SAIIER 2014:Awareness Through the Body with Rosa

Auroville Rainbow Child		Baking English
Awareness Through the Body

Work with parents and children

This is the first year we explore working with ATB in shared spaces with both parents and children. The aim has been focused on developing tools and spaces to train the ability to stay in the 'witness position'; to deepen the possibility to stay present in our lives; to be not only the thinker, doer and feeler but also the observer of what happens in the different parts of our being while we think, act or feel, and the interconnectedness between all these layers of our Being; to discover “the use of one's self”.

At the end of a session, after an exercise of relaxation, breathing back to back - sensing their own breath and the breath of the other through the movement of the breath on their connected backs - a mother said: “I felt it so short! I could have been there for much more. I think it was the first time we were really feeling each other...”

To stay in the witness attitude during concentration exercises is useful and can be very powerful; but it is even more powerful when we are able to make a bridge to stay in this witness position even while moving, acting or interacting. It is in this way that we have mostly been working - through triggering daily reactions, letting the most automatic patterns come to the surface, parents and children working together in a safe space, a space where they have the possibility to discover new aspects of their togetherness. A space of listening, beyond the fixed images we have of each other, a space to explore ourselves beyond right and wrong, a gentle invitation to go out of our habitual roles and open doors for surprises…

“For me to be part of your work with children is an important sharing with my son. He so much the activities with you, and to be involved in it, makes stronger our deep relationship to and knowledge of each other. As you see, he is growing very fast, his inner world is infinite and complex, to have a chance to be part of it, for me, is a big gift, and for him also. Each time we work together with you, a confirmation of our deep and respectful connection comes out for both… I think this is more than enough to be happy to participate.” (Feedback from one of the parents)

Work with individuals

In the same line, this year I have been offering regular individual sessions, to help individuals to raise awareness of patterns in their bodies, to develop further capacity to listen to the body, and to consciously stay there effortlessly, noticing changes. To actively change their relationship to their bodies, by discovering the deep effect that this conscious presence has in themselves, and how an attitude of openness and listening creates changes - not only in the body, but in the whole being - harmonizing it.

Group work with adults

We did a journey from the most physical and gross to the more subtle. We started as usual, training attention and concentration - our two basic tools to work on anything - developing an awareness of our physical structure, awareness on the patterns imprinted in it, and researching ways to free ourselves consciously from those patterns.

“Working with you has been a very big part of the change that has brought more peace and light into my being.”

Later on, for a period of time we placed our focus on exploring “Space” inside and outside, our individual space and the collective space - developing new perceptions of it as we were placing different intentions in it. And from this exploration of space noticing again changes in us rippling in our whole being.

“After yesterday's session at CRIPA, my hips were moving freely and softly. Going home on the bicycle, I was aware of being wider, expanded in being, and hips much more comfortable on the cycle seat. It was a beautiful moment to be connected in the circle in that special way and to feel the separation and then the final re-connection. These sessions are really wonderful.”

To end the year, from the “space exploration” we moved on to explore the subtle physical layer. As adults, many of us grow up without having any possibility to develop the awareness of this layer of our being. As we tune into it, we realize how real and present this non-visible body is, how much information we receive through it.

The Mother said:

“To whatever cause an illness may be due, material or mental, external or internal, it must, before it can affect the physical body, touch another layer of the being that surrounds and protects it. This subtler layer is called in different teachings by various names, … All communications with the exterior world are made through this medium…

... This body is built up, on the one side, of a material basis, but rather of material conditions than of physical matter, on the other, of the vibrations of our psychological states. Peace and equanimity and confidence, faith in health, undisturbed repose and cheerfulness and bright gladness constitute this element in it and give it strength and substance. It is a very sensitive medium with facile and quick reactions; it readily takes in all kinds of suggestions and these can rapidly change and almost remold its condition... ”

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