Practice Drills for Training Your Mindfulness Skills.

Exercise Category:

• Sensory• Intuitive

Areas Of Improvement:

• Mental Awareness
• Body Awareness
• Impulse Control
• Conscious Action

Perceptual Focus:

• Close-Up, Onto Body
• Varying to Panoramic, Onto Body

Exertion Type:

• Attention Direction, Onto Self
• Attention Holding, Onto Body

Application Level:

• Task Concentration
• Expanding and Deepening into Intuitive Concentration, Mindfully

What You’ll Need:

• Timer Or Stopwatch (session time alert)
• Pencil or Pen
• Journal or Paper for notes

Inhale, then Exhale - 5 to 7 seconds per depending on your physical comfort, and you can adjust on the fly during the session to improve your comfort.  Continue to breathe this way for as many repetitions or minutes you have time for during the session.

Set your session up for 5, 10, 15, even 30 minutes if you wish, according to comfort and schedule, remembering that the more you invest, the greater your reward in the form of experience, confidence, and strategic knowledge into the mechanics of quickly recapturing your Attention. 

Your Goal:  There is NO OBJECTIVE here except to complete the breaths. Do not distract yourself with considerations of reward or progress. 

Just do the work, because eventually this is something you want to be able to do all day long without strain or struggle.

Why? So that you gradually take back your body from the unconscious habits and influences of established mental habit patterns.

Up to this point, most of your breathing is done FOR you by your autonomic system and you don't think about it. Those days need to be put behind you if you want outstanding PROFESSIONAL GRADE level Attention Span. If the prospect seems daunting, rest in the fact that as you do it, nothing will ever again be daunting to you.

Why? Because the feeling of being daunted can be blasted into nonexistence within just a few seconds with this technique.

Just like the feeling of being afraid of competition, jealous of a rival, negativity toward yourself or others - NONE of it can last long if you bogart your own Attention to guide it to the act of breathing on purpose.You just can't lose with this one. It's like a 'GET OUT OF JAIL FREE' card for distracting, unpleasant, unproductive mental states.

Example of a Practical Application:  Do this throughout your day, in numerous low-risk tasks. For example, while driving, calmly breathe in and breathe out, operating your breath the same way you maintain constant control of the vehicle you're driving in.The body is the vehicle you're driving while you're driving the vehicle. Breathing does not require you to distract yourself from driving, but instead helps you focus better on the task as it energizes and oxygenates your physical form.

While you're sitting in the classroom, decline to give yourself the sweet thrills of daydreams or fantasizing. Instead, give yourself the sweet POWER of Attention Control in the here and now, this very present moment. You'll be able to observe nervousness vanish (assuming you've made the right study preparation - if you haven't, then don't look to be rescued from a lousy score. Do your duty to prevent having reasons to worry in the first place.

Examples of Usefulness:

• When you KNOW that you're distracted but having a hard time focusing - This technique is like having your own crowbar to pry your Attention away from a chaotic imagination or negative mental state. You may find it shocking to discover...

"No thought, no emotion, no attitude, no fear, no anxiety, and no resistance can outlast a few deep breaths taken on purpose. At the end of a series of such actions, unwanted mental activity becomes so deprived of the Attention it needs to continue that it simply breaks up an disappears, leaving you there quietly alone, breathing."

Attention fuels thoughts and without it a thought quickly fades to nothing with little effect. Unfortunately, we tend to keep unpleasant and unwanted mental content onstage by feeding it our Attention. Deprived of that same Attention, NOTHING can remain on the stage of the mind. This one tactic is more than enough to completely ruin distraction's habitual grip on your life. When distracted, BREATHE ON PURPOSE to escape its grip. Remember:

"IF YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN TO BREATHE WITH INTENT TO BREATHE, YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS FOR PURE, UNCORRPUTED FOCUS."

Oh, how easy and normal it is to NOT breathe on our own! Stop living like distracted people. Start operating your own body and cease leaving everything to mindless bio-mechanical automation. Not asking you to manage anything complex, only breath.

