Observations

Self-awareness includes self-observation, a very complex and interesting process. Not every 'voice in your head' belongs to an impartial observer, most of the time other parts of yourself play conductor of re-activity. I started reintegrating my reptilian 'voice', listening more closely especially to the need of food. Low blood sugar levels activate a lot of unwanted 'emergency circuits', and give the pre-frontal cortex not too much energy to be heard in the chatterbox brain.

It's not too healthy to spend much time in the 4f domains of the reptilian brain. Fight, flight, food and fornication can integrate with our behaviour without allowing them to be the 'decider'. A friend of mine compared his collection of inner voices with the parliament, commited to follow the Prime Minister's decisions. He shared with me his way of organising his inner struggle between his wants, needs and social norms, an insight into his private decision making process, based on an advanced form of self-reflection and inner dialogue. Thanks, Dave.

I prefer other mapping models to improve the quality of my self-observation. The triune brain models offers a good start, or Leary's 8 circuit model of consciousness. The map is not the territory. With one of my maps I can name the reptile, monkey, man and sentinel in myself.

Monkey oversimplifies the mammalian brain, mammals developed emotions to organise their communities. Nevertheless, even in 21st century successful emotional game strategies, found in many other mammals as well, still dominate the political arena of humanity.

The 'reasonable' or 'rational' or 'conceptualising' part of our being happens mainly from the cortical areas of the brain. We might ruminate here why something appears beautiful to us, and find the labels to verbalise our experience. It's easy to place the 'observer' here, as we might already have the habit to conceptualise and contextualise our experience, listening to the 'voice of reason' in our head.

In as much we can mistakingly feel torn apart between body and mind, we can mistakingly feel an inner fight of reason and emotion. The 'voice of reason' happily claims to be impartial observer, which leaves the 'voice of the heart' quite sulky, being left out of the game. But the voice of reason is not the sentinel.

Our emotions allow us to connect to other people, and our reason helps us to find meaningful ways to share this connection. Okay, that's prophecy or even gibberish. Or just an example for the challenge. As soon as we phrase observations in a way that assumes some objective reality we have 'diagnosed'. The perception of isness leads to a host of undesirable side effects, and prevents acceptance and the potential for change.

No matter how many voices talk to you, which map or concept you use, don't fight yourself. The voices get so much easier to understand when they communicate non-violently. The trying ends with the fighting, surrendering allows the sentinel to observe, direct, act and re-act.

Of course, I dare to be totally wrong here.

Unexpected

AT can teach to react adequately in any situation, much more than getting in and out of a chair, or releasing specific areas while laying in semi-supine. Our reactions are implicitly holistic - although we might only guess as to why a person blushes during a conversation, we can safely assume that the blush is more than a physical phenomenon.

I looked forward to a turn with Ann, but she didn't arrive in time for the quick-ease, and changed the order of turns a bit. I asked her about that, and she offered me a turn either in the break or after school. I reacted a lot when she told me about the change of plans, yet agreed on a later session.

I took me a while to direct my attention away from the change of plans, and towards observing some fellow students while cycling. I had a bit of a table turn with Ferry, so I didn't have to go 'turnless' into the group.

The anatomy session was like so often a mixture between dull facts, nice anecdotes and some group work deepening our topic, muscles of head-neck region. Our group gave examples of misuse while speaking, demonstrating poking the head out to make a point, gasping, and shyly talking towards the ground.

Having a turn after school went against my habits, and it was the first time it happened for me. Ann went with me to the back room, and we spend most time talking in a very insightful way. She reflected on my reactions earlier, and lots of lightbulbs went off in my head. Interactions are driven by intentions. If I manage to keep up my intention while just observing my reaction to emotional stimuli, a 'problematic' situation can have a positive outcome. Brooming emotions under the carpet, or riding blindly their waves just makes matters worse. Like so often, happiness lies in the golden middle.