Mind the Gap

Awareness, and how to encourage it, and how much of it to encourage, is a big part of my life nowadays.

I spend a lot of time and attention in trying to increase and sharpen my own awareness - of things happening inside and outside of me -and a lot of my students' lessons doing the same for them.

So I found this article -The Illusion of Attention - really interesting.

Now before you make an exasperated noise and go on to google it -

stop.

Check this out first -

Basket ball awareness test ...

and then go on to The Illusion of Attention

I won't add anything more because I don't want to give away the point of the experiment, but even those of you who are familiar with this experiment might have an little surprise when you do the basket ball test.

It immediately interested me because I connected it with our forgetfulness of ourselves when we're immersed in our tasks, routine or specialised - and of course, one of the important points of the Alexander Technique is that it is precisely this forgetfulness that creates problems for us. So lessons aim to sensitise us to what's going on in ourselves so we can stop damage before it happens.

The article suggests that our supply of attention is limited, and so this kind of unawareness is bound to happen. I agree - only I wonder - have we really reached the limits of our awareness, or could we extend it a little further in our functioning?

Could we expand a sense of the whole - of ourselves, of our environment - a little more? Do we really have to work with the extreme narrowness that we usually sink into?

It's something that each of us can explore for ourselves, in our daily lives - how we can enrich our lives by simply being aware.