You are the trainer for your Mind and Body

Exercise: Spot and count a letter

Do this simple exercise alone, or do it as a group and share the results. 

Read the following passage between the stars and count the total number lower case letter ‘a’s  in it. Don't count the higher case 'A's. Write down the numbers using three different methods suggested below.

“Following is a good example of mental conditioning. It is insulting to intelligent human beings. We see ads in the media showing a celebrity (celeb) endorsing a product. We know many things happening here. The celeb may not have used the product even once. He may be selling his popular image, voice and fake emotions to earn a huge amount. He is giving us the impression that he used that product, felt happy about it and hence suggesting to us to buy it. In other words, he is misleading us. We know that the celeb gets paid from people like us buying that product. Though we know all this, we smart people buy the product and the sales of that product goes up. Are we not paying the celeb to cheat us without even realizing it?"

Method 1: Habitual working

Count the total number of letter ‘a’ s in the above passage, counting top down. Write down the number as result ‘1A’. Now count the 'a's starting from the last letter upwards (bottom up) and write this number as result ‘1B’. Both the numbers ‘1A’ and ‘1B’ will be different for most people! Repeat this process and you may come up with recurring variations in the count of ‘a’ s! How embarrassing! When a group of people do this exercise they will come up with different numbers for such a simple task! There is no justification for any difference. This exercise shows how your ‘Body’ (eyes, hand and brain) is bound to it’s habitual style of working. Our mind-body system is unable to count a letter in spite of our best intention and efforts! Think about it.

Method 2: Your analytical ‘Mind’ goes to work

Your mind has come up with with ‘Method 2’ to get the same count every time. See how the performance of your body and mind improves.

Point at every letter in the passage with the tip of your pen. Don't touch the paper. Lift the tip of the pen every time you move from one letter to the next letter. Start from the first letter. Stop when you notice the first letter ‘a’. Breathe in once and while breathing out, say in your mind ‘one’ because it is the first ‘a’. Keep repeating the latest count, ‘one, one, one …’ and move on to the following letters. When you notice the second ‘a’, stop. Breathe in once and while breathing out, count ‘two’. Keep repeating ‘two, two, two…’, till you notice the third ‘a’. Repeat this process till you reach the last letter in the passage. Write down the result as ‘2A’. Repeat this method starting from the last letter of the passage and going up the first letter. Write down the result as ‘2B’. The difference between these two numbers will be much less than the difference between ‘1A’ and ‘1B’. Small variations may still arise.

Method 3: An even  better method

Put your Mind on the job again. Now it comes up with this ‘Method 3’ to count the number of ‘a’ s with higher accuracy. Turn the page upside down. Count the inverted shape of ‘a’ following the rules of method 2. With this method, you will get almost correct result, every time. Try any other letter using this method.

The results will be impressive for individuals and for the group, compared with the method 1 and 2.

What is the learning from this exercise?

Your ‘BODY’ (eyes, hand and brain) has not been reading individual letters. It has been looking at the whole word in a flash and arrive at the best guess based on past learning, millions of times.  That is how we read so fast. Our current goal is to read the 'individual' letters. We don't want to read the words or their meanings. To achieve this goal, we have to use our MIND to subvert our brain's habitual route. We came up with Method 3.

Now we face another problem. Our mind wanders and does not obey us, in spite of your best efforts. We need not be a victim of the current state of the Body or Mind. It is OUR job as the owners, to train our Mind and Body. We have to come up with appropriate mental and physical training methods as we do for training our dogs. ’Focusing on breathing’ is one practical method to train your Mind in concentration.

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