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I often describe awareness as "the capacity to notice things that could be noticed" it's actually really common for people to unconsciously cut things out of their awareness such that they *couldn't* notice them to expand awareness, then, means to be able to notice more things
I say unconsciously because it just happens and most people lack the meta-awareness needed to notice that part of the world has disappeared I call this state 'collapsed awareness' if someone audibly calls your name and you don't notice, your awareness is collapsed in some way
this may sound like it's not a big deal, but consider that if something it outside your awareness, you are unable to make choices in relation to it collapsed awareness represents a *loss of agency* you can't respond to the person calling your name if you don't notice them
we can extent this further into other 'spaces', not just spatial if you can't notice that your colleague is angry, you can't calibrate what you say or how you say it if you can't notice that the numbers in your spreadsheet are wrong, you can't investigate or fit them
going even further into interoceptive awareness... if you can't notice that you are getting anxious, you can't investigate what's causing it or prevent it from affecting your entire way of being and downstream impacts to expand awareness is to be better able to notice all this
most crucially in the context of Alexander Technique is the capacity to notice your own habitual responses to the world around you "this person is angry with me, and oh look I have the urge to yell back at them" if you don't notice that urge then you can't help but yell back
noticing your own conditioned responses is the first step to being able to step out of them and choose another path actually being able to *not do* your conditioned response, though, requires the next Alexander Technique skill — 'inhibition' — to be able to leave that urge alone
finally, I often use sounds as a way in to expand awareness: "check you could notice an aircraft above you if one were there" the point is not to 'do' go and listen for an aircraft, but to become available to the fact that there exists a part of the world that is above you
there's a link here with left hemisphere / right hemisphere stuff where to expand awareness may mean to switch back into right hemisphere mode, which for the experience of the left hemisphere means 'to conjure the world into existence', but that's a different conversation
anyway, I think that this expanded awareness stuff — the capacity to notice all that which could be notice — has enormous value and absolutely should be trained I kinda want to figure out what it would look like if executives, politicians, people of influence could do this well
more here! https://t.co/MLZPSn4doI
I'll start! It helped that after my first lesson I felt like my teacher had surreptitiously slipped me some wonderful drug 😂 I felt expansive, light, happy, the world was incredibly vivid, colourful and had a new kind of depth to it. I didn't *understand it*, but I *got* it. https://t.co/tKuZ8ICeQo
Just realised I was made a video about this like 5 months ago 😂 https://t.co/VbZZBrbyfm