We turn our consciousness to practice ourselves. The principle of awareness, embodied through the art of comprehending oneself. Benefits of Mindful Living

Let everything arise from your awareness. And the miracle of mindfulness is that without saying anything, without doing anything, it simply dissolves everything that is ugly in you, turning it into beauty.
Bhagwan Rajneesh

A conversation about awareness is a conversation about you, because there is only awareness in the world, and it is at the center of the human being. The rest just obscures our visibility. Therefore, in order to return to the center, to understanding our true essence, some effort will be required in the form of exercises aimed at awakening consciousness.

Mindfulness, or awakening consciousness

Mindfulness, the awakening of consciousness by noticing minimal changes in the physical, emotional and mental planes, is practiced in psychology. But the very concept of mindfulness was not an invention of psychological science at all, but is a borrowed concept that originates from the practices of ancient philosophical teachings.

Psychology skillfully applies this concept to create positive changes in the psycho-emotional state of a person and, therefore, uses it as an applied method for correcting the psyche, forgetting that awareness can and in fact is valuable in itself. It is a thing in itself, but not in the sense of its unknowability, but in the fact that it is valuable in itself, regardless of whether we know about its existence or not. She is.

If we accept awareness as an integral fact of existence, then we let it into our lives, enlivening and filling the world around us with meaning. If we do not recognize the concept of awareness, it nevertheless does not cease to exist in reality, but at the same time our life flows in an unconscious way, by inertia. A person is more than a set of physiological and mental functions. He experiences the world through awareness. The more aware he is, the more everything becomes open to him. It’s good that people are increasingly thinking about this and developing their ability to understand through various methods and technician.

Mindfulness techniques and mindfulness practice

There is a whole sea of mindfulness techniques; The main thing is to choose those that suit you best. Most spiritual practices are aimed at developing awareness. We can say that one of the most important goals of practice is the development of maximum awareness, otherwise no further progress along the path of discipleship seems possible.

An adept of a particular school or teaching must learn to be self-aware. This refers to awareness of the physical, emotional and mental body, that is, the first 3 human bodies out of 7, which form the physical-energetic essence of a person. Self-awareness implies the following:

awareness of your body (movements, condition, temperature, bodily sensations, etc.),
awareness of emotions (their source, color, development and attenuation, change, etc.),
awareness of thoughts (origin, development, transformation, transition from one to another).

Yoga provides a wide field for the practice of mindfulness. You can start at any level to begin to develop awareness. One of simple ways for a beginner it will be the practice of yogic asanas. They create awareness not only of their own physical body, but also psychological state. Every time you perform, your consciousness is focused on those parts of the body that are most occupied in one position or another.

This is essentially one of the mindfulness exercises that psychologists recommend. They say that you need to change your usual rhythm of life or choose other methods of performing those tasks and actions that you usually don’t even pay attention to. Let's say you are drawing right hand, since you are right-handed, you need to try to perform this action with your left hand. The direction of your consciousness will immediately change.

It's the same in yoga. You usually sit on a chair or armchair. You get used to it and don’t focus on it anymore. In order to become aware of the process, take the Vajrasana pose. It seems like nothing complicated, you sit on the floor and feel good, but it’s unusual. From this, consciousness becomes absorbed in this process. Attention is drawn to the posture itself, the position of the arms, legs, and sensations in the knees.

Awareness of the emotional sphere in yoga practice

Emotional awareness is also practiced most naturally in yoga. In the first stages of practice, you will notice your feelings emerging at the moment of performing asanas, without focusing on them. You simply let them be, arise and fade away just as naturally. Eventually you should come to the point where emotions no longer play a big role. These are just emotions - the psychological response of our body to external stimuli. Yes, these are not even emotional impulses, as people prone to romantic feelings usually characterize an influx of emotions. This mental changes, closely related to chemical reactions occurring in the body.

Golden and silver Age literature has taught us to treat the emotional sphere with special reverence, but for our purposes of achieving awareness, it is better to immediately put things in their places. Let us leave the description of wonderful or terrifying feelings for writers, and we ourselves will turn to their conscious observation. The mere fact that you begin to be aware of the emergence of your feelings and emotions will reduce their uncontrollable flow and stop uncontrollable reactions.

Yoga effectively works with the emotional body. Concerning thought process, then there is hardly any practice that can compete. In both of them, special attention is paid to the concentration of thought, the direction of the thought flow in the right direction. First, they work to make thoughts fully conscious, clearing this process of the taint of internal criticism, and at the next stage they move on to stopping the thought process through the practice of deep meditation.

How to Develop Mindfulness: Mindfulness Exercises

To give the reader the opportunity to experiment, let's look at a few exercises that can be used daily. They are not directly related to the practices of spiritual teachings, but will nevertheless prepare you for them if you want to do them in the future.

This list could be supplemented, but with practice you will learn to create exercises for developing awareness in real life. In the next section, we will move on to look in more detail at some of the techniques for developing mindfulness described above.

Exercises to Awaken Awareness Using Attention

The essence of mindfulness training is to devote all of yourself to what you are doing at a certain moment in time, to avoid switching attention. If it jumps to another object, return it back and calmly continue to study, observing your actions, the sensations and thoughts that arise in the process. This way you will be practicing conscious thinking at the same time.

Awareness can be directed to both thoughts and movements. This even leads to an expansion of awareness, bringing it to a more high level, while switching attention to another activity or object contradicts the practice of awareness, since attention is scattered, and the key to the practice of awareness lies precisely in the direction of attention. In fact, you are taking your first steps in the practice of meditation, perhaps without even knowing it.

Conscious attention when communicating with an interlocutor is expressed in the fact that you do not evaluate him, as we are usually used to doing, but turn off the critic inside and switch your attention to awareness of what your interlocutor is wearing, how he speaks, how he gestures, or what he is holding in his hand. hands, etc. You need to completely capture his image and at the same time become aware of your thoughts and feelings during the process of observing your interlocutor.

Concentration of attention directed at an object greatly develops awareness, but is perhaps difficult at the beginning of practice precisely because of the simplicity of its implementation. You need to pick up a small object - something that is familiar to you well. It could be keys, a watch, a mobile phone, etc. After that, you begin to examine this item, noticing all its smallest details. Some may find this boring, but by being able to focus your attention on an ordinary thing, you will easily develop not only the ability for deep directed concentration, but also lay an excellent foundation for further practice of directed attention, known in the yogic tradition as dharana.

Conscious vision is very close to the technique described above, but the emphasis in this exercise is slightly shifted. You don't look at one object completely, you choose some aspect to focus on only. For example, while walking down the street, mentally set yourself the task of noticing and concentrating only on the faces of passing people for several minutes, or noticing and finding the shade of a certain color. Try to notice and realize as many occurrences of this shade in the world around you as possible.

Developing mindfulness through the practice of mindful movement exercises

By conscious movement we mean a process when your attention is completely focused on performing certain actions in the present. You can walk, fully concentrating on the rhythm of your steps, awareness of the contact of the soles of your shoes with the surface on which you are walking. It's very easy and exciting at the same time. We are usually not aware of this process, so when you direct your attention only to it, you will see how unusual it is.

You can also experiment with becoming aware of the sensations you get from touching objects: how they feel, whether they are warm or cold, how your hand feels; and at the same time observe yourself - how you react to sensations. This practice of training awareness through movement automatically eliminates combining tasks.

If you devote yourself to one thing, then you simply are not able to do one more thing at the same time. Theoretically and even practically this is possible in everyday life. People do this every now and then, but in awareness exercises this would be nonsense, since the very nature of awareness excludes internal rushing and combining things.

