What’s the difference between Attention and Intention?

Written by Inner Fire Yoga teacher, Karen Rigsby

“Attention is where your eyes focus.  Intention is where your heart is focused.”  -Grandpa Kraft at my high school graduation circa 1980s

When we begin a yoga practice, our attention might be initially on our breath, on our alignment, on what our asana looks like in the mirror.  We might focus on the strength of our standing leg while we contort our spine to some preconceived notion of flexion so as to put our forehead on our knee.  Our intention, however, is where we hope our practice takes us. Our intention brings our awareness to a quality or virtue we wish to cultivate in our lives. A yoga practice may seem daunting in and of itself without the indulgence of virtue.  But once we have the bones right, virtue follows naturally. It hangs the muscle on our practice. 

I have a dear friend who coaches athletes, and one of her favorite maxims when coaching an athlete new to endurance (aka suffer) sports is “start with small, digestible bites of success.”  While yoga is certainly not a suffer sport, many would argue that it starts out that way. And to that extent, I would offer the same counsel. Take it in small digestible bites of success.

Begin at the beginning of a yoga practice.  Pay attention to the physical body.  There is great power in aligning the body by undoing our dysfunctional movement patterns; the ones that cause chronic pain or set the stage for soft tissue trauma.  Freedom of body, one of Inner Fire Yoga’s tenets, comes about when we endeavor to pair strength with mobility – quintessentially, the physical aspect of yoga.  We focus on breathing, we align our asanas, and on good yoga days, we can even push our perceived limitations into a bit more “depth.”

Initially, when I started practicing yoga, my attention AND my intention were both on the nuts and bolts of my physical practice.  It was, I thought, why yoga brought me such peace – because for an hour-ish at a time, I would have no room in my mind to prioritize my week’s agenda, to rehearse conversations with my boss about compensation, or to rehash the conversation with my partner about finances.  All this was boxed out of my mind because my attention span was so fully-whelmed. It took time in a disciplined practice -- and I was blessed with good and discerning teachers – but our body eventually remembers. There are grooves and patterns that are neurologically inscribed in our muscles after hours of practice, and we no longer need to consciously remember all the little nuances of our Trichonasana.  

What do I do now, I thought, with all this extra bandwidth?  Yoga had attracted me because I thought it to be part of a physical wellness regime, a “workout” where I could snatch a little rush of endorphins and sweat and burn some calories.  For years, I had come to my mat for that empowering purpose only so I had never bought into the option of “setting an intention” for my practice. But one day on my mat before class, in prayer for my sister who was choosing the high road despite trudging through some serious s$#t, I decided to try a mantra throughout class.  It was going to be my heart’s prayer through Dr. Ruddy’s 90 minute hot class. “My breath is your strength, Heidi,” was my first effort at dedication.

Now, if you have taken Dr. Ruddy’s class, you will understand why I completely forgot – about 3 minutes into class -- to meditate on my mantra.  There are so many pearls of wisdom offered from that man that I spent my entire “intention” bandwidth on trying to remember just a few. But I have since practiced with that mantra and many others, with small degrees of success.  Sometimes I say the mantra once at the beginning and then I don’t remember it until I am wiping up my sweat puddle after Namaste-ing. Other “better yoga days,” I am able to breathe it maybe ten times in class. I do see the fruit of that dimension of my practice, and I truly believe that we miss the largest portion of the delicious yoga pie chart if our intention is stuck on the physical benefits.   

There are many ways to practice an intention or a dedication, but here is what is working for me.  I use a word, a very short phrase, or a picture in my mind.  It must be simple - mostly because I like things complicated.  The simplicity keeps me from straying too far. I use a gesture or a specific asana to bring me back to it if I’m thinking about too many other things.  For example, in the Inner Fire Flow sequence, I TRY to remember to use the moments in a forward fold to breathe a repetition of my mantra. I might make this happen twice or ten times.  Part of it is just being deliberate about choosing an intention. If the beginning of class is the only time I think of it, I have still deliberately shifted my mind out of the junk. There is power in changing our thought patterns even once a day.

Changing physical movement patterns is hard, but we have the mirror for visual cues.  We have our teachers for alignment cues, and we have sensation for proprioceptive cues.  If we pay attention, we can find that freedom of body. Changing thought patterns about ourselves and others, patterns of conversation (or lack thereof), and patterns of seeing and categorizing others – these are much harder to see and therefore much harder to change.  Quiet space is necessary first. Second, just like the physical patterns, we must pay attention.  And third, once noticed, we must have the honest intention to change.  

Then, just like our Warrior II, we practice, in small degrees of success, the new pattern of thinking, seeing, conversing.  Inner Fire Yoga’s vision – to inspire freedom of body, clarity of mind, and generosity of heart – is, for me, a work in progress.  It is a labor of love, born of attention AND intention; of directing my eyes and my heart. And so worth the sweat and the tears.