1 Purely behavioral tools, that quality peer-reviewed science says, can improve focus and concentration significantly. A 13-minute meditation done every day for a period of eight weeks, that meditation led to significant improvements in focus and concentration ability as well as other aspects of cognitive performance. It also improved mood and reduced stress. So, you might be wondering, what exactly is this meditation? The meditation is very simple, and it's one that anyone can perform. What you would want to do is set a timer for 13 minutes. You would sit or lie down, close your eyes, and you would simply focus on your breathing. Most people are going to benefit from only doing that breathing through their nose. But if you have some sort of obstruction or inability to breathe just through your nose, you could probably also do it by breathing through your nose and mouth, or just your mouth. But ideally, you would do just nasal breathing for a period of 13 minutes, concentrating on that breathing and concentrating meaning bringing your awareness, your interceptive awareness, to a point just about an inch inside of your forehead. Now, of course, that might sound kind of gory to some of you, you've never actually been inside your forehead.
2 But, just about an inch behind your forehead is where you would want to place your concentration while also concentrating on your breathing. Now, here's the thing about meditation that all studies of meditation show: unless you are a very experienced meditator, your concentration, your focus will drift away from your breathing and away from that location about an inch inside your head, inside your brain, about just behind your forehead. That will happen maybe every 10 seconds, every 20 seconds, maybe even every five seconds. But an important part of such a meditation practice to improve concentration and focus is that you are continually refocusing back to that specific location and refocusing back on your breath. This is something that again, is not often discussed. People think that if you do a meditation and you're supposed to concentrate on your breath, that if your mind drifts, that somehow you failed in that meditation. But actually, that's not the case. A huge component of improving your ability to focus and concentrate by way of neuroplasticity, rewiring of the circuits for focus and concentration, is the repeated return to a state of focus from a state of non-focus or diminished Focus. Okay, so think about it like trying to drive down the freeway and staying between the lane lines and every once in a while, because there's a bit of drift on the vehicle, it starts to drift right a little bit; then you hit the rumble strip, and then you pull back to the center. That's really what a focused meditation practice is about, as opposed to expecting yourself to stay between the mental Lane lines, so to speak.
3 If you're going to practice the 13-minute meditation every day, sit or lie down, close your eyes, and concentrate on your breath. Focus your attention on a location about an inch behind your forehead and fully expect that at some point, you'll be thinking about something else. That's a cue to refocus to that location just about an inch behind your forehead and back to your breath. By doing this repeatedly, you're training the network within your brain that includes the prefrontal cortex you're focusing on, as well as some other structures like the infotemporal cortex and the hippocampus, a structure associated with memory. Other components of the neural circuit involved in directing our mental focus and concentration are also trained. This practice emphasizes focusing and refocusing.
4 In fact, I would prefer to call such a practice a "Refocus Focus" meditation. This sort of meditation practice has been shown in the study, the Suzuki lab, and other studies to really improve people's ability to focus and remain focused. So much so that in the beautiful book "Altered States", they describe a number of different meditation practices, some a little bit longer than the one that I described, one that's 17 minutes, another one that's 30 minutes. Some people meditate as long as 60 minutes a day, although that's quite a long time in my opinion. The point here isn't how long you focus or somehow trying to achieve total focus for the entire 13 minute, or 17 minute, or 60-minute bout of meditation. While that would be wonderful, and I think many people aspire to do that, that's a lot of hard mental work. I think for most people out there, including myself, a relatively short meditation practice of about 13 minutes, in which you fully expect your focus and concentration to drift but that you are continually refocusing, is going to be the most effective. Yes indeed, the most effective at teaching yourself to focus and stay concentrated.
