The Zones of Awareness Exercise

Zones-of-Awareness is a concept borrowed from Gestalt therapy. According to the gestalt folks, there are 3 zones of awareness:

1.     In your head - thinking, ruminating, crowded, racing thoughts, planning, etc.

2.     In your body - noticing needs, levels of arousal, discomfort, pain

3.     Outside - checking people, places, etc.

The Zones of Awareness Exercise can give you a sense of where you may be "sticking" yourself and reducing your ability to use all your resources and strengths. Ideally, we should have a balance of these three zones that enhance healthy functioning.

The typical exercise for experiencing the zones of awareness is to close your eyes, take a deep breath and just drift with whatever awareness you experience. Allow that to happen for 30 seconds to a minute. Open your eyes and come back to your outside environment. Where were you the most aware–head, body, outside?

Close your eyes once again. This time rather than allowing the awareness to simply drift, direct your awareness to a different zone. Experience that other zone for 30 seconds to a minute and then come back. Where was your awareness focused? Did it take some energy to maintain focus on that other zone? Were you easily drawn back to another?

This simple exercise gives you an opportunity to experience your preferred zone or zones of awareness.  You may not need to bother with this exercise. As you review your usual behaviors and thinking/feeling patterns you will likely be aware of your preference for one or 2 zones while excluding another.

For example, people who are obsessing, worrying or have crowded, racing thoughts tend to spend an inordinate amount of time in their head. Obviously this will exclude the other zones.   

Others spend a lot of time worrying about physical ailments or the possibility of physical ailments. 

Some people will focus almost exclusively on their effects on other people and in that sense they become performers rather than being centered in knowing what they want for themselves.   

This information plus other combinations – head/body, head/outside, body/outside -- can lead to variations that can provide you information for attention to desired changes. See Find Your Center - Access to Joy, Satisfaction and Relief  -  in future blogs.

 copyright, 2014, Bill Falzett, PhD