Three Questions with Meghann Koppele Duffy

Episode 20 - Finding Focus - Three Questions at a Time

• Meghann • Episode 20

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Think you’re bad at focusing? Maybe you’ve just never been taught how your brain actually works.

In this episode of Three Questions, I break down the three questions I wish more people would ask when struggling to focus because sometimes the problem isn’t you, it’s your sensory environment. From visual overload to uncomfortable clothing to background noise, we’ll explore how the right input can turn distraction into clarity.

We’ll dig into:
 ✅ How your eyes, jaw, and even posture impact your ability to stay present
 ✅ Why some people need to move to focus and others need stillness
 ✅ How to identify your biggest focus disruptor (and what to do about it)

Whether you’re a movement teacher, a parent, or someone who’s tired of feeling distracted all the time, this episode will help you understand your own sensory system and how to set up an environment that supports real, sustainable focus.

Resources mentioned:
Episode 2: Sensory Preferences and How They Dictate Who We Are!
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Connect with me on Threads

Meghann Koppele Duffy: Welcome to Three Questions where critical thinking is king, and my opinions and research are only here to support your learning and understanding. Hey, I'm your host, Meghann, and I'm so honored you clicked on Three Questions today to talk about focus. Yeah, focus. What does it mean to be focused? Are you even focused right now?

Do you really wanna be listening to the sound of my voice? And what's so interesting about podcasts is people who choose to listen to podcasts usually like to learn, you know, via lecture or can take an information auditorily. Now, some people, maybe you're watching this on YouTube and prefer to watch this and hear it at the same time, maybe seeing me helps you more focused.

Maybe you're driving right now, so you kind of have to be pretty focused on the road, and maybe you find yourself going, oh, shoot, what did she just say? And rewinding, and I don't know about you, but do you ever do this where you'll be reading a book or listening to a podcast and you're totally spaced out and they're like, oh, I missed something.

Let me rewind it. And then you rewind it and you miss it again and again and again. So a few things are happening there. It's easy to say that you're not focused, but what if you actually are, but you're just focused on something else? I find this happens to me a lot when I'm watching my stories. You know, my Bravo TV stories.

Um, I love Bravo tv. I find the shows kind of a great escape and um. Although I don't like, I don't, I don't like the mean-spirited stuff. I kind of like the witty comebacks when a housewife comes back with a witty comeback. Ooh, I love it. But what's interesting is I'll often be doing work while I'm watching the show and I'm actually focused on my work.

And I like to have the show in the background because like if you miss part of it, you kind of still know the plot. But sometimes if they say something and I'm like, wait, I don't understand how this all fits together. I have to rewind. I keep having to do that. 'cause honestly, I'm not really focused on the Housewives.

I'm focused on my work. So let's talk about focus and I'm gonna ask you three distinct questions today, and I don't want you to be honest with yourself because I think if we can kind of dig into these three questions, I think at the end we will all feel like we have more tools to be focused. So number one, what are you seeing?

Like what are you actually seeing right now? Is what you are seeing distracting you from what you are hearing? Okay. Think about it. So we talked about driving in the car. Um, my husband laughs at me, but I, when I'm driving, I don't like to have. The music playing, if we're going to also be talking like one or the other, bro.

Um, also if I'm lost, I don't like to have the radio on. Why? It's because I need to focus on what I'm seeing and what I'm hearing can really be distracting to me. Now that might sound crazy to you or you might be like, oh my God, I'm the same way. Right. And there's jokes about it, like when you get older, you have to turn off the radio to drive.

And there's something to that. So what we're seeing is not the only information our eyes are getting, and I feel like when I understood this concept, it helped me like give my brain a break. So our eyes are taking in a ton of sensory information all the time, guys. Light colors movement. I mean depth. So many things.

And you might have some gif that might seem weird. I have no people who can see colors. Um, energetically, uh, she's one of my favorite students. Shout out Cindy. Um. And we've talked about this before, so I'm, I'm gonna throw it on you under the bus here, is when she was learning some of the neuro techniques I was teaching, I think she was trying to see it through my eyes.

And when we kind of talked about it and she was able to see it through her eyes, understanding the concepts, oh my God, it is just, her work was already great, but it really catapulted her to another dimension. And what was interesting is she said to me one day, she's like, we interacted with a person. That we both didn't like.

And she's like, Meghann, I know I feel and see energy, but I see colors. And I'm like, say more. And she's like, that person's brown. Like it's a really bad color. And I was like, well that fits right. And it was interesting because you know, sometimes when you see a have a gift that other people can't see, it's either called like voodoo or witchcraft, but she really sees energetic flow and stuff like that in color.

