In this twenty-sixth installment of the ongoing live series with Wendy Nash inquiring into meditation practice on and off the cushion we explore attention spans drawing from our internal and external meditative and non-meditative observations to examine how attention spans seem to be quite short these days, why this may be, and what to do about it in/with meditation practice and in everyday life. Amongst the topics mentioned are the four roads to success/power, honesty, seeing what’s really present, self-kindness and belonging.
*There’s naturally an ongoing open call for meditation (related) questions for the (roughly) monthly “Meditation Q & A” either by the various social media means listed; integratingpresence[at]protonmail.com or just showing to type/ask live.*
Background
Regular, current and past visitors to Integrating Presence may recall the monthly series “Ask Us Anything” I did with Denny K Miu from August 2020 until January 2022 — partially including and continuing on with Lydia Grace as co-host for awhile until March 2022.
For a few months thereafter I did various Insight Timer live events exploring potential new directions and/or a continuation of the Ask Us Anything format while weaving in other related teachings to these events.
Then, after chats with meditation coach Wendy Nash, it became clear to start a new collaboration similar to “Ask Us Anything” simply and clearly called “Meditation Q & A” especially due to the original intent of the Ask Us Anything’s being “discussions about meditation and related topics.”
Past chats with Wendy:
Audio: Lengthening Attention Spans | “Meditation Q & A With Wendy Nash” #26
Or listen via Insight Timer (app or website)
The raw unedited YouTube transcription of this podcast:
holess welcome this is Josh integrating presence and today we’re back again for another Q&A with a lovely windy Nash
Wendy what’s going on what’s going on I’m here on gubby Gabby country in Queensland in Australia and what’s going
on my bike got stolen a couple of weeks ago so that’s been quite a journey
and uh and so what else that’s been a journey that was much
more expensive even though I had Insurance much more expensive than I expected so this been quite interesting
to discover how beneficial the Dharma is cu I look at all the good parts all the
kind things that people do rather than focus on why is my insurance company swindling me
and and why did somebody steal my bicycle in the first place so it’s been
quite good actually yeah it’s isn’t this interesting you’ve
got this group with um you know biking promoting biking more over driving and
then your car gets I mean your um your bike gets stolen you know uh hopefully
there’s no Shenanigans involved here um yeah yeah and like you said about the
dharm um excuse me while I’m bringing up something here on the screen you know it does it really does
so these inevitable challenges we face in our lives and then like what’s going to help us with these what’s what’s
really going to be a benefit I mean do we want to there’s plenty of things out there we can cope with and um you know
improve our lives but I as far as overall complete systems longest standing most effective this is what
I’ve come across especially for everyday life so today we’ve go ahead yeah no you
go oh I was just gonna do a little bit too much of a abrupt transition here to
today’s uh show which I’m calling um lening lengthening attention spans this
is the 26th um meditation Q&A we’ve done and this
is um and you of course for those of us for those oh easy for me to say those of
us for those of you and us who have um not joined before this is an ongoing
live series uh where we look into our meditation practice on and off the cushion and today we want to get into
attention spans and we’ll make draw on our internal and external meditative and non-meditative observations to examine
how attention spans seem to be quite short these days why this might be and
what to do about it in meditation practice and in everyday life so of
course I read that little description I wrote there Wendy I want to throw it over to
you attention spans what you what do you say about this stuff yeah I’m not very
good at detention spans I do notice that when I watch movies movies from a couple of decades ago gee they’re
slow you know and that’s quite interesting to see what La what
keeps what is it that dat that that makes us lose
attention so I think that’s that’s interesting I’ve been looking at in my
own practice sort of the benefits of having
a sustained day practice so even though
now I don’t have like a couple of years ago I was sitting for two hours a day it
was fantastic and now I can just about get half an hour so things change and
there are other commitments and other people in my life so I don’t have the same sense of control
and what’s really interesting though is that that I’ve by just even having the daily
practice and having done it for good number of decades now then what I see is
that I’m able to sort of widen this space so I guess
I’m talking about the benefit and and how good that is so I’ve
been thinking a little bit about low self-esteem and the sort of sense of
Sorrow when you feel excluded and the arising of identity you know how your
body hardens and when you have a lengthened attention span on meditation
you can see these you have time to allow these inquiries to
occur so yeah it’s probably jumping in at the cell end this is really helpful
not so much at the where do you begin end of the spectrum and how do you do it
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