Unless you are living a very alternate lifestyle in this busy urban environment, chances are you are a multi-tasker.  You have trained your brain to respond quickly to a stimulus which comes up while you are doing something else, and you take on that activity as well as running with what you are already doing figuring you will save time.

You have trained your mind to respond to distraction.  If this “talent” isn’t balanced, you might find that at the end of the day a lot has been started and nothing finished…you have, in fact, wasted time.

In our everyday, real life that we lead, developing a strong, flexible “focus muscle” is a very useful by-product of practising yoga.  When the mind wanders, every time you bring it back to a focus point you are strengthening that psychological pathway which aids concentration.  If you admonish yourself for allowing your focus to blur, this is simply adding clutter and more mental wandering.  Enlisting the powerful guidance of your internal control system to refocus your attention and to recall your goal is to clear rather than clutter the mind.  You will find that when this “muscle” is toned during your regular yoga practice, it will also kick into your life off the mat.

Training your mind to stay on the job is what this week’s  lesson is all about – focus.