• Stepping up to the freethrow line in a basketball game. In the 1999 movie, 'For Love of the Game,' Keven Costner played an over-the-hill baseball player who manages to pull great pitching performances by stepping up to the pitchers mound and, before slinging the ball at the batter, utters the phrase, "CLEAR THE MECHANISM," before going into a state of total focus that drowns out crowd noise.With this technique - the simple practice of taking long, deep, measured inhalations and exhalations you can have that ability to dismantle the pull and tug of distraction upon your mind. This centering technique - that of breathing on purpose, acts to 'CLEAR THE MECHANISM' of unwanted thoughts, self-talk, tension, and worries so that you can step confidently into the upcomin action.
• Preparing to make a swing at the ball on a golf course. Sports Psychologists train their golfing clients on the art of breathing to become centered during competition. A relaxed performer is a better performer, and when free of distraction, competitive people make less mistakes, spot more opportunities, and take more enjoyment from playing.
• Sitting down to an exam at school. Breathe on purpose to calm your nerves and clear a mental space so that you can get the necessary thinking done without bothersome worries or anxiety.
• Before you eat your meal. Mindfully capture and control your breathing to calm yourself and lower body tension so that you feel less of a need to rush, shovel food ravenously into your mouth, or eat too much once the feeling of fulness alerts your Awareness.

Exercise Category:

• Sensory
• Also, Intuitive

Areas Of Improvement:

• Mental Awareness
• Body Awareness
• Impulse Control
• Conscious Action

Perceptual Focus:

• Close-Up, Onto Body
• Varying to Panoramic, Onto Body

Exertion Type:

• Attention Direction, Onto Self
• Attention Holding, Onto Body

Application Level:

• Task Concentration
• Expanding To Self Concentration

What You’ll Need:

• Timer Or Stopwatch (session time alert)
• Pencil or Pen
• Journal or Paper for notes

This exercise is vitally important discovering and excavating pure, uncorrupted willpower by virtue of improved Self-Awareness.

By Self-Awareness, we mean your true Will. I mean 'YOURSELF,' without all the mental noise, thoughts, and emotions; the quiet internal center wherein you know that you know that you know that you know you are real, that you exist, and that you know it as a fact.

From that central Awareness of yourself, you can do and achieve whatever right and good goal that interests you to attain. It is your true self unbothered by doubt, fear, or negativity; and, this part of your unlimited nature is the secret, quiet source your highest potential.

Through training like this, you can now begin to access it intentionally, allowing more of your potential to flow in the present moment, the here and now.

Find a place and a time where you will not be disturbed or interrupted. With your eyes gently closed, you are to slowly, comfortably inhale fully, then exhale fully, and repeat. Begin with a count of just five breaths. When you take the breath in, don’t focus on your chest pulling the air; instead, with a relaxed torso, let the air fill from the bottom of your lungs near the lower sternum and fill upwards.

On exhale, release the air slowly so that it seems it’s exiting from the top of your lungs on down to the bottom. As an example, conceptualize the way a balloon fills from the bottom and then the top expands; when you let the air go from the balloon, the top air goes first and then the bottom. See if you can try that a few times, but don’t get too wrapped up about it. Just make sure you breathe comfortably.

Every single breath is to have your undivided Attention, from beginning to end. Your goal is to fully live the action of the breath, and nothing else matters. Thoughts will arise - you’ll start analyzing - but NONE of that is of use to you as you direct your Attention to stay on and immerse itself into the breath itself. Try five. You may not be able to complete three full breaths before you lose your Concentration. When you can do five fully attended breaths without thought or other distractions stealing your Attention away from the rich, full experience of breathing, then extend the number.

The anchor—the target of your Attention—is the breathing itself, and NOT the interesting experience of your widening Awareness. We don’t want you to become suddenly fascinated with a growing perception and end up wandering from the point, which is to stay fixed on the breaths. OF COURSE your Awareness is growing. OF COURSE you are starting to see deeper into yourself. OF COURSE the most amazing realizations are becoming clear. OF COURSE you are feeling some giddy sensations as your physiology begins to loosen its grip on hidden anxiousness. These things are of no consequence, and are merely special effects, to become a normal, average part of your daily life, and so there is no need to be impressed. Stay focused.