State of mindfulness in everyday life

A state of awareness can be cultivated through directing attention to certain aspects of life, as well as through exercises and spiritual practices. In your daily life, practicing mindfulness will help you see things differently and make your life more interesting, not to mention that you may suddenly have talents that you never knew you had.

Often the development of awareness is accompanied by the discovery of creative abilities in a person, and a craving for creative self-realization appears. This is nothing more than a manifestation of the highest spiritual principle of a person on the physical plane. How else can it manifest itself if we live in a three-dimensional reality. We cannot get by with figurative-mental creation alone; we need to transfer images, embody them in physical world- through art, reading philosophical literature or engaging in spiritual practices.

The principle of awareness, embodied through the art of self-awareness

No matter how surprising it may seem, spiritual practices are very closely intertwined with creativity, since it is aimed at creating oneself: cleansing one’s self-image from everything unnecessary, disidentifying with some general stereotypes, finding and knowing one’s true essence and purpose.

Another way to express this is in the words of Oscar Wilde: “The purpose of life is self-expression. To manifest our essence in its entirety is what we live for. And in our age people have become afraid of themselves.”

We need to stop being afraid to explore the inner essence of ourselves, come as close as possible to it, become aware of ourselves and understand that we are awareness itself. We and awareness are one and the same. There is nothing in life except awareness. Everything that exists in the world is its manifestation. Since we are aware, it means that it exists for us. If we were not aware, then this would not have happened for us. On the one hand, this is an amazing conclusion, and yet many ancient spiritual teachings shared this idea. The identity of Brahman with Atman in Vedanta philosophy, the denial of the very existence of the “I” in Advaita, Buddhist dissolution in nirvana - these are concepts based on the principle of awareness.

Ancient thinkers long ago solved the riddle of the meaning of life - it lies in the awareness of everything and everyone, in the multifaceted, absolute comprehension and application of this concept of being. Therefore, we cannot even divide the concept of awareness into theoretical and practical. This is one of those phenomena where the theoretical component can only be understood through the practical aspect.

Be aware of yourself and the whole world will open up to you!

Hello, friends. I have already written about how, thanks to it, your life improves many times over, and you become healthy and happy people.

Today I will tell you exactly how to train mindfulness in everyday life, I will give effective exercises for awareness, in a word, I will teach you how to achieve it in order to receive all the bonuses of this state of consciousness.

We constantly worry about the future, we cannot forget the bad past, we are always afraid of something, angry, offended, and so on ad infinitum. All this leads not only to mental problems, but also to physical illnesses. As they say: “All diseases come from nerves.” We are ruled by thoughts and emotions stuck in our heads; they, and not we ourselves, decide what our life will be like.

If a person, for example, is very nervous during an interview, it means that emotions are clouding his head and preventing him from thinking rationally. He has no self-control and usually fails an important meeting. And many such examples can be given. We simply do not live consciously and do not know how to control our thoughts, feelings and emotions. Almost all of a person's problems are due to his unawareness.

Get out of this hell, wake up, improve your life, become healthy and happy man Only awareness will help us.

And you will learn how to achieve it from this article.

Awareness comes gradually

Mindfulness is special condition consciousness, in which we do not wander in the chaos of thoughts and emotions, but are in the current moment, here and now. We begin to clearly understand everything, but most importantly, we become aware of our real self. Or you can say, it awakens in us. As a result, we go beyond the psyche and can look at its manifestations from the outside. This immediately solves many problems. Uncontrollable negative emotions, which previously destroyed us from the inside, leading to illness, finally cease to have power over us and gradually dissolve.

It all seems clear and sounds beautiful. But it will not be possible to gain awareness right away, “at the behest of a pike, at my will.” This is a workout and the results will not be immediate. Our consciousness must get used to working more productively, development will be gradual. The habit of living unconsciously is deeply rooted in us and it takes time to change it. You cannot gain awareness right away. This is a process, and the growth of awareness can go on endlessly. You can’t say that a person has become as smart as possible and that’s all. You can develop your mind throughout your life. So it is with awareness. At first we are aware a little, then more, even more, and so on.

But don't be alarmed. You don’t have to be super conscious to improve your life. Already your first efforts will bear fruit, negative emotions and uncontrolled internal dialogue will significantly decrease. And having felt all the charm of this state, you will be happy to increase the power of awareness. For you, such work on yourself will be easy and relaxed, you will like it. And someday your awareness will increase so much that you will simply be surprised how much your life has improved. “How did I live before without her,” you say to yourself.

But first you have to work hard. There is no way without this.

Where to begin?

And you need to start by removing the importance of your thoughts and emotions.

The fact is that we are very strongly linked to them. And such a thing as a sense of self-importance is to blame for everything.

A separate article will be devoted to it. Now the main thing is to understand that this feeling leads a person to pride, selfishness, stubbornness, disrespect for other people, and placing oneself at the center of the whole world. Feeling important actually has both pros and cons. Without it, we would not be able to interact normally with people or defend our opinions. But excessive self-importance actually leads to big problems, gives rise to many negative emotions, and blinds us from true vision peace. What we are interested in now is that due to a sense of self-importance, a person is strongly attached to his feelings, thoughts and emotions. He considers them unshakable, very important, unchanging, and not subject to criticism. “I said so, that’s it, it’s the law.” "My opinion is unshakable." “My thoughts and emotions are me, they are important and unchanging.” All this leads to the fact that a person considers his character, his reactions, his entire psyche as a very important part of himself that cannot be changed. Even if he is not happy with his character, he still believes that nothing can be done about it. This is also important.

The first step towards awareness is to reduce your sense of self-importance. To do this, you need to change your worldview and understand what I am about to say.

Our thoughts, feelings and emotions are actually not as important as they seem to us. This importance was invented by us, other people look at our character completely differently, they don’t care about us. But most importantly, all manifestations of the psyche are just a program that exists in our head and which can be erased and replaced with a new one. It is only a part of ourselves, but it is not us. We are actually something more than all these thoughts and emotions.

Learn to listen to other people's opinions. Not only your own, but also their thoughts deserve attention. Try to understand what the other person wants. Stop arguing, maybe your opponent is actually right.

Just stop, stop being proud and not seeing anyone around. Look at other people with understanding and respect.

Maybe you don’t want it, you’re not used to it, but try it. You want to become conscious and change your life. At first it will be difficult and you will have to change yourself.

Such a change in worldview leads to the fact that a person stops, calms down his pride a little, pauses the internal mental conversation and begins to notice at least something around him, stops being stubborn like a sheep. And here the so-called pause in response appears, the key to awareness.

To come to awareness, you need to find this pause in reaction within yourself. Or, you could say, you just need to stop the world.

A person is constantly in a hurry to somewhere, doing something, spinning through life like a squirrel in a wheel. Maybe this is all good, but it leads to the fact that his internal dialogue is constantly working, without stopping for a second. We are always thinking about something, making plans for the future, imagining what will happen next, remembering past events, reacting emotionally to events, and so on ad infinitum. This has become a habit and has led to the fact that we are constantly attached to our thoughts, emotions, and our ego. The real self is in a sleepy state.

A person's attention constantly jumps like a mad monkey from one object to another, unable to focus on one thing.

There is no talk of any awareness in such conditions.

All this led to an unconscious reaction to the surrounding reality. A person lives like a robot, obeying the programs programmed in his head.

The formula is: stimulus-response. All! And these reactions are already in our brain, and we always react the same way. Our life is the result of such programs and we are not able to change it. And the world that we observe is also the result of the work of the same programs. We look at the world through the prism of our ego. You can read more about this.