Which could be really helpful when we were looking at distribution of load in the body, because if colors were stuck or the color wasn't fully flowing, she could know that distribution of load wasn't where it needed to be. I work with some massage therapists or body workers, and they'll be like, I just always know where to put my hand, and I'm like, bullshit.

There's a reason why. Okay. Some of them, it's something they see. They can see heat. Okay, we're gonna talk about feeling in question two. Some people can actually see heat, or see cold or see disconnections. I can't explain how they see it. They just do. That's what makes sense to them. So what we are seeing matters, going back to what I said before, what we're seeing is not everything our eyes are taking in our brain processes that and filters shit out.

Wow. Think of how hard our brain is working. So if you're someone who sees a lot of things, maybe you're hypervigilant, maybe you have PTSD or something bad happened to you, or you were in a situation that you needed to be hypervigilant, where you're gonna be looking around, taking in a ton of information, your brain has to process all that.

That can be fatiguing. Okay. So being able to maximize our eyes', ability to give our brain sensory information can help, oh my God, I don't know what that was. Something just jumped down my throat and I think it was air. So by maximizing our eyes, ability to take in sensory input, we'll help the brain have to work less hard to process it.

Okay, so for example, if your eyes can't gaze, stabilize, that's a problem for your brain. So right now, uh, provided, if you're driving do this later, I want everybody to find something about, I don't know, five feet away from you. I, I'm bad with spatial awareness. Maybe like two arms lengths away and just stare at it and see how long you can stare at it without your eyes moving or blinking or burning.

It is really hard. That's what I call an eye plank. Okay? That's the muscles of your eyes trying to stabilize on a specific target. So think about it, just forcing gaze stabilization, ain't it? And if you have trouble gaze stabilizing with a lot of people do. Um, you know, I see it a lot in people with dyslexia, ADHD, on the spectrum or just maybe traumatic brain injury, concussions. It's something that I, I don't think I was ever great at it, but post-concussion, it's a lot worse. I didn't realize how much I look around when I talk to people, uh, even in this podcast, like if you watch me, I, I look up, I look around like I'm me staring straight at you.

I would be like a terrible broadcaster. Like that doesn't feel comfortable to me. Okay, so how can we help our eyes gaze stabilize better? Well. Mobilize them one way is what's called a smooth pursuit. So you could do that looking along a straight line. You could put your thumb out in front of you and track it slowly in multiple directions, letting your eyes smoothly track along a straight line diagonal.

A loop, whatever you want it to do. Now this can be tricky because when a lot of people try to smoothly track their eyes, like right now, how far can you smoothly track to the right I'm doing with my thumb? When I get right about there, my head turns a little bit. But notice my, if you watch me on YouTube, my jaw didn't move.

And you might, if you're listening to the podcast, can you hear the difference in my voice? I'm actually talking outta the left side of my mouth because when my eyes track to the right. My jaw stayed put, but my head turned a little bit. Okay, so that's not really isolating eye tracking to the right, that's not gonna help my eyes gaze stabilize as much as I want, so I need to stabilize my jaw.

You might need to stabilize your whole cervical spine. So everybody do one of two things. Make an owl with your hand and touch your sternum. It's kind of like your breastplate right here. With your thumb and touch the right side of your chin with your pointer finger. Okay? Or what you can do, and I'm sorry, you should do this with your left hand 'cause we're about to use our right hand, or what I want you to do is touch your cheekbone and jaw, which is what I'm doing.

Okay? Touch one of those two spots, then put your right thumb out in front of you and just track your eyes to the right by moving your thumb to the right and bringing it back to center. Again, bring the thumb to the right and back to center following with your eyes. It should have felt easier to do or harder based off how your brain interpreted that sensory information.

Now, going back to what you're seeing, question one. I was demoing that. So if you're watching this on YouTube, you have a much better understanding. You were really focused on that. If you are walking or driving and listening to this podcast, I bet you're like, what the hell did she just say? Why? Because you are not seeing what I am saying.

You are seeing other things and those could be distracting your focus. Okay. Or. You might be like, I don't know what you're talking about. Meghann, you described it really well. Um, I mean, I could have used a few more descriptions. You were, because you were doing it. I don't think you described it so well. Um, but I'm with you and I don't understand why you're talking about, I don't need to see things to hear well.

Well, you're someone that can stay focused despite a lot of visual distractions. I'm gonna say. You might get locked in. Your significant other spouse or friends might be like, yo, are you even listening to me? You might be a really great athlete. That doesn't let the distractions on the field in the stands affect you at all.

