Yoga and meditation teachers often use the words ‘attention’ and ‘awareness’ interchangeably. To me they are fundamentally different, as they create two fundamentally different experiences of reality. Attention means being focused on one thing. Awareness means taking in multiple things at once. Focusing on one thing gives us a distorted view of reality, especially when we (as we often do) focus on the most negative thing happening in any given moment. Learning to move from attention to awareness can transform your practice both physically and mentally. Ultimately, it can transform your life.

Attention can be focused and steady, and when it is, it can be quite helpful in quieting the monkey mind. But our normal mode is to be stuck in attention that is reactive rather than steady. Our minds tend to zero in on what appears to be the most pressing thing at any given moment. We do this to the exclusion of everything else, only to become obsessed with something different a few moments later.

This obsession over whatever seems most important at the moment literally distorts our perception of reality. It dramatically over-emphasizes one aspect of reality, while it erases from your view everything else that is happening. The problem is that we have an inbuilt tendency to zero in on the most negative thing happening in any given moment. Ignoring all the other things happening in each moment means ignoring countless things that are actually going well. Cultivating awareness is not the act of putting on rose-colored glasses. It’s the act of taking off the cracked, smudged, and soot-stained glasses you have been wearing all your life.

Evolutionary reasons for our reactive attention habit

For survival in prehistoric times, such reactive attention was probably a healthy response. But to live mindfully (and thus to maximize happiness), it is best to minimize this tendency. Being attention-driven and reactive keeps us in a state of chronic stress, always mindlessly reacting to the strongest stimulus.

It doesn’t matter what that stimulus is. One moment it’s the cup of coffee you are craving, the next moment it’s the guy who just cut you off. At other times it’s the fact that you still cannot touch your toes in Paschimottanasana.

Being attention-driven and over-reacting to the strongest stimulus keeps us locked in a place of unhealthy negativity. This is so because the strongest stimuli are often negative ones. It’s hard to focus on the beautiful flowering trees along the road when someone is honking behind you. Being attention driven also keeps us away from the here and now, from the authentic experience of our lives. This is so because the things we react so strongly to are usually in the past or the future.

When you worry about your aunt who died of skin cancer, you are worrying about something in the past. At the same time you are worrying about a potential future, because it makes you think that your own chances of developing skin cancer in the future have increased. You have no way of knowing whether you will get skin cancer or not, but nonetheless obsessing over your aunt’s death is stressing you out right now.

How moving from attention to awareness can transform your yoga

In yoga reactive attention manifests itself often as a fixation on a particular body part. Sometimes we fixate on the body part that seems to be working hardest at that moment. Sometimes it’s the one that is feeling the most intense stretch. Reactive attention also manifests itself as an over-focus on the front of the body (associated with individual consciousness), and a tendency to forget about the back body (linked to universal consciousness).

In yoga, allowing reactivity to rule us means we forget about the energetic shape of a pose. We forget about spacious alignment as our mind tries to convince us that we need to straighten that front leg NOW in Warrior II because we think the bent leg can’t support our weight any longer. Ironically, being able to move from attention to awareness is exactly the solution to the front knee turning to jelly.

Bringing awareness to body parts that don’t seem important right now is transformative. Spreading awareness allows you to realize that there actually are muscles you are not currently contracting that, when engaged, would really aid the pose. When you notice non-essential body parts you also notice that you may be holding tension where it is actually detrimental. Engaging what you forgot to engage, and relaxing what you forgot to relax can make poses dramatically more effortless. Of course, making poses more effortless is a mere side-effect of moving from attention to awareness, cool as it is. The real point of distinguishing between attention and awareness is to notice how reactive attention keeps us locked out of the here and now. The point is to notice that reactive attention keeps us away from serenity.

Spread awareness to increase happiness

We will focus this week on spreading awareness to the body parts that don’t seem important in any given pose. Hopefully you will discover how seemingly minor and usually forgotten alignment details can transform a pose. Perhaps you will also discover how spreading awareness can transform your experience of that pose.

In this way, your yoga practice can become a laboratory in which to practice reducing your reactivity and increasing your serenity through moving from attention to awareness. And with enough practice, your growing ability to be less reactive will spill over into the rest of your life.