seven

THE SIXTH LIMB: FOCUS (DHARANA)

Settle in the here and now.
Reach down into the center
where the world is not spinning
and drink this holy peace.….

Donna Faulds

Mary was in a room filled with more than sixty yogis, though she might as well have been alone. When she is on her mat, Mary says there is nothing else: “It is me, my mat, and my breath. I am so focused on my practice that I don’t even realize who is on either side of me. After class is over, I look around and think, ‘Oh yeah, there is so and so.’”

In this class, her longtime teacher, Rod Stryker, was talking the yogis through the mechanics of Lord of the Dance pose, natarajasana, an advanced posture requiring great strength, flexibility, and most especially, balance. On the mat next to Mary, a friend wobbled, fell out of the pose, then executed a tuck, tumble, and roll right under Mary’s feet.

Her pose never wavered.

Focus, or dharana, is the sixth limb of yoga. This practice is devoted to bringing a laser-like concentration to one thing—a mantra, the flicker of candlelight, a mental image, or a spot on the wall. This state of deep concentration, when mastered, forces the mind into the now. It is fully present in this place, at this time.

We train to develop our muscles and our memory, and fill our minds with knowledge, skills, and experience. Dharana is something different. It is training the mind itself to gain mastery over what it pays attention to (and how that attention is paid) as a way of staying present.

The mental exercise begins by focusing on an object and developing the discipline to return to it every time the mind fluctuates. When you begin a dharana practice, you’ll likely notice you have a very chatty mind. And it’s not so easy to command silence. Michael Singer, author of The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself, writes about this in the first few pages of his book:

In case you haven’t noticed, you have a mental dialogue going on inside your head that never stops. It just keeps going and going.… Why do you even tolerate that voice talking to you all of the time? Even when it is saying something soothing and nice, it is still disturbing everything you are doing. If you spend some time observing this mental voice, the first thing you will notice is that it never shuts up. When left to its own, it just talks.

Think about it—one of the lines that divides what is considered sane and insane is often nothing more than verbalization. Imagine if you gave voice to every thought in your head. People would think you were mad! Yet all day long, you are listening to the voices that are constantly chattering away inside the mind, and you probably think they are “you.” Singer’s book points out how irrelevant those voices are. They are a major distraction from the now. In reality, neither past nor future exist except as memories our brain has stored (and likely altered) or in the imagining of an unknowable future. Even so, that voice is convincing—you think it is you, and you believe, react, and respond to what it says. It evokes emotion. It creates energy. But it is not you—and if you train your mind to become the observer, it will help you see what is really happening.

The late Steve Jobs, the much-lauded genius behind Apple, was a Zen Buddhist with a committed meditation practice. In his biography authored by Walter Isaacson, Jobs says that with focus, the mind makes room “to hear more subtle things. That’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly.… Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before.”

Dharana practice is devoted to instructing your mind to stop drifting back to what happened yesterday, mulling over today’s to-do list, or projecting what might happen tomorrow. Dharana prepares the mind to quickly drop into deep meditation, and develops your ability to steady the mental fluctuations that can keep you distracted, unhappy, and divorced from the present. When you can control your mind, you will see the power of now as everything else dissolves away.

ACCIDENTAL DHARANA

Have you ever been so absorbed and passionate about a task or a project that you worked for hours without realizing the hours had passed? Practicing dharana will help you call on that state of steady, calm, focused concentration at will.

Your mind’s predilection to wander is easy to see in an on-the-mat practice, especially as a beginner. I have attempted balancing poses, both simple and complex, hundreds of times in yoga class. I nail it, seconds pass, and from my peripheral vision I notice the person in front of me begin to waver and wobble. As I see my neighbor fall out of the pose, my balance suddenly becomes precarious, then impossible to hold. It is much easier for me to maintain balancing poses during home practice, when my mind has only my body to focus on.

During balancing poses, yoga teachers recommend finding a spot for your drishti, or gaze, and keeping it there to help you retain balance. Focusing intently—on a spot on the wall, the floor, the mat in front of you—allows your mind to rivet on to one thing, helping the body maintain balance. This was a light bulb moment for me—balancing has less to do with my body’s ability and much more to do with my mental state.

Patanjali says, “Disease, dullness, doubt, carelessness, laziness, worldly-mindedness, illusion, missing the point, instability—these are obstacles in Yoga.” These also describe the obstacles to good work, and dharana can help you conquer them!

THE MYTH OF MULTITASKING

At work one day, I found myself sucked in to a huge argument about the importance of multitasking. It was being extolled as a virtue by an editor who was coaching a young reporter. Overhearing the conversation, the science reporter piped up, asserting that multitasking was impossible. Several of my coworkers, who fancied themselves expert and efficient multitaskers, vociferously argued that she was wrong. I was on the fence. I contended that it might be possible, but wasn’t necessarily desirable.

The next day, the science reporter produced research data to back up her argument, including studies that reveal multitasking is actually an illusion produced by the efficiency of our amazing brains. The human brain is so proficient and speedy at jumping from one thought to another that we’re convinced we really are able to do several things at once. But that cranial capacity for firing quickly just allows us to delude ourselves, and the research shows it exacts a price.

Scientists have used advanced brain scanning technology to see what happens when we try to do more than one thing at a time. One article we read likened the brain’s functioning to the frenzied mental state of an inexpert plate spinner. If this brain pattern is continually reinforced, the ability to concentrate eventually is damaged, and the quality of your work is diminished, according to research conducted at MIT.

Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist at the University of London, reported that even thinking about multitasking can cause a brain bottleneck. Doing two things that employ the same parts of your brain, such as talking on the phone while writing an email, can produce the same foggy state as losing a night’s sleep, and knock a whole ten points from your IQ, according to his study.

Dharana is a natural remedy to this modern multitasking madness. Developing the ability to employ this kind of concentration at work seems like a no-brainer, if you will excuse the pun. Imagine if you had the ability to fixate on the needs of the customer or the students in front of you. What if you could summon, at will, total focus on the report that needs to be written, the conversations at meetings, or assembling a machine? Surely that would have an impact on the quality of your work.

Perhaps you are thinking, “I can’t do that! The distractions at work make it impossible!” Phones are blaring, beeping, or (even on “silent mode”) buzzing. Your neighbors are yakkety-yakking, and the siren smell of coffee in the break room tempts. Your email inbox is overflowing, your meetings are stacked up, and the project files on your desk are towering. And every time you sit down swearing to accomplish something, inevitably someone interrupts with a request. And you’re supposed to focus?

That’s where a dharana practice can help. One of the miracles of your mind is that it is malleable, trainable. Just as your muscles can be developed to support you in the most challenging of poses, so can your mind be developed to focus like a laser on what is in front of you right now. Neurons can be trained to fire differently, to carve out new pathways in the brain.

FENCING YOURSELF OFF FOR FOCUS

At the last newspaper where I worked as an editor, managers typically left the doors to their offices open. It was rare to see doors closed unless someone was out of the office, a meeting was being held, or a performance review going on. The “open door” culture made a statement about managers being available if needed, but also invited mindless interruptions.

During the last several months of my job there, I worked for a woman who had established a different sort of routine. She would check in with her staff first thing in the morning, and then seclude herself, office door closed, while she took care of tasks that needed to be done. Because she was flouting office culture, some of my coworkers muttered about her being standoffish.

That wasn’t my experience. I found her to be warm, caring, and personable. She frequently checked in with people, and if you really needed an answer, she made herself accessible. My feelings about her leaned more toward envy. I admired willingness to signal that it was her time to concentrate, which minimized the constant interruptions an open door solicited. Although I didn’t hesitate to knock if something was urgent, her closed door also made me realize there were many decisions I could make on my own, or that could wait until she wrapped up and opened the door.

Of course, boundaries are harder to create if you’re working in a cubicle or open office environment—no door to close! However, other distraction-busting strategies can be developed. When work requires dharana, post a sign in a prominent space around your desk saying “Do Not Disturb. On Deadline.” If your work environment allows it, alert key coworkers that you’re moving to a quieter location so that you can better focus on something that needs to get done. I’ve known people who would arrange their schedules, if feasible, to carve out hours in the morning or evening when coworkers would not be around so they could work with fewer distractions. Or if your employer is flexible, build a business case for working at home.

Unless you are a hermit, external distractions are almost impossible to avoid. Even if you work at home, things are bound to clamor for your attention (the laundry, the cat, the refrigerator). Training your mind to make everything but the present moment recede from consciousness can be invaluable for managing those distractions.

ADMIT YOU ARE OUT OF CONTROL

Another way to develop dharana at work is by listening. How often do you zone in and out of conversations at work, even in important meetings? How many times do you use your mental faculties to start formulating an argument to what the person is saying, instead of trying to understand what is being said? A good dharana practice would be to listen intently, even if you think you have heard it before, or you disagree, or it provokes an emotional response. Make a game of it—listen so closely you’d be able to repeat what they had to say word for word. In our Authentic Conversations work, we advocate that people “argue the other person’s side” as a way of creating understanding and letting the other person know they have been truly heard. It doesn’t require agreement, it just means demonstrating that you get their point of view. Without an intentional focus on what they are saying, it’s not possible to do.

Practicing dharana will increase understanding and improve the quality of your relationships with coworkers and customers. It will enhance your ability to work with others collaboratively, cohesively, and efficiently.

THE PRESENT IS A GIFT

Dharana demands presence. You cannot do quality work if your mind is chattering away, reminding you about picking up the kids from school later, or percolating on where you’re going to meet your friends after work, or fretting about tomorrow’s doctor appointment. The time to focus on picking up the children from school is when you are picking them up, not when you’re at your desk crafting an email that will update your coworkers on an important project.

Dharana also helps you detach from desire—to get your way, to win the argument, to distract yourself from a work deadline. The clamor of competing priorities is held at bay. Decide what most deserves your focus, right now, and give it all your attention. Move on to the next, and repeat.

Five suggestions for practicing dharana

1. Start small. Sit in a quiet room and focus on a physical object—a photo, a piece of art, a candle flame. See if you can “see” the object without thinking for three minutes. Increase by a few minutes each day.

2. Swami Kriyananda suggests it is more powerful to think positively about one thing than avoid thinking about many things. Decide what will get your attention for a predetermined length of time. Then list the things that might be a distraction. Make a mental note of when you will give yourself time to think of those things before beginning your task.

3. Close your door, turn off your phone, shut down the Internet—eliminate any potential distractions and commit to total attention on one task for at least thirty minutes. Set a timer. When it goes off, see what you notice about your mind, and what has been accomplished.

4. During meetings, listen closely to everything that is said, without judging what is said. Stay present to the conversation by being silent, unless your input/feedback is requested. After the meeting, see how much of the conversation you can capture in notes.

5. When you are feeling tired or frustrated by a task, “take five.” Focusing on the sound of your breath, or the rise and fall of your belly, take five full, deep breaths. Then reassess. If you’re still feeling frazzled, maybe it’s time to conclude. If you’re feeling better, try five more pages, or five more emails, then do the breathing technique once again.