In my experience intention activates patterns rather than one single impression. For example, there is not just intention to lift the foot but intention to move the whole body through pattern of movements. The intention to walk is not sliced into "intend to lift foot, intend to move it through air, intend to put it down" but the whole movement is intended at the beginning and the pattern is followed as if it was a program in a computer.retrofuturist wrote:Greetings,
May I ask a question to our resident meditators who use "sweeping" in their practice?
When you sweep, do you ever pay attention to the quality of the volitional action of sweeping, or put another way, the deliberate act of changing the focus of attention?
This is not so when I move very slowly, deliberately slowing down the movements. In this case a large part of intention is diverted to keeping the movements slow. Another situation is when I try to learn a new movement (also done slowly), it seems to me that these are phases of generating patterns rather than initiating a set pattern by intention.
An interesting situation to observe intention are surprises or sudden problematic situations. Intention can shift very quickly. For example when a driving the car the intention to keep a specific pattern (go straight) can change within a second to (turn left) to avoid another car.
Other interesting situations are those where I have to alter my movements and thus the intention to initiate specific movement patterns continuously to adapt. For example during trekking in the mountains. Every step one has to choose anew, using the information of the eyes. All these intentions to make long step, short step, a bit to the right or left etc, come automatically, too.