This workshop is intended for healthcare professionals, bodyworkers, and anyone who utilizes physical touch or one-on-one interactions in their professions.

Attentional distance is a powerful perceptual tool you can use to help another person feel more or less “space” between you and them.

Have you ever felt uncomfortable around a stranger? Can you feel bad vibes from across the street, or when someone new lights up a room? This is because each person has a magnetic field around their heart, and when you are in close proximity, your hearts are directly relating to each other. This can feel good or bad.

About the Workshop

In this workshop, we start the class with a grounding meditation focused on breath, body awareness and being rooted. We then move into spinal awareness. We split off into pairs to do an exercise to feel the presence of our partners within our personal physical space. 

During the second exercise, we will learn how to hold a wide-heart centered field for our partners. We then get to experiment with how to move our attentional distance closer, then further away and how that affects sensations in our partner. 

To do this exercise the participant in the “practitioner” role visualizes their spine behind themselves and has an awareness of space behind their back body. This allows for the “client’s” system to access more space. The “practitioner” can slowly try closer or farther away spaces to see what is most comfortable for the “client” at that moment. 

The skills learned in my attentional distance workshops are useful to all but are especially helpful for anyone working with touch or one-on-one interactions. Offering the tool of attentional distance helps practitioners enhance feelings of safety for their clients, validating their sense of autonomy and privacy and helping them access their spatial needs. 

For more information on how our hearts interact, check out heartmath.org/