But we can stop the habitual reaction, which means we can change our lives. Changing your life starts with changing your thinking. Change your thoughts and your life will change. But the world around us will also change. If we stop, for example, being angry with people and seeing everyone as enemies, then we will come across more good people. To change the world, to rebuild it, you must first stop the old world, stop the old reaction to the situation. To do this, you need to insert one more link into the stimulus-response formula: a pause, leading to freedom of choice. A new formula emerges: stimulus - pause (freedom of choice, stop) - and only then a reaction, but it will be conscious, and not automatic. This is stopping the world, stopping the habitual reaction, stopping the internal dialogue, awareness.

That is, before the reaction occurs, and we react habitually, there is a pause. We stop, stop the internal dialogue, conscious attention turns on, which itself will decide how to react in the current situation. We are transforming from robots into conscious people.

The techniques and exercises described below will help you come to such a stop and better understand what it all is.

Exercises and techniques that lead to awareness

To make the task easier and quickly achieve awareness in everyday life, you need to insert one more value into the above formula. Remembering to be mindful. It turns out like this: stimulus-remembering-pause-reaction.

And for beginners even this scheme: remembering-stimulus-remembering-response.

That is, your path to awareness begins with the fact that you must, either on a schedule, or by a reminder on your phone or something else, remember that you must be aware and not drown in the routine of internal dialogue.

You must deliberately find time to practice throughout the day.

Practice at work

Set several alarms on your phone to remind you to be mindful work time. If possible, set aside 5 minutes every hour or 2 hours. Step away from the everyday hustle and bustle, take a break from work. Leave all problems, unresolved matters for a while, 5 minutes “will not do you any good.”

Look carefully at your palm, consider all the lines on your palm. Feel it, imagine that it is hot, then cold, play with the sensations. Mindfulness means that we can calmly direct our attention to some object without being distracted by extraneous thoughts.

Take a look at the objects around you, look out the window, what you see on the street. Scan your eyes with everything that surrounds you. The main thing is to look at everything without judgment, without thinking about objects, that is, not to include internal dialogue, the work of the mind, but simply observe.

At first you won't be able to do this. Despite the apparent simplicity of these mindfulness sessions, they give very good results and lay the foundation because of your awareness. But because of this simplicity, the practitioner does not attach importance to such practice, skips it, and considers it frivolous. Thoughts like this begin to creep into my head: “I’m doing nonsense, I’d rather get busy, I won’t waste time on mindfulness sessions.”

Therefore, overcome yourself and first practice through effort, be disciplined. You will enjoy these breaks from work later. They will give you rest and relieve your head well. After this, your productivity will only increase.

The next stage of practice at work will be the ability to observe those thoughts that will creep into your head and interfere with awareness. A person is not used to just observing the world around him without evaluation. As soon as you start doing this, your restless mind will try to return your attention to the usual course of life's bustle. He will want to think about current problems again, will discourage you from practicing, and so on. If you can step back from these thoughts and observe them, if you catch yourself again thinking about something rather than observing your palm or other objects, then the power of your awareness will increase many times over. As soon as you realize that you are thinking again, do not fight your thoughts, but simply move away from them, observing from the side and again, without being distracted by them, engage in practice. Be aware and observe everything that is happening around you.

After you start to succeed at something, you can add observation of your body. Walk your attention throughout your body. Look, you probably have some parts of your body that are tight due to the specifics of your work. Maybe you sit in one position at the computer a lot or strain your eyes a lot. Close your eyes, relax them, and also take a comfortable position and relax your whole body. Look consciously at the areas muscle tension and relax them. In a word, relax, take a break from work, but now do it more consciously, without being distracted by thoughts, but calmly observing parts of the body. Believe me, after such sessions, I repeat, your productivity at work will increase. If possible, relax while lying down, scanning your body with your attention, try doing or. You can read about these wonderful techniques by following the link; they also increase your awareness.

Mindfulness while eating

The more you organize such mindfulness sessions, the faster its power will grow. Mindfulness can be applied to any situation. For example, a person has such a bad habit as eating food quickly, while talking, watching TV and thinking about something all the time.

If we are mindful, then we do what we do without being distracted by extraneous internal dialogue. In fact, if we eat like this, we not only lose awareness, but also undermine our health. Be sure to read about this in the article about. Unconscious and rapid swallowing of food inevitably leads to illness gastrointestinal tract. The worst thing is when you eat and at the same time experience negative emotions. This is a direct road to gastritis, and then stomach cancer.

Learn to eat mindfully.

Before swallowing food, smell it and feel how pleasant it smells. Place a piece of food in your mouth. Feel the taste, understand that you like it. Chew your food thoroughly, and don’t think about anything else. Swallow the food and feel how it enters your stomach. It tastes good and makes you feel good. If you do everything right, you will see how your restless mind prevents you from consciously eating. Extraneous thoughts will begin to creep into your head. This is our habit, an unconscious state. Catch yourself thinking and not practicing again. After this, calmly turn your attention to food and continue the practice. After consciously eating, you will feel the benefits of such a meal, a pleasant state in your stomach, and you will be surprised that you are full much faster.

Mindful shower

You can use such an interesting practice as a mindful shower.

After a working day, in order to wash away all the negativity, while taking a shower, do not dwell on the events of the past day in your head, but simply feel how the streams of water touch you, watch how the water flows over your body and you feel good about it. Monitor your bodily reaction, how your body reacts if you take and change the temperature of the water. The combination of a contrast shower and a mindful shower will only benefit you, improve your health and increase the power of awareness.

Unload your brain before bed

Internal dialogue prevents us from being conscious, and therefore, at the first opportunity, we need to reduce the power of its influence on us. The most the right time for this purpose it is going to bed. Before falling asleep, take a comfortable lying position and try to relax without thinking about anything. You can bring your attention to your body and relax areas of tension. This simple technique will make your sleep healthier and also increase your awareness. You can read how to fall asleep correctly and achieve healthy sleep. You can also practice yoga nidra or relax in shavasana before bed.

Many people don't know how to truly listen to music. Basically, they turn it on as a background to avoid boredom and to fill the emptiness in their soul. But they don’t hear it, they don’t feel it, because there is no conscious listening to music. Put on headphones so that you are not distracted by extraneous sounds, turn on your favorite music, no matter what.

Completely immerse yourself in the music, listen to it without being distracted by extraneous thoughts. Isolate the sound of a particular instrument from the general sound, for example, listen to what rhythm the drums produce, how beautiful a guitar or other instrument sounds. Feel how beautiful music really is if you listen to it well and listen without distractions. You will find a lot of interesting things in this practice, you will definitely like it. Give it a try.

Concentration and deconcentration

There are special psychotechniques that significantly train attention and develop awareness. This is concentration and deconcentration.

Concentration is prolonged, one-pointed attention on one object. Deconcentration is when we disperse our attention and observe several objects at once. When we practiced the above techniques, for example, looking at the palm of our hand, we were essentially practicing concentration. You can simply enhance this technique by choosing an object and looking at it for a long time, concentrating all your attention on it. You've probably heard about the famous Eastern technique of looking at a candle. Now you understand that there is nothing mystical about it and that in fact it is needed to develop awareness and awaken the real Self. You yourself can choose any object and train your attention by trying to look at it for a while without being distracted by extraneous thoughts and other objects. Many people draw a dot on a white sheet of paper, place it in front of them and look at it.

And to apply deconcentration, try looking at an object to your left, to your right, and then at both objects at the same time. This will be deconcentrated attention. It is often used in life. For example, when we drive a car, to drive safely, we deconcentrate and immediately try to observe several objects on the road: signs, traffic lights, pedestrians, and so on. The special deconcentration technique differs from examples from life in that we do it more carefully, without being distracted by internal dialogue.

