So what we just practiced was Focused attention, the first family of practices we’ll describe.

Focused attention, like the name suggests, involves focusing on an object of attention . It could be the breath, sounds, body sensations, a word or image or something else.
(review the animation)
The practice is simple but not always easy because our minds tend to be distracted a lot. Basically, we practice

1. Maintaining attention on a certain focus or object, like the breath
2. Noticing distractions – as when the mind moves to attend to something other than the breath. Noticing that the mind has moved away from the focus is, in itself, a moment of mindfulness
3. Flexibly shifting or returning attention to what you’re focusing on

These are also the three main categories of executive functions (EFs) that we will return to later.