What we pay attention to grows

You know that saying, “What you pay attention to grows?”

(It’s one of adrienne maree brown’s “Pleasure Principles” in her book Pleasure Activism, and also comes up in her Emergent Strategy, among other places.)

I’m really feeling the deep and useful truth of this mantra lately.

I’ve been noticing it on my regular walks in the woods and by the river, and on hikes in newer places as I’ve been traveling.

Historically, my attention has been very tuned to plant life in the woods, as I’ve spent years learning to identify plant friends: who is medicine, food, familiar, a fierce boundary-setting teacher (think poison ivy and nettle, two of my dearest plant allies).

In the last year, my partner has reignited her childhood obsession for birding, and so walks in the woods with her invite my attention to attune to a new level and a different (read slower!) pace.

It’s a whole different way of watching/sensing/being-with the out-of-doors, as we tune to listening to bird song, watching for particular flight patterns high or low or at the edges of vegetation.

When I pay attention for the birds, I’m taking in my surroundings in a whole new way. And suddenly there are exponentially more signs of birds than I could have imagined!

Something similar is happening as I start to deepen into learning mushrooms from a friend. As I walk with them through the woods, yet another way of paying attention comes on line.

Now I am scanning the leaf litter, and for all manner of fallen trees, decay and detritus, ripe for mycelial growth. Again, I see a whole new layer of life come into focus when I shift how I am directing my attention. 

On a short walk by myself the day after going out for more mushroom learning with this friend, I see at least ten new types of mushrooms I hadn’t even noticed were there before.

This concept of what we pay attention to grows comes up strong in the somatic lineage I’m studying in as well. 

Last week I returned from the first of 4 in-person intensives I’ll be joining in over the coming year, as part of a year long politicized somatics training I’m part of, Opening to Freedom: Embodied Facilitation for White Folks.

For one, being in this co-hort with other white folks committed to racial justice and collective liberation is just so truly sweet at so many levels. 

And, we get to be in lots of practice around attention and awareness!

So much of somatics is about retraining our attention to take in the full range of sensation we are feeling in our bodies. We talk a lot about practice in somatics, and how it takes time to repattern our brains/bodies to pay attention in this way.

Most of us have spent a life-time tuning out and dissociating (for good reasons! Thank you bodies for taking care of us when it was too much to feel by ourselves!), and so it’s a lifelong practice of dropping back in.

And, as we re-tune our attention in this way, I’m coming to learn there is SO much more going on below my neck than I realized!

Why might this be important? 

Well, there are lots of reasons.

One reason we might want to pay more attention to what’s happening in the body is that this can help us notice early cues that we are getting activated and off-center. 

As we notice these early warning signals (one of my teachers would call body sensations “the lights on the dashboard” indicating what we are feeling and therefore needing), we can start to interrupt habitual responses/strategies that might not be serving us. Instead we can start to make new and hopefully more generative choices under pressure.

And if what we pay attention to grows, we can also hopefully become more aligned with our purpose through being more choiceful in what we are practicing. We are always practicing something, so why not practice on purpose?

What is your purpose? What matters to you? What are you longing for today?

How do you feel tuning into these longings and what matters?

What’s one tiny way you could practice moving towards that longing today?

Want to try it on right now for 30 seconds?

When I was at this most recent somatics training, we got to practice tuning into the body at a number of different levels.

We spent a lot of time singing. What sensation does song bring online? What happens when we feel into what happens in our bodies when we are singing? Singing alone? Singing with other people? What becomes more possible when we pay attention to the vibrations of song?

Here’s one of my faves to try on and sing along to, from my song-catcher/weaver kin, Lyndsey Scott!

We also got to pay attention to our bodies in action and movement. What happens when we try to keep our attention in the body and with sensation while walking? While dancing? While in connection with another being?

Why might we want to practice paying attention at all of these different levels?

How might tuning in and paying attention in all these different ways not only grow awareness and choice, but also presence and pleasure?