Why do such techniques lead to awareness? The thing is that in life the usual work of our attention is that it constantly jumps from one object to another, unable to concentrate. This is because it is linked to our restless internal dialogue, our psyche and mind. They command our attention where to direct our gaze. This is our constant bustle of life. Also, deconcentration in life is not clear and complete. If we further give an example about driving a car, we often do not notice the real situation on the road because we are distracted by extraneous thoughts.

When we specifically use concentration and deconcentration, we seem to pull attention out of the shackles of the mind and force it not to obey the internal dialogue. And what exactly draws attention. I said that We we pull it out. In fact, this is what the real Self, our awareness, does. By specifically directing attention somewhere, we become disidentified with mental chatter, do not react as usual out of habit, and therefore awaken our will, our conscious, chosen perception. This is how we develop awareness.

You will see for yourself that you cannot focus your attention on one object for a long time. The internal dialogue strives to capture our attention again, and we again begin to think, losing concentration. If you are absorbed in the mind, you have lost awareness. Once you understand what you are thinking, you reawaken your awareness and calmly return your attention to the object. This is how awareness is trained. And the longer you can observe one object, that is, concentrate, the stronger the power of your awareness will be. Therefore, you train to concentrate for a long time at least once a day, the main thing is that this happens regularly without long, several-day breaks.

Mindfulness in stressful situations

All the above techniques are good, but as soon as you find yourself in a stressful situation, negative emotions come upon us so strongly that we immediately forget about practice, about a conscious state and give in under their onslaught. Emotions consume us. This is why we must train awareness specifically in difficult situations, only then will you be able to withstand any stress and not lose your head in any circumstances.

For example, you have an important meeting and you are attacked by fear. The most important thing here, until the moment when the fear is not yet very strong, is to remember that you need to be conscious, that is, apply the formula that I spoke about: stimulus (emotion) - memory - pause - conscious reaction. And to be aware means not to be consumed by fear, but to observe it. It is useless to fight with him; fight is a form of cooperation. By trying to get rid of fear, you will come to even greater tension and only intensify it. You need to try to relax and look at your fear from the outside. You are watching him. That is, when you come to a meeting, you understand that you are afraid, you see how your body is shaking, and you begin to look from the outside at your fear and bodily reactions associated with fear. If you can do this, fear will no longer cloud your head much, and you will behave adequately and will not fail the meeting. It is unlikely that you will be able to completely get rid of it, but sometimes a little awareness is enough to save the situation. Therefore, it’s okay if you are not good at observing emotions at first. The main thing in a stressful situation is not to lose your head, but to remember that you need to be aware. Over time, the power of your awareness will increase and you will be less nervous, gain confidence and stress resistance.

Take up meditation

There is no better tool for developing awareness than. Why is that?

What I talked about above is awareness in everyday life. This is what we need. What is the point of mindfulness if we don’t know how to apply it in real life conditions. Ideally, it should be always and everywhere, in any situation, at any time.

But meditation is actually also mindfulness, but used in a comfortable environment, when you are not distracted by anyone or anything. Meditation is the training of conscious attention. When we sit down to meditate, we disidentify with our psyche and begin to observe thoughts, feelings and emotions from the outside. In meditation we awaken the real Self, true awareness. And the greater the distance between the psyche and the real Self, the stronger the power of your awareness. That is, the more and better you meditate, the better you will be able to be mindful in everyday life.

But, I repeat, it happens under ideal conditions, and when you start applying mindfulness in everyday life, you fail. Therefore, meditation is needed to feel awareness, separate the real self from the psyche, calmly feel this state in silence, and increase the power of conscious attention. And then train attention always and everywhere in any situations. This is an interdependent process.

And only in this way will you become truly conscious people, which means healthy and happy.

Let's say, in order to learn to speak well foreign language, you need to live abroad or constantly communicate with someone who speaks this language. But first you need to learn the basics of speech, remember a lot of words. So it is with awareness. First, learn to look at your psyche in a calm environment, in silence, feel the basics of awareness, and only then, go out into everyday life.

Of course, you can learn to be mindful without meditation, but your progress will take a very long time, and many will never be able to truly experience a conscious state.

The techniques and exercises that I gave above are actually not that difficult. I have also already talked about many of them on the pages of this blog. For example, I already wrote, . Control over emotions lies in their awareness.

But the difficulty is that you need to believe in them and at first force yourself to practice constantly, every day. You'll have to use willpower and force yourself. But later, when you get the first results and the power of your awareness increases, you will like the techniques of mindfulness, everything will be easy and joyful for you. This soul of yours will demand rest from the everyday hustle and bustle and enjoy a conscious state.

These exercises and techniques will be enough for your life to begin to change in better side.

I will also say that you should not strive for constant awareness, to always be here and now. This is a more advanced practice performed by many spiritual seekers. In order for your life to change for the better, it is enough to include awareness in stressful situations or when you need to change something in your character, change your outlook on things. And also periodically arrange daily sessions mindful observation using the above exercises and techniques. Well, don’t forget to practice meditation. Over time, your awareness will become stronger, and it will gradually be introduced into other moments of your life, improving your life more and more.

What results should you expect? What I talked about in the first article about awareness will come. There are many bonuses that can be listed, and one article is unlikely to be enough for this.

Health will improve, many diseases of the body and mind will go away. Stress resistance will increase. All those negative emotions that prevented you from living fully and achieving your goals will cease to dominate you and will gradually disappear. You become free from uncontrollable manifestations of the psyche. Now you make your own choice about what your life will be like. Previously, this was done for you by emotions lodged inside you, programs instilled and hardwired into your brain, and painful memories from childhood.

But most importantly, personal strength or fortitude will gradually increase. It's an incredible feeling. Be sure to read about it by following the link.

The growth of personal power is due to the fact that all vital energy, previously consumed by negative emotions, now fuels the body and our soul. The soul, previously imprisoned, finally spreads its wings and flies to freedom. We feel this as an increase in spiritual strength. What could be more important? Intuition and self-confidence increase, you stop making mistakes. In a word, become healthy and happy people. Learn to be mindful in order to achieve this.

And that's all for today.

And in conclusion, a strong song for you, performed by strong people in a burst of fortitude. This is so that you understand what personal power is. But for this you need to listen to it consciously, without being distracted by your stupid annoying thoughts. Move away from them at least now. The song is worth it.

Much of what we do, think and feel throughout the day is based on habits.

The more often I go to work along this route, the easier it will be for me to take the same route next time, because each time I remember it better and better in both body and mind. The more often I respond to my parents' words in a certain way, the more likely it is that in the next situation I will react to them in the same way again. The more often I think about my work, about politics, about the weather outside, about my husband or wife in a certain way, the more likely it is that when these thoughts pop up in my mind again, they will be about the same.

Our body is constantly looking for opportunities to optimize energy consumption, and if it can switch something into automatic mode, then it does it with pleasure. When we have already learned to walk, we do not need to apply our attention to it every time. When we have already learned to drive a car, we no longer need to worry so much about all the details of the driving process, and we can direct our attention to the conversation or what is being said on the radio. When we have already learned to go to the same cafe every day for lunch, then we no longer need to remember where to get a tray, and if we have already studied the menu well, then we no longer even need to choose what to order. We do all this absolutely automatically.

But what do we lose?

We lose at least the following:

Presence Skill in every moment of our lives, putting it on autopilot instead. In other words, we lose the opportunity to live.
Freshness of perception, because we are content with the patterns and patterns of behavior we once learned. In other words, we lose clarity and adequacy.
Possibility of choice, since automatic behavior involves reaction instead of conscious action. In other words, we are losing the opportunity for development.

