By Win Wenger
At this moment, as you start to read this, you are holding your breath.
Gotcha!? ?
As you breathed, you moved your attention to this next sentence. OR, you moved attention to other things and then breathed again before moving it to this next sentence.
Gotcha yet?
Not because this brief is so breath-taking (well, maybe), but because your breath paces and punctuates your attention and awareness. Whenever you start to give attention to any awareness of stimulus, you hold your breath! When you breathe again, that is part of a pattern where you are releasing your attention from the one focus of awareness and moving it on to wherever it will alight next.
You can override this pattern and hold your attention (and not just merely fixate your eyes! ?did you? Gotcha again!) on one thing through several breaths, but it takes an effort. Normally, you don't go around making that effort, and neither do others.
Your breath is pace-maker for your attention, just as your child's breath is pace-maker for his or her attention. Not all instances of hyperactivity and short attention-span are caused by being short of breath, nor all reading problems. Being short of breath, an easily corrected condition, is virtually guaranteed to cause these, however.
This breath pace-making effect is not an absolute. You can override this pace-making effect with some effort. For example, hold in mind (not just your eyes at one point! ?gotcha!) the thought, " ?Holding in mind this one thought while breathing several times."
As you can see, you can override the interrupter effect, and keep one focus of attention in mind through several normal breaths (though some readers may have needed several tries before being able to do so). Also when driving a car there
may have been occasions ?but watch closely what your mind is actually doing virtually the whole time you are driving with your attention ostensibly on the road!
But it does take an effort to override the interrupter effect and even with the effort you just made, with the beginning of one of your next breaths you did find that your attention had moved on. ?And normally, neither you nor your child nor anyone else goes around making that effort. Normally, there is nothing to prevent your breath from playing its absolute role as the pacemaker for your awareness span.
You can easily test the effects of your breathing on your awareness another way, by going out for a run (or any fairly aerobic activity) which leaves you panting, short of breath. Until your breathing settles down, how hard or easy is it for you to give your sustained attention to anything, or to do any detailed work?
Even at the start of a sustained physical effort such as lifting a heavy load, you hold your breath! Doing anything, even physical, which requires concentrated attention, you repeatedly hold your breath, while trying to fix your toaster or car engine. Some people, whose concentrated effort outruns their breathing span, even become dizzy from this effect.
Check this phenomenon out by watching your own responses, then check it out on innocents around you. Fun . . . . but there is also a very serious side to this.
Normally, there is nothing to prevent your breath from playing its absolute role as the pacemaker for your attention and awareness span. So the normal span of your breath is critical to how well your mental faculties can function. This effect is so strong, in fact, it can change the course of national or world affairs!
A Breathtaking Impact On American Foreign Policy
For example: Former Secretary of State George Schultz, despite his high intelligence was remarkably ineffective in office under President Reagan his first few years. Why? ?Look at recordings of his TV interviews from those early years. He was always very short of breath, and often had to pant before he could even finish a sentence. Schultz could not muster and defend his position during Cabinet meetings. ?Nor did Schultz have the awareness span needed, despite his unquestioned intelligence, to formulate any sort of coherent foreign policy.
You have noticed that even some of your brightest friends and colleagues seem unable to make full use of their intelligence. You know from other things that they are
bright, yet they commit gaffes and oversights, or simply fail too often to see the obvious. Why? Why are some impatient with the very detail work which would enable them to succeed in their efforts? Why are so many of even the brightest, uncomfortable at reading? Well, try this one on for size:?
The Impact Of Your Breathing On Your Language Skills
If your breathing breaks your attention sooner than you can finish reading a sentence, it is hard for you to extract sense and meaning from that sentence, even if it is an easy in content as this sentence is, because before the thought it expresses to you is complete, your attention has veered away with your next breath and broken off the communication from page to you and it takes you considerable extra effort to veer back and pick back up the old focus of attention and hold that attention on this very simple sentence for long enough for the entire thought expressed in this sentence to take form in your mind!
If your breath-span is shorter than many of the sentences you read, you can see why your reading is in trouble. This may be handicapping your reading in the technical journals which you need to keep abreast of your field and career.
Smoking may be hazardous to your intellect, not just to your life and physical health!
And when you look at some of our pitifully thin-chested younger generation who have even far less reading comprehension . . . . .
An Easy Cure For The Problem:
http://www.winwenger.com/ebooks/guaran3.htm
At this moment, as you start to read this, you are holding your breath.
Gotcha!? ?
