Naming embodied experience - expanding awareness

 

In some of the eastern traditions an important goal in meditation is to silence the words and quieting the mind, emptying it of thoughts. Presence is seen as something essentially wordless. In this perspective the words are often an expression of automatic or habitual patterns of thought, which easily removes you from experiencing what is really here right now. The words are seen as less true or less fundamental than the wordlessness which is prior to the words. To connect with your true unconditioned self and become more whole, you need to stop identifying with your words and listen to the primordial silence underneath.   

In mind-body connecting practices like Rosen method therapy (a one to one touchbased modality) or Relatefullness, which is a group meditation enhancing relational and embodied self-awareness, an important focus is on practicing naming our immediate embodied experience as it is in the present moment. In my experience this implies an expansion of awareness. In the busyness of everyday life we often have a goaldirected awareness, running from task to task, ruminating about the past or the future. Entering spaces where it is possible to slow down and notice what is really going on in body and mind, creates access to other parts of awareness than the focused and goaldirected awareness. 

Connecting with the periphery of awareness and naming what we notice there, makes it possible to get to know the more complex and unknown layers of our experience. Psychologically this may be seen as a movement into the shadow, into the unconscious parts of us which are unknown to us. In a transpersonal perspective this is also a gateway to connecting with the collective psyche, a larger consciousness which is beyond our historical individual selves. In other words, paying attention in the present moment to body sensations, emotions and thoughts, may lead to openings into deeper emotional, spiritual and transpersonal states of being.  

In Rosen method therapy and in Relatefulness group meditation there is an emphasis on awareness around the intention of words in the practice. Often the intention will be to connect the words to the immediate experience, to what is alive here and now. This intention will sometimes be expressed as not "going into story", in other words, not apply the words as a mean to avoid experiencing what is alive in body and mind here and now, but practicing allowing words to connect with the aliveness in the now. This may be challenging because what we experience in the now is constantly changing, and we cant control what will unfold in our immediate experience, so naming it means exposing the unfinished and vulnerable parts of ourselves. There is however magic lying dormant in creating the bridge between words and the everchanging present  experience, it often feels like a gateway into the unknown where there are endless possibilities and potential for cocreation. 

In a perspective from the psychologist Robert Kegan, noticing and naming previous unknown aspects of ourselves may also imply psychological growth and development, because naming something makes it an object for awareness, something to explore and look into, and hence creates more space and freedom to choose around it. The philosopher Martha Nussbaum writes about this in the article "Why practice needs ethical theory", where she argues that naming experience, as philosophers do with ethical theory, is necessary to be able to criticize and improve practice.

The departure point of this post is my love for words as a way to connect with my self and others, and a fascination with how we in mind-body connecting practices like Relatefullness are practicing naming what we notice, and how this makes it possible to move into deeper layers of experience in the periphery of our awareness. Expanding awareness like this give access to experiences which are beautiful and scary, and they may have a numinous quality and transformational potentiale. Here is where our higher wisdom and guiding and healing resources are at play. Here are the wounds and pain we dont want to know of, and the sources of our intuition and creative powers. Practicing naming what is going on in these more remote areas of the psyche makes the beauty of our souls and the consciousness we are a part of more visible to ourselves and others. The practice of naming immediate experience, to speak from our souls and authenticity beyond or underneath the habitual patterns of thoughts which are a product of culture and society, may in this perspective be seen as a work of transforming ourselves and hence creating a more hopeful future.