At the level of the brain and neural connections, each action or judgment paves a “path” between certain groups neurons. And the more these actions are repeated, the wider and more well-trodden this “path” becomes. The rut becomes deeper, it becomes easier to get into it, and it becomes more and more difficult to get out.

If we want to live not on autopilot, but to be consciously present in every moment of our lives; if we want to be able to choose what we do and think in a given situation, we need to be attentive and open, receptive and calm. These qualities of the mind allow the neuroplasticity of the brain to be activated, and literally change our lives for the better.

How to remain mindful in everyday life? For this we need formal and informal practice.

Formal practice- this is actually the practice of mindfulness, in which we do only this: meditate. Sometimes with an object (for example, breathing), sometimes without an object (we just sit), but we do only that. We don’t wash dishes, we don’t eat, we don’t watch movies. Formal practice can be done while sitting, lying down or walking.
Informal practice awareness is, in fact, everything else, the rest of life. And the goal of our practice is not to build 10-15-20 minutes of meditation into the day, but to make any of our activities during the day a meditation.

Why is formal practice necessary?

Formal practice helps us set ourselves up for the day and/or end it with a clear and clear mind. This is the same hygiene of the mind as brushing your teeth is hygiene of the body.

In formal practice, we dive into concentration much deeper than during ordinary activities during the day, and therefore we can engage in in-depth development of mindfulness skills, which we then apply in various everyday situations.

A useful metaphor for formal practice is going to the gym. When you do the barbell chest press, you build muscle and develop your strength. At the same time, in ordinary life you will likely never need the chest press skill on its own. However, you will be much stronger and ready to take on any challenge. Likewise, formal meditation is an exercise in developing skills that we can then use in life.

Transition from formal to informal practice

The most important moment in formal practice is its last moments, when you need to move from sitting meditation to the next activities of the day. You don’t have to “take away” from meditation what you discovered there, but those states of concentration, clarity, peace, transparency of perception that you strengthened as a result of practice - there is no reason to lose them when moving on to your next activities.

At the end of the meditation, realize what positive states of consciousness you have at that moment.

If you are sitting with eyes closed- open them.
If you sit with an open mind, consciously focus on something.

In these actions, try not to lose the awareness that you have developed during formal practice.

Now, try to get up without losing these states of mind. Take a few steps.
Try next action, still maintaining these qualities of mind.

Track at what point and why will awareness begin to dissolve?

So, in formal meditation we develop those mindfulness skills that we can then use in life. As we develop these skills, we begin to feel and perceive more, think more clearly, live more vividly, experience our emotions more clearly, and maintain better contact with reality.

Nevertheless, awareness continues to flicker like a candle in a draft. She appears and disappears. We wake up and then fall asleep. To wake up more often, we need mindfulness triggers, or “alarm clocks.”

Mindfulness Triggers in Everyday Life

Mindfulness triggers are anything that helps us “wake up” and re-enter conscious contact with everything that is happening inside and outside of us. This is what either reminds us of awareness or helps us maintain it.

regular formal meditation practice

2. More often return attention to the sensations of the body. A simple option is to remember the posture of our body. This means at any moment in time when you remember this, become aware of the sensations that the body offers you in the position in which it is at that moment.

You sit?
How does this feel, not at the level of image (“I’m sitting on a chair”), but precisely at the level of feeling physical sensations?
You go? How does this verticality, straightness, instability feel?
You are lying down?
Are you slouched? Are your shoulders back?
What's going on with your hands? With jaws?

Attention to the body, attention in the body is the first step to a conscious life.

3. A special case of attention to the body, and at the same time the most important independent practice in itself - attention to breathing. This practice involves returning your attention to the sensations of your breath as often as possible.

Whatever you are doing at this moment (unless you are operating a complex technique), if you remember about breathing, turn your attention to these sensations and stay with them for one inhalation and one exhalation.

Just one breath. Then continue doing what you were doing. If you feel that you want, you can, you are ready to watch your breathing a little longer - for your health! It can be three or nine inhalations and exhalations.

At the same time, we are not only aware of our breathing, do not forget about it, complement our life with these sensations at this moment, but also take life into our own hands. The fact is that such attention to breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for relaxation and release from stress, for restoring energy, for conscious (not impulsive, not emotional) processing of incoming data.

Important, that we are not trying to breathe in any special way. When we bring our attention to our breath, we simply feel everything that arises naturally with the next inhalation and the next exhalation.

4. Scattering these moments of attention to breathing throughout the day creates brief moments of break and respite, in the truest sense of the word, in the flow of daily activities. And the important key here is not only in breathing, but also in the respite itself. Another great method for activating mindfulness in everyday life is pause.

It is impossible to learn conscious action if, before any action, we do not know how to simply be. If, along with any action, we do not know how to simply be. Be calm and attentive to what is happening.

Actually, this is what we do in the practice of meditation - we cultivate the skill of conscious presence in everything that happens, without trying to hold it back, push it away or suppress it. Therefore, you can safely treat such pauses during the day as mini-meditations. It doesn’t matter in what position, it doesn’t matter with with open eyes or with closed ones.

Take breaks throughout the day, breaks from the flow of things, and listen to the time. Just be.
For a few moments, a minute, a few minutes, just be present in the flow of changes - sounds appear and disappear around you, the picture before your eyes changes...
Images and thoughts appear and disappear inside you, another exhalation is replaced by another inhalation...
For a few minutes, just be with complete clarity and peace.

One, two, five, ten times a day.

5. We use external reminders. External means are any things or objects that can remind you to be mindful. Any means are suitable here, we will list only the most obvious:

Cards that you carry with you, with words and phrases that help you remember to be mindful.
The same cards that are placed around the house in any common places: by the kettle, by the mirror in the bathroom, on the toilet door, on the front door of the apartment, on the desktop, on the edge of the computer monitor, and so on.
"Reminders" on your phone. Mobile phone- This is an item that you almost always have with you. You can set several alarms, you can turn on random reminders throughout the day - just don't overdo it, frequent vibration or ringing can become annoying.
Meaningful phrase or symbol on the desktop of the computer.
Any bracelets, rings, ropes, knots, temporary tattoos. “Every time I see this ring, I remember breathing.”

Be creative and come up with what works for you! Invent!

6. We use anchor actions. In the previous method, we used some objects that would remind us of awareness, but here we “link” the memory to some specific actions during the day. It is important that this action is simple, not very frequent, and not very rare. The ideal case is when you perform this action 4-5 times a day.

For example,

“every time I leave the house”, “every time I walk up the stairs”, “every time I open the door”, “every time I hang up the phone”, “every time I go to the coffee machine” ...

awareness of the body, of what is happening around and inside is turned on.

Create the intention in the morning to use this particular anchor action today. Choose one thing. As soon as attention to this action becomes automatic, choose another anchor. If you want a more formal approach, choose one such activity per week. Let's say, "This week I'm going to be mindful every time I see a mirror."

Any actions can be mini-meditations. When we do not use action as a reminder of awareness, but actually practice “life as meditation”, performing these actions as a kind of formal practice.

Washing the dishes, brushing your teeth, tying your shoes, waiting for the computer to boot or the kettle to boil, making the bed, eating dinner - all this can be an example of such actions.

