Steering Consciousness
Practices + a little neuroscience
Color Scan
This practice gives a simple, felt-sense experience of how our attention shapes what we see and what we overlook.
Look around the room you’re in and find all the objects that are green.
Now, close your eyes. Ask yourself, “Where are all the objects that are blue? (Pick any color other than green.)
Open your eyes - check to see what you missed.
Why This Matters
Every moment, the brain filters millions of bits of sensory data and shows us only what it predicts is relevant. When we focus on one “color,” the rest of reality fades to the background — the same way that, under stress, the mind fixates on problems or threats.
Neuroscientists call this selective attention. The dorsal attention network and amygdala heighten when we’re in narrow, task-focused or threat-detection mode, while the parietal and prefrontal regions open perception and support calm, big-picture awareness.
By shifting focus from one color to another, we’re not just training the eyes — we’re rehearsing neural flexibility. Each small shift strengthens the brain’s ability to move between detail and context, between vigilance and ease.
It’s a rehearsal for how to see life more fully.
Near and Far
Hold your palm close enough to your face that you can clearly see the lines, or even your fingerprint swirls.
Notice how when you’re focused in on your palm, the room around you is blurry.
Keeping your palm in the same place, switch your focus to the room around you.
Recognize how detail on your palm is now blurry.
Why This Matters
When we’re stressed, our attentional system is pulled into what neuroscientists call the salience network — the brain’s built-in alarm system that monitors threat. Regions like the amygdala, anterior insula, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex light up, scanning for danger and narrowing focus to whatever feels unsafe. It’s the same mechanism that helps us survive a real threat — but in everyday life, it means our mental “camera lens” locks onto the problem and everything else blurs out. This is what hypervigilance feels like: we lose perspective, imagination, and access to calm reasoning.
When you shift your gaze from the palm to the wider room, you’re gently rehearsing the neural flexibility that restores balance. That small act recruits your prefrontal cortex (the brain’s executive and integrative center) to override the alarm response, broadening the attentional field. At the same time, the parasympathetic nervous system — particularly through the vagus nerve — begins to re-engage, lowering heart rate and signaling “you’re safe.”
Repeated micro-shifts like this teach the nervous system that it can move between narrow, task-focused attention and wide, contextual awareness without danger. In neuropsychology terms, you’re exercising the dynamic balance between the dorsal attention network (focused, goal-directed) and the default mode network (expansive, self-referential, creative).
Over time, these moments of widening become a kind of mental proprioception: the ability to sense where your attention is and to choose where to rest it. Each time you practice near-and-far, you’re literally rewiring pathways of regulation and resilience — showing your brain that safety can include both focus and spaciousness.
Resources for Deep Dive
Neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman explains how the visual system helps regulate stress.
Clinical Psychologist and former Buddhist monk Dr. John Churchill unpacks how to train the attentional system in the context of meditation and contemplative practice.
Neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman interviews Dr. Marc Berman about how nature and other physical environments impact focus, cognition, and so much more.
The Path of Insight
In this series of talks on the Waking Up app/webiste, meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein guides you through the Buddhist path of mindfulness practice and the nature of enlightenment, while sharing deep insights and intimate personal accounts of his 50+ year meditation practice.