How Awareness Helps You

At last Wednesday's meditation group, we talked about the importance of awareness. Awareness can be such a buzz word, but what does it actually mean?

The dictionary definition of awareness is "knowledge that something exists, or understanding of a situation or subject at the present time based on information or experience".

When we apply this to ourselves, what we mean is that learn to understand our wants, needs and motivations by using awareness. For example, in 2011 when I was getting recurrent chest infections, I realised that it was caused by stressful, grief related shallow breathing. By breathing properly into my belly, and my managing stress, the recurrent chest infections stopped.
Awareness means questioning your behaviours and reactions to situations. When you have a sugar craving, it's asking yourself a few questions. Why do I need a sugar high? What am I trying to emotionally numb? Is there a better way to deal with this feeling? Am I thirsty? Do I to change what I eat at breakfast, lunch or dinner to something more life-affirming and life-giving than sugar?

Awareness can be brought to relationships, work, money and health. Through awareness, you're looking at sources of joy and seeing how those sources can be built on for the future. You're also looking at sources of tension, and seeing how you can stop experiencing that tension in the future.

It's not always easy or pretty looking at ourselves. It is really worth it. I'm reminded of a quote I saw on Facebook over the weekend, that I thought was quite funny: "This too shall pass. It might pass like a kidney stone. But it will pass."
Awareness, rather than burying our head in the sand, helps things to pass.

Sometimes we need help and support as we become aware and face what's going on in our lives. Sometimes, we need emotional balm for our lives. That's where I can help with Indian Head Massage, Reiki and one-to-one Meditation sessions. There are also two meditation groups in Castlebar (Wed 8pm) and Louisburgh (Tues, 10:30am).