OfPonderingWandering

This is Part 1 (Experiential Awareness) of a two-part blog (+ Analytical Awareness) series on how to reclaim Ourselves- from ourselves. For those of us who have experienced adversity in the past, our journey begins with regaining conscious control over our ‘automatic behavioural responses.’ You see, our brain is excellent at adapting both behaviour and mental processes to ensure survival. This may look like emotional numbing (protection from overwhelming emotions) or even issues related to attachment theory. These ‘processes’ are great at what they do; they have protected us and allowed us to get to where we are today. But now, these processes hold us back, it is time for us to choose who we become. And this choice stems from one thing: Awareness. 

Experiential Awareness

How truly aware are you? Many of us think awareness is merely an external-facing process. We can be mindful of sounds, sights, smells, touch, and so on. But what about internal experiential signals? What does the experience of being you entail? What are your values, your purpose, and what are the emotions you feel? And how do you think about your emotions? Lastly, what are your thoughts? These questions are often overlooked. We live in a time when ignoring our internal signals is normal, if not encouraged. We spend much of our day distracting ourselves from true me-time. We commute to work listening to music/podcasts, and we eat dinner with YouTube. The lengths we go to avoid spending time with ourselves are incredible. Why? Part of the issue lies within the education system, which does little to foster and grow our emotional intelligence and regulation techniques. Yet, at the same time, there’s a modern pandemic of boredom aversion. In contemporary life, we are hooked on the next big thing! The next show is the next hit of dopamine to get us through the day. Evolutionarily speaking, our brains are wired to seek dopamine; however, this process is being hijacked nowadays. It has gotten to a point where leaving the house without music is considered ‘raw dogging.’ Now, coming back to our point. If we wish to reclaim ourselves, we must begin to spend time with ourselves. This means we must start to be comfortable with boredom, the ultimate form of spending time with ourselves. 

Boredom represents a poverty of external stimuli, meaning there is very little for us to attend to within our present external environment. So then, we must rely on internal stimuli. 

Our brain begins to spam us with random thoughts. There’s almost a tsunami of thoughts that come up, yet we can’t stop here; there’s tranquil water on the other side of the wave (the end of thought). So we must learn to ride the waves. We must hunker down for the storm and wait it out. After our thoughts start to calm down, thoughts from the true self will begin to bubble up. Thus, strengthening the sense of experience and marking the beginning of the long journey to the self. 

Now, essentially, the ‘reach the end of thought’ practice is an open awareness mindfulness technique, which has been used for thousands of years by several different cultures to get to the bottom of things. This technique is excellent and effective. But open awareness comes with a risk to some of us. 

Sometimes, when we open the gates to ourselves, we can become overwhelmed with negativity. This can have an amplified effect for those who have experienced trauma in the past.

Despite this, we can all still benefit from mindfulness practices. Instead, we must shift our mindfulness from the internal to the external. Grounding techniques are popular within trauma work for their effectiveness in silencing any arising negative thoughts. One of the most popular grounding techniques we can use is called the 5-4-3-2-1 technique, where we identify five things we can see, four things we can touch, three things we can hear, two things we can smell, and one thing we can taste. At the end of these practices, we will be anchored to the physical present and not trapped within our minds. 

We can strengthen our experiential awareness by exploring the thoughts that arise within us or by examining how we interpret the external world. Yet, we are missing a crucial piece—our mind-body connection. Emotions are not just thoughts; they are full body experiences. When we feel anxious or angry, our heart rate increases. When we feel sad, we often experience a lump in our chest and a feeling of low energy. But first, we must define what emotions are. Our brain processes way more information than we are consciously aware of. One of the ways this processed information can manifest is through our emotions. This is how we can feel sad without being able to point to a specific instance. Now, our emotions induce different subjective mental and physiological states in response to various stimuli in the environment. For example, two people can react to the same stimulus in very different ways. If you love meatloaf, and I hate meatloaf, we would both react to a plate of meatloaf in our way. 

You see, our bodies are great at communicating our emotions; the problem is that many of us don’t know how to listen. To further complicate matters, for some of us, our brain has adapted to numb out our mind-body connection as a protective measure against overwhelming emotions. So we are quite literally flying blind when it comes to our emotions. Yet, by strengthening our mind-body connection, we can reclaim our emotions and empower ourselves with the super-processors that are emotions. We can start to improve our mind-body connection through regular exercise, such as long nature walks (a favourite), and through disciplines like yoga and tai chi, which promote peace within our bodies. 

As we begin to get in touch with our bodies, we will start to have a deeper ‘line of communication’ with our emotions, as we learn how our emotions speak to us- tightness, racing heart, sweating. And through learning their language, we strengthen our awareness and refining our experience of ourselves. However, experience alone is not all there is to awareness. My next blog will be on the analytical side of awareness. Stay tuned!