How to ignore distractions?

Hi Lauren

I am just off to bed (it’s the other end of the world here) but just wanted to give you something to go on instead of you letting that monkey mind run away with you.

There are plenty of things you could do, plenty of books you could read. It’s just a matter of finding THE thing or things that speak to you…

For the moment please try looking around the forum and see if something works for you as a starting point. Try typing in the word ‘mojo’ in the search facility and you will find a ton of great stuff to get you going… in a good way of course.

When you come back (and I am awake 😆 ) perhaps you can say if anything resonated for you. Perhaps you can tell us what has worked for you in the past. Your mind is so busy it seems that you are identifying with your thoughts. Somehow you will find something to stop the cycle and stop buying into those stories you seem to be telling yourself. Oh, and remember sometimes we just have difficult days. Allow that to be and then let it go otherwise you could be beating yourself up (unnecessarily – of course).

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Lisa

Thanks for the recommendation. You are right of course that if you try to stop the thoughts that it can really cause you some extra struggle. Somehow acknowledging them is a way to stop the thoughts taking control of you so that you stop ‘being thought’ (ie being controlled) instead of the acknowledgment of the fact that thoughts will happen regardless. I hope that made sense.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Something struck me about your post above, where you say you have a big ego and look around to compare yourself to others…well, one of the things that comes with practice is to actually do what Bikram says and “Check your EGO at the door”.

What this means is that you are not in competition with anyone in your class. Because quite frankly, we are all just plugging away trying to do our best. It is pretty normal and usual to be caught up in the “how am I doing OMG my bow pose SUCKS look at that girl’s standing bow” mindset. And it is equally easy to get distracted into the “why is that guy adjusting his costume HEY you aren’t supposed to be wiping the sweat you’re supposed to do the yoga hey look someone just lay down in savasana” mindset too. I’m pretty sure ALL of us have done this when we’ve started. I know I did, and sometimes my mind wanders and still does from time to time.

BUT you can manage this and with time, you’ll be able to focus. First thing to do is seriously, and this will sound harsh, “get over yourself”. Check your ego at the door. You are competing with yourself and only yourself. Understand that no one is looking at you and judging you in an everyday practice. You may feel that they are because you are looking at everyone else, therefore everyone else is looking at you! This isn’t true! Sorry, but really, no one notices or, and this will sound doubly harsh, actually CARES if you have a perfect standing bow or yours is better than the one that the guy in the corner does. No one. Once you can release this thought, you can focus more on what YOU are doing and what the state of your body is on that day and how you are reacting to the yoga, not to others in the hot room.

The second thing to try that worked for me at the beginning is to set an intention for the practice. What I mean by this is pick ONE thing you want to work on, one thing to focus on, and then just bring your mind to it whenever you become aware that your mind is wandering. By intention, I mean a concept, such as “acceptance” or “forgiveness”. And focus on that. It sounds weird, and kind of artsy-fartsy if you know what I mean, especially if you are a technically-oriented person, but this really, really works.

The last thing to do is to really, really LISTEN to the teacher. And I mean REALLY. Listen hard to every word. SO…what this means is that your inner monkey mind dialogue will be switched from this:

“lock the knee, lock the ok is my knee locked omg look at that other person their knee is straight I’ll never get my knee straight and they are really like an upside down L Linda I’ll never be that good but I’m better than that girl in the back uh oh the person over there is falling over well at least I don’t fall over well not so much…”

to this:

“lock the knee, lock the knee, lock the knee, ok is my knee locked….breathe….my intention is acceptance…its ok to do my best…breathe…its OK to be less than perfect…breathe…breathe…acceptance…”

Pretty soon it will be second nature, I promise.

I envy those people who find that the physicality of Bikram’s is enough to prevent their minds from wandering! I am working towards that too. So just keep in mind that this is a skill, and it needs to be practiced.

Let us know how you do!

Great discussion!

I’m also of the opinion that re-directing so-called “bad” thoughts (“bad” is an interpretation – they’re just thoughts) is better than trying to “stop/suppress/banish”.

There is a great NLP anchoring technique which is a one-step chained anchor (and it has a name but I can’t remember it haha!) where the trigger for the anchored “resourceful state” (in this case, “good thoughts”) IS the “bad thought”.

The reasoning being, that every time the “bad thought” presents, it is automatically connected to resourceful states (so no “thinking” is required to change “thinking” if you see what I mean).

I have personally found this to be extremely helpful (for more than yoga)

freiamaya: every time you write something I’m struck by your eloquence! Thanks for making such well-considered contributions.

Robert

PS. Just remembered the name of the technique (google it): NLP New Orleans Flexibility Drill