Question

Could you please summarize the tools we have to develop and strengthen body awareness in daily life?

Answer

We're giving mindfulness activities based on the body, very helpful for strengthening body awareness in normal daily life. Learning how to be aware of your postures wherever you are. When you're standing to know that you're standing, sometimes feeling the touch of the feet on the ground. When you're sitting to know that you're sitting. Having a body awareness even when you're talking is very helpful to put a bit of mindfulness within the speech, and it gives us a sense of what we are saying. Sometimes we encourage people to be aware of their hands, because our hands are doing a lot, and a lot of the times our hands are an expression of what's going on in the mind. You'll notice some people have a pen and they click it, keys and everything, so learning how to calm the hands brings more body awareness and tends to calm the mind too. Learning how to keep the body still rather than moving all the time. Often people when they're sitting or they've got their legs crossed, sort of go up and down with their legs, up and down. So trying to keep the body still when we're in a particular posture, that is, if we're able, unless we happen to have some real bodily pain that we have to keep the body moving more. One of the things that I have used a lot in informal practice is to just train the mind to drop down to the feet whenever I'm walking somewhere. It helps to let go of thinking and just be there in the present moment, and get a rest in between things. In the beginning of teaching, that was almost essential, because that was practically all the rest we got.

Our apologies if there are any errors in the above text. If anything seems to be wrong or confusing in any way, please feel free to contact the teachers for further clarification.