Ed Halliwell

I’ve noticed lately that I often wake up at night with my ankles crossed. That might not seem much of a revelation, but I’m working to pay particular attention to the subtle ways I unconsciously tighten, slump and close off my body from its surroundings. I have a tendency to pull away or wall off from unpleasant events, and this expresses itself physically as well as mentally. I’ve found that I can start to undo this habitual pattern by practicing openness, gentleness and letting go of tension. Such as uncrossing my ankles when I wake up at night...

Our society categorizes conditions like depression and anxiety primarily at a mental level. I used to buy into that, believing that if I could only persuade my thinking mind to behave differently, I would no longer be prey to them. I now look at things rather differently, to the point where I no longer use terms like "mental health problems": words and phrases that emphasise well-being as a "head-based" condition don’t much correspond to my experience. Indeed, by crystallizing them into fixed diagnostic criteria, I suspect that, for me at least, they help make a self-perpetuating story out of temporary, sensory data.

It’s estimated (conservatively) that one in ten children in the United States would qualify for a diagnosis of Attention Hyperactivty Disorder. We live in an age of "continuous partial attention," where the constant pressure to react to a flood of stimuli goes beyond the reasonable capacities of our brains. We know that young, growing brains are especially vulnerable to being shaped by negative experience—a scattered attention can create a brain in disharmony, which may further impede our ability to focus. And a mind that can’t sustain focus is a mind that will find it difficult to learn something new.