Then He Shows You How To Let The Pool Settle, Wherever You Are…
The cue is the first sign of a dull or cloudy mind. Perhaps your eyes feel heavy, perhaps you’ve just read the same line twice, or perhaps your hand reaches for your phone the moment a task gets slow or hard. Here is what you do next, in Steve’s words:
“You sit up tall, and you take one slow, deep breath, all the way down into your belly.
You look up from what you are doing and gaze far away for a moment, out of a window or across the room, and you let your eyes rest on something in the distance.
And then you name the one thing in front of you. You say to yourself, ‘Now I am reading this,’ or ‘Now I am listening to this,’ and you give it your attention.”
Dr. Steve G. Jones, on the Boost Mental Alertness track
That’s the Rock Pool Reset. “It takes only a few seconds,” Steve says, “and each time you do it, it becomes more natural to you.”
You may be thinking that a breath and a glance out of the window are hardly going to rescue a whole afternoon. That’s a reasonable doubt. Anyone can read those three steps and forget them by lunchtime.
That’s why the track doesn’t leave them on the page. In deep relaxation, Steve has you see yourself at your desk late in the afternoon, the words in front of you beginning to blur and the old pull towards the phone arriving. As he falls silent you rehearse the reset in full and notice your mind settle and clear. By the time you hear his voice again, you’ve already done it once.
And for the moments your mind simply wanders off, he gives you a single word. The very moment you notice you’ve drifted, he points out, “your mind is already waking up.” So you say quietly to yourself, “Here,” and bring your attention back, “gently and kindly, the way you would guide a small child back to the path.”