***
Any skill is developed through careful repetition. If we want to return attention to our actions during the day, then the most effective simulator will be an action or task that satisfies several conditions:

It repeats several times a day. If this is something that happens constantly, then we simply will not remember about awareness. If it's something that happens too rarely, then again, we'll be less able to remember to be attentive. We need something that is repeated, say, five or six times a day.
It repeats regularly, say, every few hours.
It lasts for a while, not too long (attention will get tired), but not too short (attention will not have time to establish itself).
It's something we actively do it's a process, which can occur both “automatically” and consciously.
It brings pleasure. It is important that the activity chosen as a “mindfulness trainer” is enjoyable, because mindfulness then triggers a positive feedback loop: the more mindful we are of the process, the more pleasure we get from it, and the more mindful we want to be.

As one of possible examples: All these conditions are ideally satisfied by nutrition.

Mindful Eating Practice

It's usually pleasant active process, a certain action that we regularly perform throughout the day, and each time for some relatively long time.

What to pay attention to while eating?

As always with mindfulness practices, this means that at the moment of eating, our attention is completely in this process. The expression “when I eat, I am deaf and dumb” did not appear by chance, because this rule helps awareness.

When I eat, my attention is completely focused on the sight, smell, feel of the cutlery or mug, taste and texture of the food. Attention is not in thoughts, not in conversation, not in plans, not anywhere else. It is in all those sensory events that are associated with the process of eating. Yes, and in sounds too, for example, in the crunch of the crust delicious bread. In the sensations on the tongue. The difference in taste at the beginning of chewing, in the middle, and at the end. The feeling of swallowing another portion. In the sensations in the stomach.

What other meditation actions can there be?

Short snacks and tea/coffee

An apple is great, but so are a cookie and a sandwich. The same goes for a mug of tea or coffee. Hand feel, mouth feel, sight, taste and smell. Chewing and swallowing sensation.

Water treatments- shower, brushing teeth, washing dishes.

In this scientific experiment, students were divided into two groups, and one was given the opportunity to simply wash the dishes, while the other was asked to do it with attention to what was happening. Those students who were offered mindful dishwashing later reported that subjectively, time passed faster, and they were more interested in it than their “unconscious” colleagues.

Hiking

hiking

Let's say, every morning you walk from home to the car, or to the subway, and you know that this is exactly the time that is only for you, only for meditation, only for exploring your feelings and the world around you as they are exactly at this time. morning.

Physical activity

Taoist practices

Advantage physical activity is that these are dynamic changes in sensations in the body, and they can be quite easily
monitor and be aware. There is research showing that if we pay attention to the sensation in our muscles while performing strength exercise, then this muscle develops better than if we are listening to music, a podcast, or watching an episode of our favorite TV series at that moment.

If we create several of these large “mindful practices” for ourselves throughout the day, carry out a daily formal practice, and use reminders and “anchors” of mindfulness in addition, then we are, by definition, already spending the day in presence, focus, clarity and balance.

Schedule

Order and routine help a lot in practice. If you have it in your life, great, use it to reinforce mindfulness.

Every morning after using the toilet, do you go brush your teeth? Great, that means you have a routine for the day.

Do you put the kettle on before your shower every morning? Great, then you can use this routine as a practice framework.

You don't need to think about the sequence of actions. This is a ceremony in which the sequence of actions is clear to you. You can shift your attention to something else - to the fact that you are present in all these actions through your organs of perception in each new moment. The same principle works for formal meditation practice.

A clear understanding of the place and time of practice: “here is my pillow in the corner, and here is my time - half an hour before breakfast” helps in making it regular.

It is good to reinforce the daily routine with a ritual beginning and ending of the day. How do you usually open the day? How do you complete it? There are no specific practices here. This could be consciously stretching in bed in the morning, and wishing all your family and friends health and happiness before going to bed. This can be setting up for the day using certain phrases, and ending the day by recapitulating the highlights of that day in memory. This could be paying attention to your breathing or body posture immediately after waking up, and observing your breathing as you transition to sleep. This could be an intention for the day, and an assessment of the past day.

This can and should be something of yours, something of your own, so come up with your own way of opening and closing every day, experiment, practice. It really works!

Ritual

A related topic to the previous one is ritual. Life as a ritual, actions as a ritual, as a ceremony of awareness. Ritual is not something religious or mystical. It is simply an action performed with a certain intention and attitude.

If you are now sitting reading these words at the computer, try “sitting as a ritual” and “reading as a ritual”...

Do you feel it’s all about your attitude to what’s happening? A ceremony of awareness means performing any action with feeling, with purpose, with alignment. With the routine mentioned above. With an understanding of the value and significance of all this.

Every morning after waking up I brush my teeth. Every morning before breakfast I sit down to meditate. Every time before I eat, I take three conscious breaths. Every day after work I walk down the street to the metro...

For most of us, the day is conveniently filled with such actions, which can be made ritualistic - and therefore conscious - by a special attitude towards them.

What is this attitude? Ritual. This can mean something different for everyone.

Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh suggests imagining that we are walking not on the sidewalk, but on the petals of living flowers. Or that we don’t wash dishes, but figurines of Buddhas. The key here is not to replace the real with the imaginary, but to change our attitude towards these actions.

How would I walk if there really was a carpet of fresh flowers under my feet?
How would I wash the dishes if they were really Buddha statues or photographs of my parents?

Right now, try to perform any action as a ritual, feel the taste of this relationship.

Experiment, come up with your own ways of life-as-ritual. Perhaps this is the understanding that every moment is unique and will never happen again. Perhaps this is a feeling of gratitude for life, manifested through any of our actions. Perhaps it's something else.

Experiment and come up with your own ways to reinforce mindfulness in everyday life. Perhaps some of the ideas I described in this article will help you. Or you will realize that something else works for you - great!

May your increased level of awareness benefit you and all those with whom you come into contact in life.

In this article I will share tips on how to how to develop awareness. The development of awareness sounds somehow painfully mysterious and enigmatic. At the same time, there is little mystery or enigma here; this is a very specific concept (I have already written on this topic in more in general terms, in the article, in this article I will try to touch on the specifics regarding awareness, based on an example, and also answer the question of how to develop awareness.

What does mindfulness mean? Let's try to figure this out right away. Awareness is the ability for a rational, mediated by consciousness, adequate analysis of external reality and internal subjective state, detached from emotions, the formation of behavior patterns based on conclusions from this analysis, the ability to track emotions and unconscious impulses of the psyche and the ability to resist them. In other words, awareness precedes any rational assessment and activity.

Example of mindfulness

I came up with the definition myself, so don’t scold me. Of course, I won’t leave it this way and will try to explain it with a specific example. Before we talk about how you can develop awareness, let’s talk once again about the nature of this quality in order to come to complete clarity. The main thing is to understand that awareness in many situations can precede some physical action. Let's give an example. You have an important meeting, a serious exam or an important job interview.

In general, this is a situation during which you experience nervousness. Here is a case of a mental reaction that is NOT characterized by awareness: you came to a conditional meeting, nervous and on an emotional high, you understand that there is nothing to be done about it, because you think that you know yourself well and because similar situations you usually worry and you will too in this one. Because of your nervousness, you get confused in the presentation/answers to the questions of the examiner/HR officer (although before that you spoke it out in your head and everything looked much more harmonious and logical).

You lose your thoughts and cannot retrieve the necessary information from your memory because you are worried. Your speech is confused and uncertain, your consciousness is not concentrated, you answer worse than you would if you weren’t nervous. As a result, the examiner/recruiter/business partner was not fully satisfied with your performance. HR concluded that you have low resistance to stress, the examiner noticed that you were worried and could attribute this to poor knowledge of the subject. As a result, you have achieved worst results than they could have gotten if they had been collected and calm.

How does mindfulness manifest itself?

Now I will give the opposite example of a conscious reaction to what is happening and your competent behavior resulting from this.