Insofar as internal distractions go, you may expect to feel certain impulsive tugs by your senses and rebellious thoughts that want you to chase after their noise; too, you may find yourself suddenly inspired by grand ideas and insights into complex problems and be tempted to write them down, tell someone right away, or begin some form of action right then, but you must dismiss and ignore them to remain on point of breath. Any fantastic idea or creative insight that occurs to you - if it is of lasting value - will still be there in your memory when you have completed the exercise session. By ignoring the temptation, you shall be gaining something much more valuable than what the disobedient thoughts promise in such moments.

When you extend the repetitions past, say, 20 or 30 breaths, you shall inevitably enjoy a quiet examination of your automatic breathing processes beginning to relax themselves. After a while, the machine of your unconscious releases its grip and turns the responsibility for inhaling and exhaling over to your conscious control, so that you are totally in charge of each movement of your diaphragm and its musculature. You’ll find yourself making adjustments of comfort, perhaps even testing out various speeds and depths of breathing. You might start out at about 8 to 10 breaths per minute, but as your autonomic process turns control over to your conscious control, end up at 2 to 3 very deep, refreshing breaths per minute.

Now, here’s an important lesson that shall apply to many things in your life when it comes to ‘automation’ of brain and body function: Just as you may clearly notice the difference in your subjective experience as your brain allows the responsibility for your breathing process to shift from automation to conscious direction, every other significant area of activity in your life has some level of automation involved which, if you apply the knowledge you acquire here, brings about an amazing new, enriching quality of life when such tasks and activities come under quiet, consciously-directed control. Look for the lessons in this!

Remember, ALL your senses will begin to open up and your perception begin to expand outward with clarity, and at this you are to appreciate it but decline to wander in Attention. The ultimate objective here is a thorough quieting down of distracting thought, impressions, and impulses, leaving a calm, silent perception with no pushing or pulling interference. When you get there, you’ll know you’re starting to approach the state of your Unified Mind. It is the beginning of true personal power.

Exercise Category:

• Advanced Sensory
• Intuitive

Areas Of Improvement:

• Mental Awareness
• Attention Control
• Impulse Control
• Conscious Control
• Conscious Action
• Relaxation
• Peak Performance State

Perceptual Focus:

• Close-Up, expanding to Panoramic
• Onto Self

Exertion Type:

• Attention Direction - Onto Self

Application Level:

• Self Concentration

What You’ll Need:

• Training Tracker or paper to write on
• Timer or watch with second-hand to track time
• Privacy

Your Awareness during Breathing Concentration naturally seeks to expand outward. In the first exercise (Basic Breathing Concentration), you restricted that tendency in order to narrow your target to breaths, exclusively. Now, you are going to allow our Awareness to spread out from the breathing process to your entire body, taking into notice any tensions or bothersome impulses to fidget.

Allow your Attention to perceive every inch of your physical form from the feel of the bottom of your feet to the top of your head. This transition from Close-up/Body to Panoramic/Body may take more than just a few moments, so maintain patience and diligence as the muscle of your Concentration expands. The circle of your Conscious Awareness (as described in ‘Attention’ module as the limit of what you can perceive at any one time) may need to be moved from place to place intentionally all around your physical form, but in time it won’t need to be moved as all input from all your senses in regard to your form become integrated through practice.

Maintain your breaths as in the basic exercise, only do not concern yourself with counting. Allow nothing to interfere with your purpose.

10 to 20 minutes per session is sufficient; however, if you are interested in ridding yourself of certain compulsions, extend your time so that you may become more familiar with the hidden physiological mechanisms behind strong impulses. Concurrently, your growing Awareness of such provides you the ANSWER and SKILL to remove the effects of them.