That is such a skill. Okay. You might be actually bad at multitasking because you're so laser focused, and dare I say, I feel like multitasking is like overrated. I feel like sometimes when we multitask, we're actually not focused. And so something I've allowed myself to do as I've gotten older is I am not a great multitasker.

That's when I make mistakes. I like to get locked in and laser focused, and people will ask me, how long does it take to do things? It takes as long as it can. I don't know. Sometimes it takes me really quick to do things other times longer, but. I know for me what I am seeing and my eye's ability to gaze stabilize affects my focus.

Now for you, your eye's, ability to move around might affect your ability to focus. So if you're thinking, man, I need to dig deeper into this, I shit, I love that for you. I will put, um, the link to find a neuro studio trained practitioner, um, in the show notes. Also, reach out to me. Just keep in mind it isn't about just doing eye exercises.

Always think how the rest of your body is responding because the whole body is connected and sometimes doing too many eye exercises can aggravate your nervous system if your eyes are already taking in too much information. So. Think about what you're seeing, what you're not seeing, and think if you can change what you're seeing or what you're not seeing or maximize your visual field to help you focus better on.

To question two, what are you feeling?

So what are you feeling? Are you in your favorite yoga pants or sweatpants, or are you wearing those pants that like look really good but aren't as comfortable? You might be walking around the track listening to me, but you're a little not focused because your clothing are bothering you. Um, I think it was episode two I did on sensory preferences.

If you haven't listened to that episode, please do. Please do. And I would love, I feel like nobody really shares that on Instagram, but I get such great dms and emails about people being like, oh my God, these are my sensory preferences. And I thought that was weird. Nope, not weird. Very, very normal. So what you're feeling could distract you.

I don't know. Um, so if you just listen to this podcast, maybe you don't know how I dress, um, but if you watch me on Instagram, on the neuro studio. You'll notice I wear high-waisted sweatpants or the Venice joggers from Athleta, like all the time. I have about 10 different pairs and I always wear a crop top.

Now what's interesting is I. I used to never wear a crop top, mostly because like I didn't know if, I don't know why recently, like me in my forties, I'm more apt to show my belly than I ever would when I was younger. I don't know, who knows? But I love where crop tops fit and it really helps me understand the difference between my upper and lower body.

And it helps me understand where they are in relation to each other. Okay. And when I'm exercising, sometimes having the visual of areas I over mobilize, which are my lumbar spine. So I look at the difference, the space between the bottom of my crop top and my pants. Okay? So I'll use that to help me move better.

It helps me stay focused. Now here's the other thing. I, I sometimes change my clothes multiple times because if I am uncomfortable, I cannot be focused on my movement, on anything When I lecture. I often like to wear shoes when I lecture because, um, I like sensory information on the top of my feet. That helps ground me.

I like sensory information at the bottom of my feet. But my studio where I lecture, it's concrete floor. There's stuff over, and my feet for long days. Don't love that. Okay? Now, I've been in instances where I didn't change my outfit or I wasn't that comfortable. My lectures weren't as good that day, I was less focused.

Okay? So think about your clothes and what you're doing with your body when you're trying to learn. Here's something else that's pretty interesting. I used to do this in college. Did anybody else do this? I would read my notes for my kinesiology class on the elliptical. Why did I do that? Um, combination of I wanted to be active because God forbid I gained weight at college when I was eating like shit and drinking like a fish.

You know, the, the idiot behaviors we do, uh, as a college student or in our twenties. If you're there right now, do what you need to do. Um, your goals will change throughout life or they might not and that's okay. But anyway, but the reason I did it, it was help me focus. A lot of people might co-sign this, so if you're a hypermobile or of EDS, you often feel better when you're moving.

You often feel shittier when you're still or not doing anything. So when I give lectures, I say to people, like, I work with a lot of Pilates teachers, uh, PTs, um, and listen, a lot of Pilates teachers were ex dancers. Not all of them. I wasn't, certainly wasn't an ex dancer, but I say to people, you'll not distract me.

If you need to get up and walk around or do weird shit while I'm lecturing, please do what you need to do to stay focused. Somebody sitting still during a lecture could be brutal. So if you're walking right now, I want you to realize that blood plump plumping pumping through your body, that nerve conduction the muscle spindles, your tendons, your joint angles are all giving your brain proprioceptive information, making your body feel safe and active.

