In 1926, Milner decided to keep her own journal (a sort of close self-analysis) of the movements of her own mind, which she later published under the name of Joanna Field as a little-known but fascinating book, A Life of One’s Own (1934).

Milner’s motivation for keeping a journal was in order to understand more about the background feelings of anxiety and dissatisfaction with herself that she had experienced for as long as she could remember. In particular, she wanted to understand why:

‘in certain moods the very simplest things, even the glint of electric light on the water in my bath, gave me the most intense delight, while in others I seemed to be blind, unresponding and shut off’ (p.68).

Using a method that would now be widely recognised by the field of positive psychology, Milner decided to track her moods and to identify what was helpful and unhelpful to her well-being. Her approach was not psychoanalytical but practical and behavioral, focused not on analysing the past but on noticing more consciously what is happening in the present.

In fact, her journal became an impressive piece of qualitative research as well as a practice of self-care. She kept it faithfully for seven years, at the end of which time she concluded that the single most important aspect of the way in which she experienced any one event or situation was the quality of attention that she brought to it.

She wrote: ‘I found that there were different ways of perceiving and that the different ways provided me with different facts. There was a narrow focus which meant seeing life as if from blinkers and with the centre of my awareness in my head; and there was a wide focus which meant knowing with the whole of my body, a way of looking which quite altered my perception of whatever I saw’ (p.15).

Although, initially, Milner was only able to access this more bodily awareness when she was ‘too tired to think’ and so able to ‘let go of the idea that one ought to have thoughts’ (pp75-76), she gradually developed the ability to induce this state by making what she describes as ‘an internal gesture of the mind’.

For example, when listening to an orchestra in concert, Milner noticed that ‘direct trying’ did not enable her to really listen or to still the chatter of her own thoughts; but by making an internal gesture by which she ‘seemed to put my awareness into the soles of my feet,’ or sent ‘something which was myself out into the hall’ she enabled intent listening to ‘just happen’ (pp.69-70).

Milner describes the series of small, barely perceptible movements through which she arrives at this wider more bodily awareness. Among them, she notes a pressing of her awareness ‘against the limits of my body until there was vitality in all my limbs and I felt smooth and rounded,’ and ‘the
spreading of some vital essence of myself…like the spreading of invisible sentient feelers’ (pp.73-74).

Over time, she realised that she could learn to control this ‘internal gesture’ so that she could move from a more narrow focus to a more bodily ‘wide attention’ at any time she chose.

I cannot think of a relevant piece of research for the practice of personal development today. Milner’s experiements in attention seem to me to be  fascinating descriptions of discovering the benefits of self-hypnosis and how these can be applied consistently over time.

In fact, if we look at the latest research in cognitive science, we might even suggest an underpinning for the kind of ‘internal gesture’ that Milner describes. There is growing evidence from developmental psychology that, as children, we possess interpersonal body schemas (an awareness based on self-other) and a rudimentary sense of proprioceptive self – from birth.

If this is the case, then Milner’s idea of ‘wide attention’ – based on a more bodily and felt self-experience (rather than our more habitual conceptual and thought experience) -  might be fundamental to the way that we experience and develop in the world.

It’s possible to see Erickson’s work as building upon this ‘indirect’ approach. By practising wider attention ourselves as hypnotherapists and by helping our clients to learn how to let go of more ‘direct trying’, we may be accessing something that is crucial to our sense of well-being.

Marion Milner – a woman ahead of her time and bold enough to depart from the ideas of her contemporaries to seek ways of undestanding how to acquire the attitudeand skill of happiness. Her writing is perhaps more relevant today than it ever was.

References:
Maron Milner [Joanna Field] (1934) A Life of One’s Own. London: Virago

After two weeks of snow and ice that we’ve had here, there will be many people who are relieved by the first signs of this thaw. But I can’t help feeling a little sad.

The Big Snow forced me to slow… right… down. In fact, several of the friends I’ve talked to over the last few days have experienced a similar change in rhythm.

And I notice, as I write this now, that I’ve talked to many more people over the last week or so than I have in a long time. Such lovely phone calls: ‘Hi, how are you? I’ve been meaning to get in touch.’ Or ‘We’re hibernating for the weekend and I just wondered how you’re getting on…’

Time. It seems as if there’s been more of it in these last few weeks. Time to spend inside the house, cooking, playing board games, writing, doodling, chatting. Noone has to be anywhere – because they can’t go anywhere.

It’s reminded me, once again, (and, oh, how I do need these sorts of reminders) of the importance of taking time to just be.

Shovelling snow the other day, I couldn’t help thinking again about where it all comes from. Isn’t it the oddest thing, this white precipitate that just falls out of the sky? These grains of ice that are just so soft… The metaphors are endless… I could go on for hours… In fact, in my notebook, I have.

I just can’t resist making patterns and relationships and meanings out of this strange and endlessly surprising stuff that yields so many possibilities when I slow down enough to really look at it, really experience it.

But yesterday there were the first small signs of thaw and I felt a restlessness, something shifting, an itching to move out into the world again. More metaphors.

And then, almost immediately, that little voice that says:

‘But I’m not ready. I don’t want to. I just want to stay here where it’s really warm and safe. Please.’

All that bla, bla stuff we do inside ourselves about slowing down – and what might happen,  getting back out there – and what might happen. Or not. Meanwhile, the air freezes. And thaws.

And yesterday, the lovely Valerie, a participant in my Word Sauce Online Programme sent me a poem that she has been making out of the snow. She told me that she’d been playing with the idea of being ’snowed in.’

Her poem speaks to me so deeply of the process of moving between inside and outside, this need to retreat, to go inside, to hibernate, to hide and -  at the same time – our desire to be out there in the world. I just had to ask Valerie’s permission to share her poem with you. Here it is:

‘I’ve been in a snow circled silence for a long time,
sound and time take on different characteristics
when you’re frozen, cut-off in so many ways.

From the crunch of new snow to the icy blue smoothness
of its walls, my ‘pretend’ igloo’ was complete.
It had taken years to make, you have to
tunnel down deep to get in –
even then there’s no guarantee
you’ll find me
unless I want to be found.
Icy nooks and crannies
cleansed of feelings beckon
with icicle fingers. Stay. Stay.

Or, I could use words
to dig my way out of this cold, safe world.
Slowly, putting one word in front
of an uncertain other, scrapping the slush away
until I find the ones I want.
Each one a step out, a step forward,
perhaps even my heart will thaw.’

Isn’t that beautiful. And powerful. It moves me deeply.

Thank you, Valerie, so very much for sharing your poem with us.