12-Week Foundational Practice For Training Attention – As Life Happens
This practice is the shared foundation for all Sophraxia work. Whether you continue into individual coaching or group training, this is where your practice begins.
What This Practice Is
Human Being, Not Human Doing (abbreviated HB>HD) is a foundational training designed to build a baseline relationship with your own mind and attention.
During this practice, the focus is on slowing down, returning to the present moment, and learning to observe – noticing distractions, reactivity, and the subtle ways the mind moves without our awareness. This is where you begin training the space between stimulus and response.
Rather than applying these skills to specific areas of your life right away, this time is intentionally devoted to building familiarity. You are learning how to remain calm, how to notice without judgment, and how to stay present with experience as it unfolds.
This baseline matters. Training the mind to notice what it does not yet see creates the conditions for all future work. When attention and awareness are familiar, directing them toward communication, decision-making, goals, or relationships becomes possible – and sustainable.
Human Being, Not Human Doing is not about fixing yourself. It is about building that capacity to stay with experience – clearly, steadily, and with intention – so that future training has something real to rest on.
Why This Practice Comes First
All Sophraxia training builds on the same foundational capacities – attention, awareness, and the ability to pause and choose. Beginning here ensures that future work is grounded in lived experience rather than concepts. This shared baseline allows deeper practice, clearer application, and more meaningful engagement as you continue your training.
After Completing This Practice:
Once you have completed HB>HD, you will have a working familiarity with your own attention and inner experience. You will have practiced slowing down, noticing distraction, and staying present in moments that would have previously gone unseen or unmanaged.
This does not mean your life becomes easier or free of challenges. It means you are better equipped to meet what arises – with awareness, steadiness, and choice.
From this baseline, applying what you have practiced to specific areas of your life becomes more natural – because these skills are no longer new or abstract.
What You Will Be Training
This practice trains foundational skills that support all future Sophraxia work, including:
- Noticing where attention goes, and how easily it is pulled away
- Gradually increasing your baseline capacity for focus and sustained attention
- Recognizing habitual reactions and patterns of avoidance
- Learning to pause before responding
- Staying present with discomfort without immediately trying to change it
- Developing familiarity with thoughts, emotions, and sensations as they arise
These are not techniques to be mastered, but capacities to be practiced. Over time, they become more available – not through force, but through repetition and care.
Who This Practice Is For
This practice is for those who sense that the way they move through life could be more deliberate, more present, or more aligned – even if they can’t yet name exactly why.
It is for people who are willing to slow down, to observe themselves honestly, and to practice staying with experience rather than constantly reacting to it.
No prior experience is required.
All you need is a willingness to practice, to be patient, and to begin where you are.
Continuing The Practice
HB>HD establishes the foundation for all further Sophraxia training. The capacities developed here – attention, awareness, and the ability to pause and choose – are the same capacities applied in future work.
Continuing the practice means bringing this same quality of presence into more specific areas of your life – with the support of a shared language and a steady base. This practice is not left behind, it is carried forward.
SOPHRAXIA 