Before we can engage with the world around us, we first need to know that it is there. Most of us are aware that our senses filter, interpret and censor our experience, boiling it down to something limited and familiar enough for us to deal with but we do not fully realise how little of reality we actually perceive. Awareness is among the first principles we teach in the Golden Flower School of t’ai chi. It is a challenging task that requires perseverance, openness, trust and patience. In order to increase physical awareness, the body and mind must become unhurried and relaxed, one of the reasons why most of t’ai chi training is performed at a slow pace. By paying attention to the body we can discover a great deal about how we use it. In class, we start with becoming aware of our physical sensations, starting with our breathing, the beating of our heart, then experiencing each part of our body and paying attention to the details of what we feel. Once physical awareness has been established, we move on to experiencing our emotions and our mind.
Awareness is being totally immersed in what is happening, inside and outside our mind; it is about feeling rather than just thinking, about seeing and hearing rather than looking and listening. It is awareness that we fall into when we stop trying to get somewhere and allow ourselves to be where we are and with whatever we are feeling right now. Awareness itself is the teacher, the student, and the lesson.
Practising awareness every day brings me closer to understand how I function, finding out who I am and how I can improve my health and every way of life.
