Psychological Processes of Attention

🌿 The efficacy and mechanism of mindfulness meditation is explained by the psychological processes of attention in its foundation.

Mindfulness meditation almost always implies directing our attention on a specific element of our experience - the object of our meditation. 🔍 As we do so, everything else which is not the object of our concentration we consider wandering of mind. It also means being aware of that experience which is available in this present moment.

👉 The elements of experience we have introduced in more detail here – sensations, thoughts, emotions, urges... While practicing, we approach all of them in the same way when it comes to our attention and awareness which we develop.

Let's look further below which are these elementary psychological processes of attention.

More interested in mindfulness and neuroscience? Keep reading here!

Becoming aware and redirecting

In this continuous mental dance with our mind 🎭 we differentiate two elementary steps:

Raising awareness and noticing the wandering of mind – Recognizing when our mind wanders and becoming aware of where it is currently at 🧠.

Redirecting attention – Returning focus to the object of meditation 🎯.

We aim to recognize that we have attached on to something and redirect out attention always over and over again on the subject of our practice - our method. We may have to do this from the very moment to the next sometimes, and certainly always over and over again.

📌 Important: Mind wandering is NOT a sign of bad practice! Every time we recognize the mind wandering and we redirect our attention, we strengthen the capacity for presence. That means we are practicing correctly. By doing so we develop psychological processes of mindfulness, whose results become increasingly visible with repetition and time.

Also, when we begin practicing (but also later) due to our usual way of being, the mind mostly wanders so quickly and far away that we do not even understand what "the wandering of mind" means. This is part of the difficulty in defining "the present moment" and why many may easily thinking "well, here I am, present, it is really not so difficult!", without realizing that we are not actually present.

🧘‍♂️ Deep awareness of the wandering mind

The first step in this work with our mind, becoming aware that the mind has wandered, and where it has gone to, can be divided in two sub-steps:

🔹 Noticing – Becoming aware of the present experience. 🧐

🔹 Recognizing – Clear comprehension about that which has grabbed our attention - thought, sensation, emotion... 🔍

💡 Practice of wakefulness To wakefully observe our mind means to notice it has wandered and recognizing where it is. That frees us from automatic reactions.

These two steps are nearly identical, but in practice we can differentiate between them to ease the process of noticing the movements of the mind, especially if we are only starting, or we are in a very scattered state of mind.

Specific techniques of noticing and recognizing which help us diffuse from our thoughts and other mental phoenomena can be found here.

The basic idea of these techniques is not rationalizing, ridiculing, diminishing, repressing, discounting any experience, making judgments of it or analyzing it.

They are here to help us recognize our experience and, at least for a moment (with practice perhaps longer and longer) allowing it, opening up for it and witnessing it without interference. Without "entering into a relationship" with any particular thought, emotion, etc.

When to use naming?

📌IMPORTANT! Noticing and recognizing are elementary prats of mindfulness practice, however, naming always implies discrimination which goes against the fundamental principles of open awareness.

When we are restless, or if we are juts beginning our practice, or the mind is very scattered... Naming can still be an extremely useful step.

At the same time, when we are of a more settled mind and with a higher degree of concentration, it is useful and necessary to let go of naming so we could enter into direct contact with the flow of our experience. In that phase naming represents too coarse of a tool, an unnecessary burden that holds us back.

How to know if applying naming is necessary? Pretty simple.

It is always more useful to begin with naming and let go of it once it becomes superflous, rather than skipping it.

And we will know that is has become superflous once we are truly concentrated and collected – which is not the case in most of average daily life situation. Therefore when applying these techniques, naming is always a core part of thought diffusion. As we sit for longer in meditation, naming can still be an especially useful process. We let go of it only when connecting with our object or anchor is so clear, easy and spontaneous that it is seems as if naming produces "mental noise" and disrupts / disables deeper stillness.

🌍 Conclusion: Mindfulness as a Way of Being

Through repeating these techniques, they stop being methods and become naš način bivanja. 💡 Presence and awareness grow through persistent practice, without strain.

🧩 Key idea: We do not analyze our thoughts – we simply observe them. We do not push them away – we allow them to be here. We open up to experience, without struggle, without separation. Without analysis. Without under- or overestimating.

💬 How do you notice your mind wandering? Share in the comments! 👇😊

If you are more interested in the scientific background, here you can find an open access article that goes in detail about how psychological processes of attention underlie mindfulness practice and relate to its efficacy.

Let us create space and observe our experience for what it is:

A stream of continuously changing phoenomena which rush with lighting speed through consciousness…

... and we can usually notice but a tiny little part of that stream, which momentarily ensnares our mind, and we get either led by it, or fight to defeat or escape from it – in short term (often) successfully – in the long run sustaining and increasing psychological suffering in a vicious cycle.