Mindful Awareness - The Awareness Continuum

This first exercise, the Awareness Continuum, is a gestalt therapy technique for experiencing and being with whatever is happening in the “here-and-now”. In the Awareness Continuum, there are three primary zones of awareness; the Outer Zone, the Middle Zone, and the Inner Zone.The Outer Zone of Awareness is anything outside my skin. In other words, it consists of everything in the world around me and separate from me.The Middle Zone is anything I am aware of in my mind…my thoughts, including images & pictures in my mind’s eye… and my self-talk…an urge to speak or ask questions…And the Inner Zone of Awareness is anything I am aware of in my body…physical sensations… such as the temperature of the air on my skin… the feeling of a texture or fabric underneath my fingertips… butterflies in my stomach, tightness in my chest, tingling of my scalp, rise and fall of my chest as I breathe, and so forth.You may even notice a combination of inner zone and outer zone working together…a thought like “this is too weird”… a sick feeling in the stomach… an urge to stop the exercise… Just notice these things and watch them pass by…this will demonstrate to your Logical Mind…the fleeting nature of thoughts that are not entertained…In this exercise, we are going to explore all three zones of awareness starting with the outer zone and working our way inside…but before we do, I need to cover a couple important details