So you came to an interview, meeting, exam. You started to worry because the event is important. You know yourself well and understand that almost any person will experience stress in such circumstances, BUT only if they do nothing and leave it like that. You are well aware that worry is pointless, it does not give you any advantages, but only prevents you from achieving your goals. As a result, you may not get a good job or do poorly on the final exam, just because you couldn’t control yourself and thereby made a bad impression. So why should you worry? Not only is this pointless, but it can also cause harm! (This was ANALYSIS).

You bring your breathing in order, calm your heartbeat, calm down yourself, come to the conclusion that the outcome of the meeting will depend on how well you can hold yourself and how collected and focused you will be. You are already tuning into such a calm mood and an ideal model of your behavior appears in your head, which you plan to adhere to. You deeply value your ability to hold on and pull yourself together, because you believe that this is a sign of your mental strength and psychological discipline. And you intend to use this skill.

You don’t pay attention to natural anxiety, you go to our conventional meeting, if you haven’t achieved inner peace, then you try to at least portray it with a cold-blooded expression on your face, because you know that not only your state determines your facial expressions, but also vice versa: your facial expressions determine your state(I will write a separate article about this).

Behave well, speak confidently, if you forgot something, pause, calmly remember and reproduce it, and if you still don’t remember something, then don’t start to panic under the stern gaze of your colleagues/HR officers/teachers, but tactfully get out of the problem. Even if your knowledge of a subject leaves much to be desired, you will make a good impression on others by how confident, focused and calm you are.

Since you are relaxed and showing no signs of nervousness, you can compensate for your gaps in presentation with successful tactical tricks during the speech and good contact with the audience. (This was the same physical action) As a result, you got what you deserved, and maybe even more (if you managed to bribe the audience with your confidence and manipulate their attention, despite obvious errors in the presentation), successfully passed the exam or passed the interview.

Analysis and will

This is an example of awareness and the subsequent volitional impulse, designed to bring to life the behavior pattern created in the head. Here we observed an adequate, sober and balanced analysis of our emotions. Our experimental specimen did not succumb to feelings and nervousness, he showed ANALYSIS: he calmly and calmly laid him on the operating table and dissected the tension that had arisen in his mind, realized its nature, which was complete meaninglessness and uselessness.

And then, having drawn conclusions from the ANALYSIS, he formulated a model of his behavior in his head (I set myself up to be calm and confident, or at least pretend to be calm and confident) and moved on to action, which was expressed in attempts to correspond to the chosen model, when I calmed my nerves and went inside premises and calmly defended his position as a student/applicant/employee.

There may be a different outcome. Our subject realized that worries were pointless, tried to calm himself down, but due to lack of practice, he failed. Still, he was nervous and fidgeted in his chair. And then, after analyzing it again, I saw this as a problem area that would need to be worked on and promised myself to take measures so that this nervousness would not manifest itself in the future. Maybe he failed here or he didn’t achieve what he wanted because he couldn’t completely cope with anxiety, but in terms of self-development and awareness development he took a significant step.

He realized the nature of his anxiety, made absolutely correct conclusions about it, and set himself to help ensure that this did not manifest itself in the future. He did it distance yourself from your feelings and passions. And he intends to continue to work on himself and train willpower, strengthening the internal discipline of which he lacked in this situation. Even though it was not possible to cope with emotions, the hero of our thought experiment I no longer identified myself with my feelings!

And this is the most important thing! So don’t worry and don’t scold yourself if at first you don’t manage to resist your destructive, harmful emotions and in the end they will defeat you. The main thing is that you are always aware of these negative impulses, try to resist them and never give up, looking for new ways to defeat character weaknesses.

This example clearly illustrates that mindfulness can also be understood as a skill that causes you to stop identify with your desires, emotions, passions and fears. You begin to perceive it as something extraneous that still affects you, has power over you, but is not part of your personality and therefore can be controlled and trained. This is the power of awareness! Can you imagine what useful skill you will gain if you make an effort to achieve states of awareness!

You can have the habit of being carried away by feelings and excitement, completely surrendering to their power and thinking that these impulses are a logical extension of yourself and they stem from characteristic features your personality. You allow these feelings to spin and control you, to confuse your life, to confuse your understanding of yourself and others, to lead you away from your goal and move you away from its awareness.

But you can sensibly and soberly record the impulses that arise in yourself, which prevent you from living and achieving what you want. Be aware of them, make an effort of will to gain control over them and thereby live happily and in harmony with yourself, achieving the best for yourself, rejecting fears, anxiety and uncertainty!

Why is mindfulness needed?

In order not to be unfounded and not to limit myself to just one example, I will explain about some negative impulses that need to be realized and that need to be fought, I say, after which I will tell you how to train mindfulness.

What can cause a lack of awareness?

Nervousness, excitement, restlessness
Anger, irritability
Envy
Fear, anxiety, uncertainty
Depression, tendency to despondency, mental blues
Shyness, timidity, shyness, reticence
The influence of bad habits
Inability to adequately perceive criticism and the opinions of others
Other character flaws

Now I believe you understand that the need to develop awareness in order to analyze and then cope with the above-mentioned qualities is not determined by my personal preferences. Above you can see a list of things that really interfere or can interfere with the life of almost every person and not only! On the scale of humanity as a whole, these properties manifest themselves in the qualities of universal evil: social disasters, misunderstandings, conflicts, illnesses and deaths.

In order to be able to resist them, awareness alone is not enough (willpower, discipline, strength of character, spiritual independence and developed critical ability are required; how to develop all this - we’ll talk in this blog), but this is a necessary stage that allows you to calmly assess the emergence of these feelings , spiritually distance yourself from them and stop perceiving them as part of your personality.

Awareness reflects a person’s desire to live with reason, resist instincts, passions and vices, and make correct, informed decisions, strive for well-being for themselves and others, pacify anger and envy, think rationally and cope with prejudices. Increasing the degree of awareness is one of the key stages of self-development.

How to increase awareness

Now, finally, my presentation brings me to the answer to main question this article about how to increase awareness. Please excuse me for the long introduction before moving on to the practical part of the article. I would not have placed all this material here if I were not sure of its necessity for our understanding of what we mean by awareness as the same thing. After all, before talking about something, you need to define it and come to a common understanding.

So there is no better way to develop and train mindfulness than regular daily practice.
Just as the best way to learn to swim is to actually swim, there is also no more reliable way to increase awareness than training it. Meditation can be defined as the training, the practice of mindfulness. These are sessions during which you place yourself in a state of awareness and try in every possible way to stay in it.

In this state, you achieve complete concentration and fix your attention on one thing. You relax and begin to see the internal processes of thinking and the movements of feelings as if from the outside. All your attention freezes at one point from which you calmly observe what is happening inside, you are aware of this happening.

During meditation, you may be carried away by some thoughts or feelings, memories and the bustle of the current day, but you still try to concentrate on something and distance yourself from them. This distance, the distance between the point at which your will and attention is focused and your internal processes is the measure of your awareness!. And the longer and more correctly you meditate, the greater this distance becomes.

It should be clear and logical. I mean the very principle that I described above. I do not resort to sophisticated terminology, I do not try to describe the process of meditation from the point of view of the work of energy centers, subtle vibrations, etc. I describe this as I feel and understand it, based on the conclusions drawn from the results of this practice and its positive impact on me.

And if you don’t believe me, then try it yourself, it won’t take much time and effort (your strength will only increase), but I assure you, as you practice, you will feel the same as me, you will feel the beneficial effect of meditation and my reasoning will become valid for you. I consider the main advantage of my self-development system to be that many of its conclusions are not of an abstract theoretical nature, but can be easily tested in practice, which is what I encourage you to do in every possible way!