Exercise Category:

• Intuitive
• Expanding Awareness integrates Sensory

Areas Of Improvement:

• Mental Awareness
• Disconnecting Attention from Any Thought

Perceptual Focus:

• Close-Up

Exertion Type:

• Attention Directing, Onto Body

Application Level:

• Self Concentration (what begins as, essentially, Task-oriented evolves naturally into Self-Awareness
• Learning The Nature of Will: Perceiving Awareness Itself (Meta Awareness)

What You’ll Need:

• Paper (or Journal) and Pencil to note personal insights ONLY AFTER the training session is complete!

Under the assumption that your mastery of previous Breathing Concentration (or 'Breath of Life' exercises) has resulted in a rate of 3 to 4 full breaths per minute when engaged in them, perhaps slightly less, this exercise may require 30 to 45 minutes to complete, and significantly longer should you decide to take notes during the session, rather than afterwards.

Because of the incredible experiences that occur during a month or so’s worth of training using this technique, many trainees keep paper with pen or pencil nearby to write down some of what occurs mentally and intuitively, and in the case of this exercise, that degree of detailed self-observation is not a hindrance because the high level of Awareness and control it affords allows a trainee to incorporate the actions of Conscious movement (picking up a writing tool and slowly taking notes) with the effort of maintaining breathing patterns in pure, uncorrupted Mental Concentration.

At this level, you can (and must) perfect the skill to be in a Concentrated state while conducting even the most mundane activities. This means that you should be able to place yourself in a Unified Mindset and then carry out any action without being thrown off-center. The experience and practicality of being ‘CENTERED’ becomes obvious to you through this extended version of the basic Breathing Concentration exercise.

Execute the Concentrated Breathing exercise for ONE HUNDRED full breaths.

Adopt an agenda wherein you set benchmark goals for increasingly intensive sessions - ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY, even TWO HUNDRED or more as time permits. Remember, TIME INVESTED IS POWER GAINED.

Because of the advanced nature of this time-demanding approach, you will need to schedule carefully to ensure no potential conflicts so that you do not feel pressured to hurry. If you need to prevent the session from running past the predetermined time, consider not taking notes until sometime after the session is over. Such may require a certain resolve in defying the temptation that will arise when staggering insights and realizations occur to you.

Those same insights shall be there for you when you need them afterwards, and in truth they are minor compared to the insights and realizations that your Intuition shall show you as you go about your busy day. If time is tight, save your journalizing for those larger, post-session moments.

Exercise Category:

• Intuitive

Areas Of Improvement:

• Attention Control
• Thought Control
• Environmental Awareness
• Self-Awareness
• Mental Endurance

Perceptual Focus:

• Close-Up, Onto Thought

Exertion Type:

• Attention Holding

Application Level:

• Task Concentration
• Self Concentration, Basic

What You’ll Need:

• Training tracker or paper to write on
• Pen or pencil
• Timer or watch with second-hand to track time
• Privacy

You can intentionally direct your Attention onto any source and Concentrate it there as long as your endurance holds out.

With training, you will experience better control over your ability to purposefully concentrate for longer periods, and onto targets of your own choosing, in defiance of all sorts of distractions. You will notice that the majority of effort in keeping your Attention on the task at hand (in the here and now) is spent wrestling your Attention out of the grip of parasitic thoughts that merely seem like your own voice.

For ten to fifteen minutes, make notes of each thought and associated feeling as it rises up in your Mind. Thought might come to you in short bursts or in long, rambling, running dialogues, but you do have the ability to take inventory of what’s going on in your own head if you will simply direct your Attention to your own thoughts merely as an observer rather than a participant.

During the session, if you think of a duck, write down ‘duck,’ and if the duck is quacking or you’re thinking about how neat it is that ducks can swim, note ‘isn’t it neat that ducks can float with ease’. Positive or negative, record what you’re thinking, but here’s the trick: DO NOT THINK MERELY TO COME UP WITH SOMETHING TO WRITE. Let yourself alone and thoughts will come of their own accord.

At the end of your exercise, you may realize that your thoughts are chaotic, or have nothing to do with anything of value, or that they are not pleasant.

