noticing, they’ll feel their breathing slow and deepen; listening mindfully, they’ll hear sounds rise and fall; when they meditate, they’ll watch their thoughts and feelings come and go. These observations are opportunities to talk with kids about how everything is in flux and always changing. When viewed in this way, the theme everything changes becomes a comfort, and it can be especially reassuring when life feels unfair. Tomorrow, things will be different, and whatever rough patch children might be going through now will eventually change.