More States of Attention

For the last 6 months, I’ve been working with Nelson Zink’s 12 States of Attention.

Mary Ann Reynolds taught them to me at the September Austin NLP Meetup, and she had been talking about them for some time before that. You can read previous blog entries about Mary Ann’s presentation or how the 12 States have made parts of my life much more rich, especially in settings like the black sand beach in Maui, where I wanted to expand my awareness of the place. You can also read an excerpt from Nelson's Zink's The Structure of Delight and his explanation of the 12 States of Attention.

There are several parts of this model that I’ve wanted to refine, especially about the kinesthetic sense. Broad-External-Kinesthetic is supposed to be what I can feel right now on the surface of my skin (and maybe a few inches out, depending on how you want to do it). But there’s no distinction to describe me remembering a Broad-External-Kinesthetic sensation or planning one. The same thing applies to Narrow-External-Kinesthetic, Broad-Internal-Kinesthetic, and Narrow-Internal-Kinesthetic.

Also, what about one’s sense of where the body is in space, sometimes called the proprioceptive sense? And what about olfactory and gustatory senses?

So, I’ve been playing around with several different ways of organizing these senses to accommodate that. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

Broad / Narrow (stays the same)
Sensed / Constructed (much like the original Internal / External, but this accommodates for the fact that you might construct a kinesthetic feeling, be it internal (on the skin) or external (inside the body).
Visual / Auditory / Kinesthetic – Skin / Kinesthetic – Viscera / Kinesthetic – Proprioception / Olfactory / Gustatory

That makes for 28 States of Attention! I have to admit, I like the simplicity of Nelson’s original model. Are the extra distinctions really worth it?

As I’ve experimented with this expanded model, here’s what I’ve learned. The last 3 types of perception (Kinesthetic – Proprioception, Olfactory, and Gustatory) are “bonus” states. Because they are often far beyond conscious awareness, sometimes they contain very interesting information. Sometimes, they are so secondary to the other states of attention, they provide less useful information.

I’ll probably continue to teach my friends Nelson’s original model, or my expanded model without the bonus states.