Understand that the point of this exercise is to introduce and familiarize you with the fact that your brain is a machine that spits out thoughts in a continual stream, many with no practical purpose, and these thoughts have emotional energy behind them that reacts upon the body in a healthy or unhealthy way. As you become more proficient, you may be stunned to see that most people you know are walking around under mental hypnosis, thoroughly unaware that they are under the mindless control of mechanical, repetitive, conditioned thought.

Here you begin to learn what it is to shake yourself awake from ‘mental slumber.’

Exercise Category:

• Intuitive

Areas Of Improvement:

• Attention Control
• Self-Awareness

Perceptual Focus:

• Close-Up, Onto Thought

Exertion Type:

• Attention Holding

Application Level:

• Task Concentration
• Self Concentration, Basic

What You’ll Need:

• Paper to write on
• Pen or pencil
• Timer or watch with second-hand to track time

Ensure that you have reviewed and practiced the Intuitive “Wheel Of Thought” technique for learning how to detach yourself from mechanically occurring thought patterns and inner talk for the purpose of observing them. The fundamental lessons and skills acquired though that prerequisite will make conducting this technique much easier.

We already see by now that the mind does wander with apparent aimlessness. Although the content is often impractical, upon closer examination we can observe that there are some explanations, and here you can investigate the thread that binds them.

Set your timer or alarm for one minute.

Without attempting to control the direction of your thoughts or self-talk in any way, sit back and allow your Mind to wander in whatever direction it chooses to go in accordance to its usual habit until the sounding of your alarm.

When done, consider the thoughts and ideas and self-talk that coursed through you during that time and write out what you remember. At this point, write down whatever connections you can think of that bind those thoughts to one another; that is, how they might connect one to the other.

Repeat several times, and do so daily for 30 days and monitor your improvement in your ability to take stock and inventory of mental content and emotions as they rise and fall.

Additionally, you may benefit from the experience of remaining cognitively 'distant' from particularly strong, even overwhelming mental events. The knowledge that you can operate outside of a thought without obeying it is a game-changer because most people have no idea that they don't have to be slaves to their own distracting, bothersome streams of thought.

Exercise Category:

• Intuitive

Areas Of Improvement:

• Attention Control
• Thought Control
• Environmental Awareness
• Deep & Profound Self-Awareness
• Mental Endurance

Perceptual Focus:

• Close-Up, Onto Thought

Exertion Type:• Attention Holding

Application Level:

• Task Concentration
• Self Concentration, Basic

What You’ll Need:

• Training tracker or paper to write on
• Pen or pencil
• Timer or watch with second-hand to track time
• Privacy

For many thousands of years human beings have expended their lives in ambitious action in order to attain the object of a secret longing. People have sought power, wealth, and status, driven by something within that seeks expression for a reason they cannot truly fathom, believing that through high achievement and large deeds they would be put in touch with the answer to the mysteries of life. Most of these have failed and shall continue to fail.

Not YOU, however. Here, you step onto the path that takes you into the high, magnificent territory few human beings ever enter. Now you get to unravel the secrets sought by kings and conquerers - and you don’t have to go anywhere or join anything or ambitiously acquire objects outside yourself to inherit true power and wealth. Obtain Mastery here, and you’ll know everything you need to know to live a unique, stunningly successful life.

Find a spot for quiet solitude. Set your timer to alert you at the end of a five-minute interval. The objective is to sit quietly without allowing your Attention to be swept up in any form of thought.

Every time a thought arises in your Mind and you catch yourself thinking something, simply turn your Attention to the thought itself as though you were watching an ant crawl along a sidewalk, with no emotional investment, without resisting the thought or in any way trying to interfere with it. Whether the thought rises slowly or comes quickly; whether it is a single impulse or a running dialogue of mental chatter, let it be.

Remain uninvolved. You are only to observe its entrance, noting its characteristics like a scientist looking through a telescope. When a thought or thought-based feeling is analyzed in this fashion, it has no ability to steal your Attention because YOU ARE AT THAT MOMENT IN WILLFUL CONTROL OF YOUR OWN Attention. Maintain your Attention in cool observation until the thought fades away, which it must under your inner gaze.

