Episode 8: Try Slow Looking When Meditation Feels Hard
Description: Slow looking is a simple, approachable alternative to meditation, and it starts with looking at something beautiful. Tina Boogren shares the idea from the Holderness family and her friend’s morning “sit and stare” ritual, and invites you to try it for as little as one minute and notice how you feel.
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Resources: The Holderness Family
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Transcription: Hi, and welcome to Everyday Wellness with Dr. Tina H. Boogren. I am your host, Tina Boogren, and this is episode eight. And I'm so happy that you are here. Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing the show with others and just tuning in each week and jumping over to the Facebook group to help keep each invitation each week alive and cheering each other on. I just, I just love you guys.
This week for our invitation, what I'm going to have us think about is something that I've been thinking about, per usual, which is an idea that came from the Holderness family. So, many of you know the Holderness family. They're the ones that create just amazing content. I typically watch them on Facebook. They’re Gen Xers, I do believe, and they make these great videos. It's a family, but it's mainly the mom and dad that make these videos. Anyway, it was a video that I had watched not very long ago where they talked about this idea of slow looking. Slow looking, which is a practice of staring at art or a beautiful object for 10 minutes to help calm the ADHD brain and reduce stress. I love this idea, and I'm going to tie it to another idea.
So I recently got to take a weekend away with two of my girlfriends that I have known since kindergarten, and it was amazing. And we were sitting around chatting, and I, of course, asked, "What are some things that you do for your own wellness?" I'm always looking for ideas that I can steal for myself, for the podcast to share with others. And one of my friends says that in the morning she does what she calls the sit and stare. And I love that. So my other girlfriend and I were talking about in the morning, like, listening to music, right? Not watching the news, all of these things. And, our other girlfriend said, "You know, I get up in the morning, and I grab my coffee, and I just sit and stare."
And what I want to point out here is she is not staring at her phone. She is literally, like, sitting in her living room staring out the window or staring at the fireplace. Or I love pulling in this idea from the Holderness family, looking at a piece of some beautiful art, right? Whether that's in a frame or pulling, I was going to say pulling it up on our phone, but I don't want us staring at our phone. As long as we're just looking at that piece of art, right? But a painting, something. I love the idea of just sitting and staring out the window. So what this does is it acts as an approachable alternative to meditation.
So we've talked about meditation before. Some people love it. Some people, like me, love the idea of it, but it is really hard for me. But this feels approachable. So rather than, I don't know, doing some formal meditation, just sitting and staring at something is incredible. Now, just sitting and staring can be hard, especially those of us that are addicted to our technology. Like, it can feel really uncomfortable. So I love the idea of looking at something beautiful. Looking at something beautiful. Here's what's happening in our brain when we do this. There's a dopamine release. It calms the amygdala. It rewires our attention.
And again, their 10-minute recommendation, remember, I love to think of all of this on a dial. If 10 minutes feels like, woo, there's just no way I can stare at something for 10 minutes, don't. Stare at something for one minute, or time yourself the first day. How long can you sit and stare at something, and can you increase that attention span slowly over time? Make this work for you. But I think it might be kind of cool to gather some things you want to look at throughout the week.
So maybe you are going and sitting down in your living room or somewhere and you are looking out a window, or you have a fireplace, or you have, oh my gosh, mesmerized by fish tanks, or something that you already know, that is my place. I am going to make sure that I have time in the morning or in the evening, whatever it is, and you're going to put your phone in another room so we have no distractions, and you're going to do this practice of slow looking.
Maybe I could see myself gathering some cool pictures and artwork, maybe printing those out perhaps. I know it's old school, but man, I just don't want to stare at my screen, and keeping them in a folder, and then I can pull them out and do the sit and stare or the slow looking at those for a few minutes a day.
For me, I'm wondering, my friend loves to do it in the morning, and I totally get that. For me, it might be a really good practice for me to unwind and as a transition between work and non-work. That's always a very challenging time for me. I really am working on just incorporating different strategies to mark for myself, like, work is done now. Transition into the rest of my life. And dinner oftentimes can do it, but I like to just really end the day with a few minutes, and I think that this might be a really good practice to utilize in those few minutes of, like, putting a bow on the day. So that's what I'm going to have us play around with this week.
It's the slow looking, or the sit and stare, or whatever it is that you want to call it. Give it a shot. See how it makes you feel, as always. Do you feel that kind of dopamine release from engaging with art? Because that activates our brain regions that release that dopamine. This is really helpful for all of our brains, but particularly ADHD brains that often lack enough dopamine. Recognize, is that calming of the amygdala happening for you? So this kind of practice will quiet that part of the brain that's responsible, by the way, for stress, and hopefully lower that daily tension, and it rewires our attention. It helps practice that mindfulness in a simple visual way that might feel more inviting or more doable than sitting down for a formal meditation.
So I'm going to try it this week. I'm going to offer it up to you. I just picture all of us doing the slow look or the sit and stare, and carrying that with us as we move throughout the week.
Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Adrieene. Thank you, Solution Tree. Thank you, Marzano Resources. Thank you to you, the listener, for coming back and for sharing this podcast and for actually trying the things out in order to help ourselves live our very best lives. I hope you have an amazing week. I'm cheering so hard for you. Feel my hand on your back, I love you.
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