The ability to concentrate is largely a learned skill for which both physical and cerebral methods exist. All of the available methodology is uncomfortable to one degree or another.
One of the biggest crimes against boys, and young men, to come out of modern parenting and schooling is the banning of physical discipline. Without this, and lacking the meditative training necessary to instill this, whole institutions are choosing to drug their children into submission.
The long-term effects of this exposure to drugs have not been pretty either.
The training timelines for learning how to concentrate are not terribly long. The practice itself is not terribly difficult in theory either, but frequently leads to some motherfucker headaches so you will need to fight your way through that.
To do this you will need a stopwatch (any cheap plastic watch will do), a note pad, and a pen.
First, look at the pen. Try to create an image of the pen in your mind. Use as much detail as possible.
Next, start the stopwatch, close your eyes and hold the image of the pen in your mind as long as you can.
The second anything disturbs your concentration, another image flickering in/out or a song in your head, open your eyes and stop the stopwatch. Write down how long you were able to hold your concentration for.
Take a breath. Reset the watch. And start again.
Initially do this for no more than 15 minutes and work your way up to 30 minutes. If headaches start to creep in either back off on the practice time or push through it.
Your choice.
When you are able to hold your concentration for five minutes you have completed the exercise.
The longer you can do this the stronger your one-pointed concentration, or samahadi for Buddhist types, and will becomes.
Another friend’s school made their initiates be able to do this for 30 minutes at a time and I’ve been told being able to do this really brings the elemental practices alive.
This ability to focus is one of the primary methods to build energetic power, fasciae and posture work is the other, and radically reinforces all other aspects of practice.
I’ve been told that this is one of the power-building methods that still works after your physical body has died as it is not linked to the breath as most energetic based methods are.
