Humans are constantly bombarded with more information than our brains can process, leading us to filter out much of it unconsciously. Our bodies, including our brains, act as gatekeepers on a need-to-know basis. Without this filtering, focusing would probably be much much harder, as we would be overwhelmed by the flood of data. Thus, we don't perceive everything, even if sometimes we think we do.

What we tune into is largely determined by our patterns of awareness. We gather specific information from our senses and translate it into patterns. or rhythms, of perception. These rhythms are shaped by personal, social, environmental, and biological factors, among others. The layers of rhythms we can tune into are endless and complex. It's fascinating to realize that different people may witness the same event but perceive very different realities.

The well-known attention experiment by Daniel Simons is a perfect case in point. As Simons notes, "This form of invisibility depends not on the limits of the eye, but on the limits of the mind. We consciously see only a small subset of our visual world, and when our attention is focused on one thing, we fail to notice other, unexpected things around us—including those we might want to see."

"This demonstration is much like a good magic trick," Simons continued. "A magician can lead the audience to think he's going to make the ball disappear with one method, and while people watch for that technique, he uses a different one. In both cases, the effect capitalizes on what people expect to see, demonstrating that we often miss what we don't expect."

Our brains are built to manage the flow of information this way. However, research is finding there are ways to broaden our attention 'bank account' through relaxation practices. I would argue that practising tuning our sensory and movement skills, exploring new and unknown rhythms, may also help broaden our capacities for awareness.

Understanding that we see only a fraction of the world around us has profound implications. It reminds us of the subjective nature of reality and highlights the unique way each person interprets their surroundings. Understanding this, we can always try to grow our sensory awareness, perhaps emphasizing empathy and a sense of imagination, physically experiencing new things, taking deep breaths, and on occasion remembering that "not everything is always as it seems." It never hurt to ask, "What other rhythms might be possible to perceive?"

References

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/but-did-you-see-the-gorilla-the-problem-with-inattentional-blindness-17339778/

https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2017.00023

https://www.livescience.com/6727-invisible-gorilla-test-shows-notice.html)

Rhythms of Connection: A Call for Feeling in Anthropology

Tuning into Rhythms