As you breathed, you moved your attention to this next sentence. OR, you moved attention to other things and then breathed again before moving it to this next sentence.
Gotcha yet?
Not because this brief is so breath-taking (well, maybe), but because your breath paces and punctuates your attention and awareness. Whenever you start to give attention to any awareness of stimulus, you hold your breath! When you breathe again, that is part of a pattern where you are releasing your attention from the one focus of awareness and moving it on to wherever it will alight next.
You can override this pattern and hold your attention (and not just merely fixate your eyes! ?did you? Gotcha again!) on one thing through several breaths, but it takes an effort. Normally, you don't go around making that effort, and neither do others.
Your breath is pace-maker for your attention, just as your child's breath is pace-maker for his or her attention. Not all instances of hyperactivity and short attention-span are caused by being short of breath, nor all reading problems. Being short of breath, an easily corrected condition, is virtually guaranteed to cause these, however.
This breath pace-making effect is not an absolute. You can override this pace-making effect with some effort. For example, hold in mind (not just your eyes at one point! ?gotcha!) the thought, " ?Holding in mind this one thought while breathing several times."
As you can see, you can override the interrupter effect, and keep one focus of attention in mind through several normal breaths (though some readers may have needed several tries before being able to do so). Also when driving a car there
may have been occasions ?but watch closely what your mind is actually doing virtually the whole time you are driving with your attention ostensibly on the road!
But it does take an effort to override the interrupter effect and even with the effort you just made, with the beginning of one of your next breaths you did find that your attention had moved on. ?And normally, neither you nor your child nor anyone else goes around making that effort. Normally, there is nothing to prevent your breath from playing its absolute role as the pacemaker for your awareness span.
You can easily test the effects of your breathing on your awareness another way, by going out for a run (or any fairly aerobic activity) which leaves you panting, short of breath. Until your breathing settles down, how hard or easy is it for you to give your sustained attention to anything, or to do any detailed work?
Even at the start of a sustained physical effort such as lifting a heavy load, you hold your breath! Doing anything, even physical, which requires concentrated attention, you repeatedly hold your breath, while trying to fix your toaster or car engine. Some people, whose concentrated effort outruns their breathing span, even become dizzy from this effect.
Check this phenomenon out by watching your own responses, then check it out on innocents around you. Fun . . . . but there is also a very serious side to this.
Normally, there is nothing to prevent your breath from playing its absolute role as the pacemaker for your attention and awareness span. So the normal span of your breath is critical to how well your mental faculties can function. This effect is so strong, in fact, it can change the course of national or world affairs!
A Breathtaking Impact On American Foreign Policy
For example: Former Secretary of State George Schultz, despite his high intelligence was remarkably ineffective in office under President Reagan his first few years. Why? ?Look at recordings of his TV interviews from those early years. He was always very short of breath, and often had to pant before he could even finish a sentence. Schultz could not muster and defend his position during Cabinet meetings. ?Nor did Schultz have the awareness span needed, despite his unquestioned intelligence, to formulate any sort of coherent foreign policy.
You have noticed that even some of your brightest friends and colleagues seem unable to make full use of their intelligence. You know from other things that they are
bright, yet they commit gaffes and oversights, or simply fail too often to see the obvious. Why? Why are some impatient with the very detail work which would enable them to succeed in their efforts? Why are so many of even the brightest, uncomfortable at reading? Well, try this one on for size:?
The Impact Of Your Breathing On Your Language Skills
If your breathing breaks your attention sooner than you can finish reading a sentence, it is hard for you to extract sense and meaning from that sentence, even if it is an easy in content as this sentence is, because before the thought it expresses to you is complete, your attention has veered away with your next breath and broken off the communication from page to you and it takes you considerable extra effort to veer back and pick back up the old focus of attention and hold that attention on this very simple sentence for long enough for the entire thought expressed in this sentence to take form in your mind!
If your breath-span is shorter than many of the sentences you read, you can see why your reading is in trouble. This may be handicapping your reading in the technical journals which you need to keep abreast of your field and career.
Smoking may be hazardous to your intellect, not just to your life and physical health!
And when you look at some of our pitifully thin-chested younger generation who have even far less reading comprehension . . . . .
An Easy Cure For The Problem:
http://www.winwenger.com/ebooks/guaran3.htm
All I managed to get from it was that the fact that I hold my breath when I'm concentrating (sometimes to the point where I actually become dizzy before I notice I'm doing it) is slightly lower on the weirdo scale than I've always thought. Huh.
