The mind tends to look forward. You are here and now, but the mind is already planning for next week, maybe even next year, and it plays the role of a storyteller, some of whose most convincing work is dark. The trouble is that the body cannot reliably tell a vividly imagined scenario from a real one. Merely picturing the black scenario, your pulse accelerates and the stress hormones arrive, exactly as if it were happening. You can be flooded by an event that is not happening, has not happened, and may never happen.
When thoughts start galloping dangerously fast and emotions take over, what helps is anchoring attention in the here and now, because the moment you are actually in is the most certain thing available. The exercise below has saved me multiple times and still does. It takes about two minutes and can be done anywhere, with eyes open, in the middle of an ordinary day.
The exercise
What do I see. Look around and notice five random things in your surroundings, labelling each one quietly in your mind: there is a table, there is a book. Notice them and let them go.
What do I hear. Take a moment and notice three sounds, one at a time: birds outside, the floor creaking, traffic somewhere. Name them and let them go.
What do I feel. Bring attention into the body and notice five physical sensations: my eye is itching, my heart is pounding, my feet are on the floor. Name each one and let it go.
Then let attention flow freely between what you see, hear and feel, without clinging to anything, without grasping. Just notice what arises, moment by moment.
Why something this simple works
Attention is a narrow channel. While it is occupied with the actual room, there is less bandwidth left for the story, and the story is what was producing the flood. The quiet naming matters too: putting plain words to what you notice seems to take some of the heat out of it, an effect psychologists call affect labelling. And the senses have one advantage over every other anchor, which is that they only ever report from the present. The body cannot see next week.
This is a small cousin of the orienting work I use in somatic sessions, where the same principle is taken much further. But the two-minute version needs no preparation. It works in a meeting, in a car park, in a queue.
The mind will wander back to its storytelling within minutes, and that is fine. The exercise was never going to stop the storyteller. It is for remembering what is here.