Sometimes a thought will warp and shift into other thoughts, but you are not to shift your Attention away, because you will benefit mightily from the scientific experience of what philosopher Paul Brunton referred to as “The turning wheel of thought”. As long as you hold your gaze, you will be in control.

You may find yourself at times peacefully, single-mindedly immersed in enjoyable work only to have nagging thoughts come up from nowhere to disturb you, so it is vital that you use the same mental functions that allow you to hold a thought in place to instead calm the wild tides of thought crashing against the shore of your Mind. Now you’ll get the actual experience of standing guard at the gate of your Mind and sending uninvited invaders away.

The content of thoughts usually include feelings (emotions) - with some thoughts being so brief (yet deeply conditioned) that they activate a sudden feeling of unexplained emotion or change in mood. If you’ve ever suddenly began to feel a certain way emotionally and didn’t know why, now you do.

A fleeting thought rose and fell without your realizing it, bringing with it the content that activated the feeling. The visual aspect of the thought no longer on stage, the emotions still linger in your body, perhaps causing other thoughts of a similar nature to rise to the surface, placing you deeper in the mood itself (usually a negative or melancholy or fearful mental state).

Fleeting, unseen, unmanaged thoughts - like whip-wielding, ruthless taskmasters - drive most human beings unhappily through life, and people seek all manner of unproductive avenues for release from the hidden abuse. By becoming proficient in this discipline, you continually evict unwanted miscreants from your Mind throughout your day as you take your seat upon the throne of your being, directing YOURSELF, quietly, calmly, peacefully, and cheerfully in the direction that you Will. 

Nothing has any power over you from this point on because you ARE your own power. Where you dwell from here on out is The Mountain.

Know these things, and you will never again meet another human being stronger or more practically intelligent than you.

Exercise Category:

• Intuitive
• Minor Sensory

Areas Of Improvement:

• Mental Awareness
• Disconnecting Attention from ANY Thought

Perceptual Focus:

• Transitioning Between

Close-Up & Panoramic

Exertion Type:

• Attention Directing, Onto Thought (primary), Onto Body (secondary)

Application Level:

• Self Concentration
• Training Awareness: Perceiving & Controlling (affecting) Thought itself.

What You’ll Need:

• Stopwatch Or Timer to notify that session is over
• Paper (or Journal) and Pencil to note personal insights ONLY AFTER the training session is complete!


The synthetic, three-dimensional experience of Thought causes it to color our perception and paint a false picture (a counterfeit sense of reality) when we are not in CONSCIOUS CONTROL of our Attention.

Here, we practice detaching our Attention away from Thought* and, from a position of Conscious Control obtained through Concentrated Breathing, observe its nature, this for the purpose of seeing for ourselves how powerless Thought is when we operate from the seat of TRUE personal power, which is Conscious Awareness.

*This action of detaching Attention is the first level of controlling Thought!

Take a few moments to establish yourself in a Concentrated Breathing pattern. When ready, release the restrictions on your Awareness and redirect it in a general way so to observe any thought that arises without trying to interfere with it, nor should you participate in any way, but sustain aloof surveillance.

During this effort, you’ll be continually transitioning from monitoring your breathing pattern to widening the spotlight of Attention to detect the presence of any thought, impression, visual image, or low-frequency (muffled) mental chatter that may be running in the background of your Mind. Your Attention in this case is serving as somewhat of a ‘listening post’ or antenna aimed inward.

Rather than dismiss, reject, or resist whatever you encounter during the session, JUST ‘SIT BACK AND WATCH’. Some trainees have tried to analyze or write down what they saw in their thoughts, but found out that attempting to journalize the activity serves as a Thought- Stopper, while analyzing totally defeats the purpose and leads straight to the impulsive distraction we wish to avoid.

Do not be surprise if this method seems elusive once begun. Your previous training (such as the ’Wheel of Thought’ exercise) will come to your aid as you exert to separate yourself from the false connection and self-identification you’ve shared with the thoughts that have kept you company, the thoughts over which up until now you have wielded little to no authority.

15, 30, 45, or 60 minute sessions are valuable for this technique.