Primitive humans benefited from quick reactions to stimuli, risk-acceptance, and hyper-sensitivity to changes in their environment, but these traits today translate unfavourably to distractibility, impatience, and impulsivity. The resulting state of mind — known alternately as habitual preoccupation and chronic distraction — reduces our quality of life at home, at work, and in social environments.
We define a more healthy and productive state, ‘Engaged Presencetm‘ characterized by the state of being mentally, physically, and emotionally prepared to helpfully and promptly respond to selected events as they happen:
- Emotional preparation is achieved with wholeheartedly commitment to positive and benevolent action.
- Physical preparation manifests in open eyes, healthy breathing, and physically orientation toward the subject of one’s attention.
- Mental preparation consists of forearming with the knowledge appropriate to effectively respond to a situation.
To help us shift away from habitual preoccupation and chronic distraction, we introduce Engaged Presencetm practice, an on-your-feet collaborative meditation that focuses on growing participant’s ability to interact in helpful, authentic and expressive ways and to gracefully respond to social cognitive overload.
Fundamental Theory
- Distractions from the past, present and future put us into an habitual non-seeing/hearing/feeling state that requires energy to overcome.
- Constant social interactions can quickly exhaust our mental energy resulting in Cognitive Overload.
- Cognitive Overload is hard to self-diagnose and causes unconscious adverse reactions.
- The most straight-forward remedy for Cognitive Overload is Graceful Disengagement.
- Graceful Disengagement is difficult to execute but gets easier with practice.
- Engaged Presence practice builds the skill of shifting from tiring non-presence to effortless Engaged Presence.
Practice Session Description
Engaged Presencetm exercises take place in small groups of 3-20 people. Participants typically stand in a circle facing each other. The exercises look like play and take the form of several different “games,” lasting at least 15 minutes each. The common element among the various activities is the ball — real at first, imaginary later — that is passed at random from one person to another. A simple verbal call/response and a physical ‘call/response’ accompanies each passage of the “ball.” The entire circle sees every exchange, but usually only two participants interact at a time. As a given exercise progresses, participants are taught to vary the complexity of their response to stay in the state of flow between boredom and cognitive overload. Eventually everyone experiences Cognitive Overload and learns to practice self-care by ‘Gracefully Disengaging’. Stepping away from a cognitively demanding activity allows the disengaged participant to evaluate his or her mental, emotional, and physical state and practice recover before re-engaging with the group.
When the group is large enough, it can be arranged in two concentric circles. The inner circle keeps the ”ball” in the air. The outer circle watches for signs of Cognitive Overload in members of the inner circle and provides a substitute for an overloaded participant who needs to disengage.
Theory of Benefits
- Each time we successfully participate in a listen/respond interaction, we become better able to turn away from internal or external distractions and more effectively engage in the present.
- Each time we experience Cognitive Overload, we become more familiar with its symptoms and more adept at gracefully responding to it.
- Stronger listening/responding skills and self-care instincts combine to maximize the positive results of every personal interaction.
Workshop Participant Awareness Goals
All participants should be able to answer the following questions by workshop completion:
- What is my normal level of focus on the moment and what does it feel like?
- What does 100% focus on the moment feel like?
- What does Cognitive Overload feel like and how do I behave when overloaded?
- How easy or hard is it for me to Gracefully Disengage?
- How long does it take me to recover from Cognitive Overload?
Why practice Engaged Presence?
You will most enjoy the practices you are drawn to. If you have heard of a given practice, that is surely because many people have found some value in it. By all means invest time in the methods that appeal to you. Listen to your intuition, and your interests will move or expand when the time is right. Whatever the area of your work, keep in mind that practice does not make perfect, it makes permanent. Always consider how your practice will transfer to your life outside the classroom.
While practicing Engaged Presencetm, we strengthen fundamental skills of seeing, hearing, feeling, and responding that we use in everyday real-life social interactions. At heart, the exercises of Engaged Presencetm are identical with low-level, real-life communication. This parallel ensures that the skills we gain from practicing Engaged Presence transfer effortlessly to our lives outside the classroom.
Glossary
Several terms have specialized meanings for purposes of our explanation:
- Presence: attention to what is happening here and now as opposed to baggage from the past or fear/expectations of the future
- Engagement: preparedness to respond actively and helpfully to events as opposed to observing passively or responding without helpful intentions
- Practice: repetition of beneficial activities as opposed to simple memorization of meaning
- Cognitive Overload: is apparent from the mental/emotional/physical dysfunction that can follow vigorous Engaged Presence practice.