But in order to develop awareness, it is not enough just to meditate! Yes, meditation is where you should start, but then, when it bears its first fruits, you will need to undertake another set of mindfulness exercises, which include the following:

Meditate!
Try to be relaxed throughout the day. Maintain a calm state of mind.
Do not rush to succumb to sudden emotional impulses that lead to irrational actions. It is necessary to analyze the reasons for these feelings. If you are boiling inside, you should not immediately express it in action. Go out, calm down, cool your head and think things through.
Rest more often during the day, let your brain relax, think about something extraneous during such rest, not related to the realities of the current day. This will help you maintain distance and not let you get carried away by the whirlpool of routine.
Try to use your mind everywhere. In every little detail concerning your behavior, habits and relationships with people. You will notice that many of your actions that you are used to doing every day are not rational. Assess their impact on yourself and your life and select those that bother you. Work to eliminate them.
Constantly be aware of your well-being and condition, determine when you are tired, anxious or nervous. This is necessary either in order to quickly take measures to stabilize your state of mind, or in order not to do anything stupid (I’m on edge right now, I’ll go outside, catch my breath and put my thoughts in order or in this moment I'm in emotional trouble, so I'll put off making an important decision until later, when I've calmed down)
Analyze the causes of problematic situations; it often happens that you dragged yourself into a problematic situation and there is no point in complaining about the circumstances
Be honest with yourself about your motives and motivations

The development of awareness in practice is discussed in the second step, there are exercises that you can do to develop awareness.

Don't be upset if you can't complete all these steps. Learning to be relaxed and not give in to emotions is a very long and painstaking work that you still need to accustom yourself to. But as you practice meditation, you will find it easier to follow these recommendations. Also on this site I promise to reveal in more detail the components of this program to increase awareness.

Fulfilling these points not only helps you fight difficulties and understand the reasons for your actions, but also teach you to analyze, to the habit of looking at what is happening in oneself from the outside, which greatly contributes to the formation of awareness.

Don't take on too much! There is no need to strive to immediately overcome all your shortcomings and cope with the strongest and most uncontrollable emotional impulses. Start with little things, with trifles: don’t get nervous and don’t get angry when someone steps on your foot in the subway - close your eyes, concentrate and calm down, think about something pleasant. And gradually move from such trifles to global, most serious problems when you feel ready to solve them.

This is something like a gradual increase in weight when training in the gym: when starting to exercise, you do not start exercising with large weights, but start with small ones so as not to get injured and not to spoil the effect of the workout. Also, when it comes to increasing awareness, start small! And meditate, as you practice you will begin to discover amazing abilities self-control and self-analysis that we never had before!

Mindfulness has become a buzzword, if not commonplace. Everyone around advises learning to “be here and now”; books have appeared dedicated to developing these qualities in oneself. Never before has the topic of mindfulness been so popular. What's happening? Why mindfulness, how does it help and how does it affect life?

“The ability to give yourself an answer to four questions at any given time: who am I? where am I going? How am I going? Why am I going? - this is awareness, say the spouses Ekaterina Inozemtseva and Dmitry Yurchenko, who for many years have been looking for the path to a conscious life, and now share their experience with others. “If every time you doubt what you are doing, or when you feel an internal imbalance, you answer these questions for yourself - everything will fall into place.”

“My husband and I came up with practice "21 insights". “Insight” can be translated as “insight” or “flash of the day”: it can be an event, word, quote, conversation or personal thought that struck you with something and led to reflection or reflection. “Hunting for insights” throughout the day greatly develops awareness,” say Dmitry and Ekaterina.

The development of awareness affects all areas - from health and success at work to mutual understanding in the family.

As a result of practice, sensitivity to oneself and any kind of relationship increases; a person learns to notice what is important and discard what is unnecessary. Everything unnecessary goes away, life becomes more effective, yours, real.

How to measure your awareness? First, build your own scale from 1 to 10. Unit - “I act automatically, do not get involved in the process, make the usual mechanical movements.” Ten points - “I am clearly aware of myself and my path.”

Ekaterina and Dmitry came to the conclusion that awareness comes in different forms: mental, physical, sexual, behavioral, intellectual, bodily, visual, intuitive and even olfactory. For each type of awareness, based on the experience of joint relationships and mutual development, they came up with a developmental practice or exercise. In their opinion, developing awareness is the fastest way to make life more fulfilling, bright, and meaningful. And this affects all areas - from health and success at work to mutual understanding in the family.

We have selected practices for developing five types of awareness for Psychologies readers. Everyone can measure their effectiveness for themselves by observing the dynamics of their own “awareness index” throughout the day.

1. Type of lucidity: dream lucidity

Practice: sleeping in separate beds.

What opens: understanding the criteria that are important to you healthy sleep, an idea of the same criteria for a partner, awareness of the need to find a compromise between your expectations, the formation of a joint ritual that will significantly affect the quality of sleep and rest.

How to practice: answer yourself next questions. What room does your partner like to fall asleep in? Cool or warm? What kind of bed does he like - hard or soft? What underwear? Smooth or soft? With a book or without a book? Pay attention to what position you and your partner fall asleep in. What do you need more to fall asleep quickly - hugs or freedom? Do you/he have your own personal bedtime ritual? General ritual? What about awakenings? Discuss this, determine what is most important for you and your partner (for example, for one of you - cold air, and for the other, quiet music when falling asleep), try it once or make it a rule for 21 days.

2. Type of awareness: emotional

Practice: within 7 days, in response to internal irritation or resentment towards a person, mentally send him 7 sincere compliments.

What opens: changing relationships with yourself and the world around you, acceptance, understanding, the ability to see a person in front of you, and not an action.

How to practice: track your thoughts like: “what a terrible skirt she’s wearing” or “what a terrible belly”, which have not yet been realized. Through pain, work through ambiguous situations of your assessments: how not to judge a mother yelling at her child on the playground? How not to judge a colleague who violates deadlines? Alcoholic on the subway? Rudeness in the store? How not to condemn yourself if you acted not very well or completely dishonestly? The initial awareness of condemnation and then the search for sincere compliments with their evidence will help in practice.

3. Type of awareness: mental

Practice: planning the future based on your real desires and goals for the future, and not past experience.

What opens: getting rid of the fear of starting something, awareness different ways for self-realization, which sometimes even require a change in life trajectory, getting rid of the “excellent student syndrome.”

How to practice: Agree with yourself before starting any new project that you are taking on a new activity, calling it an experiment (and not “an undertaking for life, which at any cost must be completed with an A+”). Say several times that this is just an experience that needs to be gained, not necessarily showing a certain result.

4. Type of awareness: intuitive

Practice: dedigitalization (disable any electronic means communications, do not use the telephone, the Internet and TV, minimize communication with the outside world).

What opens: the ability to pay attention to oneself, to shift the focus of attention from external sources to internal ones, to see oneself from the inside, in isolation from habitual external reactions. In place of irritability, constant dissatisfaction and struggle with oneself comes self-confidence and self-confidence.

How to practice: turn off all possible communication channels, if possible, do not plan anything for this day, and if meetings are already planned, learn to act without the usual means of communication, relying on preliminary agreements and intuition.

5. Type of awareness: physical and bodily

Practice: define and find orthopedic shoes that suits your feet. Carry out a thoughtful self-massage of one area of the body, you can start with the feet.

What opens: understanding the real needs of the body not in general, but in a specific part of it, recognizing oneself “in parts” with an understanding of what makes life filled with pleasant sensations, understanding that joy is in the details, and happiness is the path to it.

How to practice: when you do a massage, listen to your sensations, and then describe them on paper, compare the physical sensations with the habit of analyzing with your mind.