That might be helping you focus teachers. You're gonna be really pissed by this. Stop telling kids to sit still. I am sorry if that distracts you. I get it. It used to distract me, but I wanted to be a good teacher and teach every person in front of me. Keep in mind, I work with mostly adults. Easy for me to say, but I do have large groups.

My husband will be like, yeah, but you work one to one. No, not always. But being a teacher is really hard. So this is not a knock against you guys. But those kids need to move to stay focused. Maybe we could have like the moving group, or I saw one teacher, they had these little TheraBands on the bottom of the chairs so kids could bounce their feet without making noise.

Um, my cousin's, uh, wife, Meghann, who's the Montessori teacher. I gave her one of the Naboso standing mats and Naboso products are sensory products that are designed to give sensory information from the bottom of the feet. And I loved how she used it in her classroom. She said to the kids, anytime you need to be by yourself, need focus, um, or feeling silly or off, or need a, a timeout, whatever you need, you go over to that mat.

So it wasn't a punishment, it was like kind of a safe space when you're feeling bajiggity as I call it, give your brain some new information. So if you're someone who thinks you can't focus, you can. Nobody has taken the time to help you understand that. And I will apologize for all teachers out there. The system failed you.

It's not you. I want you to think, when am I most focused? Well, I'm really focused when I work out or I'm really focused when I do this. I'm really focused when I'm playing video games, figure out what the sensory environment is. Well, when I play video games, um, I like the auditory noise of what's going on.

I like to see it, but I like to sit, but it has to be really dark. I don't like bright lights. That gives you information. Okay. Maybe you're like, I'm only focused when I'm moving. Or something interesting. I just worked with a college athlete. She would lose focus on the field when people stepped out of her visual field and based off her position on the soccer field, I, she has had a really good reaction time, but she was always reacting late because she didn't react until she saw it.

So I said, here's what I want you to do. I know you're supposed to air quotes set up like this. I want you to set up like this, where her visual field and peripheral vision was the largest so she could see the most movement. She wasn't feeling shifts, she wasn't feeling someone run up behind her. She would see it.

So what I want you to get from question one and question two, what you see can help you focus or completely take you out of focus. Number two, what you're feeling or not feeling can completely help you focus or take you out of focus. Now, before I go to the last one, I want us as teachers or parents or humans to think we assume our sensory preferences.

They feel so good to us. We assume it's great for everybody. So people who like to be touched during movement or love massages, it feels so good to them. They think it feels good to everybody. Newsflash. It doesn't.

I love a lecture. I love giving lectures. I like the sound of my own voice. I mean, that might sound like arrogant as hell. Well, I'm sorry. Name two things you like about yourself. Okay. But what's interesting is if we're going to work with humans or develop relationships or teach, how can we take the time to understand people's sensory environment?

How do they learn best? How do they listen best? I realize this. I know I talked about it in episode before, but I talk a lot, so who knows if it might've been just been in a conversation. If I tell my husband something and he's doing other things, like washing the dishes, singing and listening to music very loudly, he actually heard me, me repeating myself, actually annoys him.

But I assume because he was doing other things, he wasn't listening, he wasn't focused. He was focused. He was focused at the task he was doing, but he could also listen, I'm the opposite if I'm not looking at you. When you're talking to me, I did not hear you. There's times in courses where I'll actually say to someone, I'm sorry, can you repeat that question?

I wasn't listening when I asked them what their question was, but something happened where I noticed something on the Zoom that distracted me, so I stopped listening to them. Okay. I think that has shifted the way my husband and I communicate, and instead of getting mad at him or asking him to focus, look at me when I'm talking to you.

We don't have those arguments anymore, but trust me, we have arguments about other things. So moving along to question three, what are you hearing? Maybe you knew that was coming? Seeing, feeling, hearing. Hearing is a big one. Can you deal with multiple auditory distractions? Not me. If the lawnmower's going off or a dog is barking, or my husband is singing, listening to music and talking to me, whoa, whoa, whoa.

That is three too many auditory sensory inputs. Okay, so what you're hearing could be distracting your focus. So you being at a lecture listening to your teacher might be totally taking you out of focus because. You heard something they said and now you're focused on that and they're yammering around, yammering on about something else.

Lost your focus on what you latched onto. Or maybe you're the opposite. Maybe you focus better when there's music playing and you're singing in the background and the TV's on. To me, I find this fascinating. So when we are in a movement class, we have to give auditory feedback. We've gotta tell people what they need to do, what the movement is.

But so many people can't process what they're hearing because they're distracted by other things. Maybe what they're feeling, maybe what they're seeing. So queuing is really an art form. I also have a lot of clients where it used to annoy me that they need to repeat back to me what I just said. That's not annoying.

