Last week's article described the 3 A's (Awareness, Acknowledgment and Acceptance) as a way to observe and change our relationship to a situation or circumstance in our lives. This week we are going to pay attention to the first A--Awareness.
Our awareness involves bringing our focused attention to something in order to observe it. To become aware, we must actually examine what it is that requires our attention, or that which we want to know more about. We must find out what is really happening and see the situation in its pure and simple state.
This will definitely involve some discovery as we really engage in a situation or circumstance and ask for the facts. During this discovery process, we want to know simply: what is happening? What conditions are present that allows this situation to occur? What are the factors involved in the situation?
Until we really bring awareness to a situation we may or may not know we have a problem. We may only know that we are suffering or hindered in some way and we don't like it. We may avoid a particular situation because it is to distressing to experience. We may only feel a pain or anxiety and we may spend all our time trying to take care of the pain or to lessen our anxiety
During Awareness there are two things to observe. One is the way our bodies respond to the situation we are bringing awareness to and the second is the situation itself.
The first--observing the body--is crucial because it gives us critical information about how we keep this situation or circumstance out of our awareness or how we cope with it. When you are in the situation, or you even think about the circumstance, you want to observe:
How your posture shifts. For example, it may change from upright to slumped or to rigid.
How your breath shifts. Does it quicken, get shallow or drop to nearly nothing?
How your energy changes. Does it drop and pool at your feet or run up and out your head?
What kinds of movements you make. Are you moving a lot or is your movement restricted?
Where tension builds in your body. Do you get tense shoulders, does your back hurt or do you get a headache?
When we describe these factors, we are just observing what "is" in the body with regards to the situation or circumstance.
Second, as we observe the situation, we want to describe it from a purely factual standpoint. We do not want to place our interpretation on it. We just want to describe what is there and what happens step by step.
For example, if you were having problems with your boss and you were so frustrated that you were thinking of quitting, how could you bring awareness to the situation? At first you may just think that you are always stressed out and drained at the end of the day and lately you've been getting migraines.
When you observe the situation without your interpretation (that he is a thoughtless @#$% or she is a demanding @##$), ask yourself: what really happens? Maybe he does not say hello and ask how you are. Or she might just fire a list of tasks at you without seeing how you are doing with the last list or appreciating how much you just saved her butt. And then maybe he vents his frustrations on you. And you just work like mad to try to keep this crazy person from doing anything to make your life worse.
In your body you may notice that your breath stops when you hear his voice in the morning. When she comes in to deliver the demands you may notice your energy trickling down your body into the floor. After he tells you to change all the corrections he made yesterday back to your original version, you may feel a wall of tension build across your shoulders. And by mid afternoon, you may find yourself hunched over like an eighty-year-old.
Bringing awareness to situations or circumstances like this really sheds light on things and helps us see what we do to ourselves. In the above example, would you not want to change some of the responses in your body if you could? How different would the end of your day be if you just 'reset' your body by breathing deeply, moving or stretching, and directing your energy up your body, every time your boss left the room?
Practice bringing your awareness to any situation or circumstance that has an impact on you whether it is positive of negative. By simply observing what "is" you will find a wealth of wisdom revealed.
For more information on observing your breath, energy, and movement, review articles 14, 15 and 16 in Volume 2. The Introduction to SRI Workshop also gives practical ways to observe these strategies in your body and the Discover Workshop elaborates on how we develop the first A with Network Spinal Analysis (NSA).
