All-Inclusive Awareness: The Art of Effortless Focus

All-inclusive awareness is a focus that is relaxed yet alert, open, curious, and calm. It is inclusive, meaning that you are simultaneously aware of your whole body, your activity, and the world around you.

All-inclusive awareness offers us the golden mean between two polarities/extremes: it brings us focus level 5, right in the middle between sleeping, which has focus level 0, and overfocusing, which has focus level 10.

When you’re sleeping, you’re obviously not focused at all. You’re dreaming, recovering, and processing; your muscles become heavily relaxed, your muscle tone is lower, and your heart rate, breathing, and digestive systems slow down.
Let’s say that the more your focus moves towards levels 1 or 2, the dreamier, sleepier, and more deeply relaxed you become.

Obviously focus levels 0, 1, and 2 are very important. Many people sleep too little or have trouble falling asleep. Also, many people take too little time daydreaming and hardly ever sit around doing nothing. 

People can help themselves tune into focus levels 1,2, 3 or 4 during the day by practising various kinds of meditation, yoga, Tai Chi, mindfulness or by lying down in active rest. These activities can be very valuable in our lives, bringing various levels of relaxation and reduced stress. 

However, there can be a downside if you spend too much time in low focus levels during the day, as your body can become heavily relaxed, which puts pressure on your spine, organs, and joints.
Additionally, you might accomplish less than you would like because you’re daydreaming, dozing, and lounging more than you would like.

The Alexander Technique can help you rediscover all-inclusive awareness, but can also help you tune into low focus levels without becoming heavy and sinking downwards in your body so that you’ll be able to daydream without collapsing, but instead in effortless expansion. 


Next, let’s talk about the opposite side of the spectrum, which is hyperfocusing, zooming in or concentrating hard. 

This focus has the highest level 10, because it takes a lot of effort for our brains to pay attention to one specific thing only and push all other information to the background.

The more our focus shifts towards levels 8, 9, or 10 the more we enter tunnel vision or emergency mode, causing our muscle tone to increase, our eyes to fix and stress levels to rise.

Nature invented these high focus levels for when we’re in a stressful or dangerous situation. This is great when we are under a lot of pressure or need to escape from a fire, but not so great for all our daily life activities, day in day out, year after year.

Let’s do a short experiment to show you how overfocusing feels. Right now, fix your eyes on the letters on the screen. Imagine that you can’t see very well. Really exaggerate a bit and make your eyes work to see the letters.

Do you notice the tension it creates, not only in your eyes but also in your face? Do you notice your neck is tensing up as well? And do you notice your breathing gets stuck? This is how many people look at their computers, their writing, the road, or their sheet music.

Now, let’s release this tension from your eyes. Let’s look at the screen with a broad friendly gaze, with your soft panoramic vision.
Maybe there is a wall on your left and a window on your right, seen out of the corners of your eyes?
Imagine that the letters come to you, so that your eyes can stay soft and friendly.

Do you notice your face starting to soften? Your jaw? Your neck? Do you notice your breathing is freeing up?

Next, let’s zoom out even more and become aware of your whole body, the space above and below you, and the space behind you.

Now you’ve tuned into all inclusive awareness.

I’m not saying that high focus levels are wrong, or should always be avoided.
High focus levels can be useful, for instance, when you’re learning a new and very complicated skill.
At the beginning of this learning process, your brain may need to temporarily shut out information to follow difficult, unfamiliar instructions.
However, this high focus doesn’t need to become a new habit! 

The problem starts when we keep zooming in after we’ve learned our skill.

Picture a person who’s been driving for years with focus level 9: eyes fixed on a small part of the road, usually just in front of the car, tensing their neck, breathing shallowly, often unaware of changes in traffic ahead.

Or imagine an orchestra musician zoomed into their sheet music, unaware of the conductor taking a different tempo than the day before, and falling behind the others.

What a relief it would be to return to all-inclusive awareness once you’ve learned your complicated skill or are out of a stressful situation!
You will regain effortless peripheral vision, expanded self-awareness, released excess tension, freer breathing, and a calmer and more peaceful state.

Once you start to practise all-inclusive awareness you start to become more aware of the various possibilities of focus levels in your day.
Maybe you wake up in the morning, consciously choosing to keep dreaming a bit at level 2.

Then you decide to start your day in focus level 3, still feeling deeply deeply at ease while taking a shower.
Next, you tune into all inclusive awareness while making your coffee, chatting with your partner and travelling to work, enjoying your soft broad peripheral vision.

Next, you still use level 5  while working at the computer at the office. 
Perhaps you will use level 7 while giving a presentation, being a little more alert.
After that you take a break and you lie down in active rest bringing yourself back to level 5, coming back to your whole body, the space and your panoramic vision.

Later, you might have a tennis lesson and tune into level 8 because you’re learning something new and complicated.
But at the end of the lesson, you’re playing a friendly game, and you go back to level 5.

Driving on your way back home there’s suddenly a super loud noise, bringing you briefly to emergency level 10.
When you realize it’s nothing to worry about, you release yourself back to level 5.

You cook dinner and watch TV with spatial awareness and your soft friendly eyes.

Just before going to bed, you lie down in active rest to prepare for sleep, choosing level 3 or 4 with eyes closed, or level 5 with eyes open, whichever you prefer and need most.

Now imagine how it would be if you were to spend this day in high focus levels from the moment your alarm clock goes off.
Imagine how your eyes would be fixed, your neck and shoulders would tense up, your stress levels would go up and how you would be exhausted and possibly more irritable at the end of your day. 

Which focus do you normally use? Is your tendency to be in emergency focus? Or perhaps you’re more inclined to low dreamy focus levels?
Is there a difference between your focus at work and in your free time? Or maybe it depends on your activity?
Maybe you have the tendency to shift from emergency focus in the day to the other extreme when you come home?

Luckily it’s possible to bring your focus under conscious control. Once you recognise the differences between the different focus levels and how to choose between them, you can play around with them during the day.

If you’ve had Alexander Technique lessons yourself, (and I hope you have!), you know the wonderful, light, calm feeling you have when you walk out the door after a lesson. 
This is because you’ve practiced the skills of stopping and directing together with your Alexander Technique teacher, but also because you’ve practiced all-inclusive awareness.
This open and inclusive focus releases stress, brings more balance to your muscle tone, facilitates easier movement, fuller breathing, tense-free posture, and better balance.

Let’s summarize: all-inclusive awareness gives you attention level 5, the golden mean between sleeping and concentrating too hard.
In all the audio guides in my Think Up app, I will guide you through all-inclusive awareness, so feel free to choose an activity, start experimenting with all-inclusive awareness throughout the day and observe the effects!