They are processing it to stay focused. They need to put it in their own words and hear themselves say it. Okay? So sometimes when people are learning or trying to stay focused, what they're hearing or seeing can focus them. So I have a big thing about music. There is a lot of research that says M music can help with Parkinson's, gait, uh, improving gait, all this stuff.

Yes, and it also distracts and takes away focus for a large group of people. Sometimes when there's music playing and queuing going on, people don't know what to focus on. In that case, I'd rather them focus on the music. So if I'm working with music based stuff and Parkinson's clients, which I do, I'll just say find the beat and based off what they do, I might do the same thing and then face them or have my back to them so they can actually follow me and I do a different movement to that beat and make them do what I'm doing.

No auditory cueing, so I'm not telling them what to do. I am using the auditory information from the music. Plus a visual of them seeing what I'm doing now you might be thinking like, no, I love queuing to music. Mariska, my business partner loves teaching classes to music. I hate it because the music distracts me from my focus and I start queing like I've never taught a class before.

It's not cute. She is like amazing at it. Not me. So if a client really likes music in the background, well client always wins. It's not about me IQ differently, and I might use more hands-on approach so I can stay focused without losing the essence of my job as a teacher. I, so I want everybody to think right now, what do you think your brain prioritizes when you're trying to focus on something, what you're seeing, what you're feeling, or what you're hearing?

Question one, two, or three. So now we're at que four questions. I got a fifth question for you today. I'm going hard. Which of those three do you think are your biggest disruptor? Well, we know mine. It's definitely hearing, maybe yours is feeling, maybe yours is seeing. And what you can do the next time you need to focus on something, can you remove one of those disruptors or stay focused on what your brain prioritizes?

And the last thing I wanna bring to your attention is there are different conditions and different ways to learn. Research does show that when you have ADHD you can be hypersensitive to sensory or hyposensitive. Oh, that's really helpful. So yeah, it'll be so easy to everybody with ADD or ADHD give them less sensory input or more.

It's not the case. We gotta find that sweet spot of sensory information and don't be afraid to make mistake. If I create an environment that doesn't work for my client, I'll say, Hey, listen, I thought this was gonna work. It didn't. Let's switch gears. Thank you for going along in that process with me. I, I wanted to explore it, but I think we can get your goals in a different way.

Also, something was interesting to me years ago when I was studying dyslexia because I was trying to understand why someone who can understand a lot of material, do very well in school, has trouble staying focused during reading, and I read a lot as a kid. I still read a lot, but what I realized is. I read kind of the top of the page and the bottom page, and then I zoom in together and my brain processes it that way.

Not diagnosing myself with dyslexia. I'm not an expert to do that. But dyslexia is not just reading backwards. People with dyslexia will often f um, confuse letters. That will happen kind of in the beginning. But dyslexia is more about processing, written or spoken language, right? So people with dyslexia, research shows.

That multisensory inputs are the way to go. So have a tactile, have them looking at something, have them hearing. But remember more is just more not better. It's really identifying what those multiple sensory cues are. And what I find interesting is teachers who love a lot of sensory input. Who? It's game changing for them.

Sometimes their classes annoy me because, what do you want me to focus on? You just told me 30 fucking things. That's not because they're a bad teacher, but they're teaching to a particular brain type. My brain likes multisensory, but not a million auditory cues. Okay. Something to think about, and this is hard when we're teaching a group class.

I'm thinking right now. Well, I always give three options and obviously I'm doing it auditorily. Well, how else do I give 'em three options, guys? I don't have the answer to that. We're learning together. All I want us to do is be critical thinkers and think about focus. What does it mean to focus? It's our brain's ability to stay locked in and complete a task.

If we're talking about focus on neuroplasticity, we have to use this focus to excite and release epinephrine. To tell the brain we're ready to learn, to then release acetylcholine, to spotlight the areas of change. This is complex and what we're doing to focus might not be eliciting that response. Just food for thought.

And when it comes to focus on conversations in life, I want you to think, how can I set up my environment? So that I can stay focused and on days when focusing it, give yourself the grace to be unfocused and chaotic. So I want to keep this under 30 minutes. I'm at 31 minutes. That's pretty good. I hope you were able to stay focused during this session, and if not, I want you to comment on Instagram or send me a message to tell me.

What do you think? Was the problem with your focus and it can be the sound of my voice. I will be okay with that. So thank you guys so much and I will see you well. I won't see you. You might see me or hear me the next time on ThreeQuestions.

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