FOR ENHANCING CONTACT AND AWARENESS

Before you practice these exercises, read the complete assignment. It will be valuable first to have a general idea of the exercises before you practice them one at a time without reading. Prepare index cards with each exercise, or just a reminder using the title and one or two descriptive words. Make a tape recording of the whole assignment. Take opportunities during the day to do one experiment at a time.

Go on with each exercise for at least five minutes, attend to your perceptions, the awareness you have of your feelings, and your sense of your own body and bodily sensations. How do you change? You may want to make some notes about what you learn about the content of your mind.

You may find it useful to use the exercise as a purposive dream. Close your eyes and fantacize, visualizing a room. Create your own room, or visually explore your memory of a room well known to you.

You will learn more if you tape record your impressions of sensations, perceptions, thoughts, and changes at the end of each experiment. You may want to read the directions onto a tape and listen while you do the perceptual exercise.

LOOK AND LOOK!

GENERAL DIRECTIONS:   For five minutes or so focus your attention on something near you, look at it thoroughly, see how it fits against its background, look at all the parts of it, think about it as it might be upside down or some other way. Then quickly look at something far away and do the same thing. Shift to look at something close. Shift again to something far away. Look at something in the middle distance. Remark on whether you persist at the task of looking, or if you start to daydream and forget what you are doing. Did you stop on one object? How do you feel? What do you feel? Are you breathing?

DESCRIPTIVE DIRECTIONS:   "I want you to play LOOK AND LOOK with me, I want you to sit quietly and look at something across the room. Look at whatever it is over there as thoroughly as you can. Palpate the object with your eyes. See if you can penetrate its surface. Commit the shape to memory. Observe color, form, texture, shading and tone.

"Look at something on your desk (or on your lap), look at it closely. See how it is put together, notice how it looks against the things in back of it. Focus right on it and see how the things around and behind it sort of disappear as you focus on one thing and one thing only.

"Now look at something on the far wall. Look closely. See all the parts of it. Notice how the things in between it and you sort of disappear as you focus far away. Look at how the object lies against the wall.

"Now look at your right little finger. See how it joins your hand. See where it lies against the next finger. Look at all the details of it. Look closer. See the little pores in your skin. Look at your finger holding it up against the back wall. Now look at the picture again. Look at the finger. Look at the wall around the picture.

"Now look at the desk. Pick out the vase on the desk. Look at the flower in the vase. See the way the stem comes into the vase from the flower. Glance at all the other things on the desk. Now go back to the flower. See if you can see all the petals. Now look back at your little finger. The picture on the wall. The flower. The desk. The front of your dress or shirt. The wall."

If you wear glasses take them off and exercise the same kind of directed observation. Then put them on and off again.

LISTEN, LISTEN!  

GENERAL DIRECTIONS:  for five minutes or so focus your attention on a sound. Try to tell where the sound is coming from; and how the noise is made. Listen to all the parts of the sound, find out if it is made of more than one simple note. Shift to another sound. Try to be aware of the first sound while you focus on the second noise and then pick up other sounds as you maintain focus on the first two sounds. Become aware of all the relations among all the textures of sounds around you but focus on one sound at a time. Pick the sound apart.

DESCRIPTIVE DIRECTIONS:   "I want you to do the LISTEN, LISTEN! exercise with me. While you are quiet and still I want you to listen to a sound in the room. Pick any sound which comes to your attention, listen to it as closely as your can. Palpate the sound with your attentive hearing.

"Listen to the cricket outside. Listen to the stridulation. As the sound changes hold all the parts of the sound in your mind....

"Listen to the truck sound which is the farthest away. Do you still hear the cricket? Focus on the truck. Listen for the changes in sound.

"Hear the clock ticking. Listen to the ticking of the clock. Can you hear all of the clock's sound? What happened to the cricket and the truck. Can you hear all three at one time?

"Listen to the tree rustling in the wind."

"Try to experience sight and sound directly. Try to still the interior dialogue, stop talking to your self, just look! and listen!

TOUCH AND TOUCH!

GENERAL DIRECTIONS:   move quietly about the room and touch things. Touch at least 20 different objects. Touch with all the parts of your body - touch with your finger tips, hand, back of hand, arm, face, forehead. Lean up against things. Describe to yourself everything about the thing you are touching and things around it. Then still the interior voice and just sense whatever it is you are touching. Expand your awareness of the sensation. Integrate the sensation with sight, taste, sound, and the sense of space around you. Sit down and touch things. Lie down and touch. Touch other people. Touch yourself. Hold an object and feel it as thoroughly as you can. Remember touching something.

Focus your attention to the way things feel on your skin. Feel the way you sense as your weight presses on the chair. The feel of feet in shoes and against the floor. The places where clothing is tight -- waist, crotch, under arms, elbows, knees. Can you feel a draft? Are some places on your body warmer than others? Is there a cold place? Do you itch or twinge anywhere? Now reach out and touch different things. Touch them not only with your hands, but with the softer skin near your elbow, with your face and forehead. Touch your tongue to some things.

When you do this experiment collect a number of artifacts and textured surfaces. Combine tactual experiences; ie, feel the sensation of sitting in the chair, touching the floor, clothing touching you, feeling the breeze, all the while you slowly rub your hand against the cloth, and with the other hand stroke a smooth stone. Allow the focus of your feeling to float from thing to thing, and from hand to face to foot, to other parts of the body. Build an interactive exchange among sensing surfaces and things perceived.

TASTE AND TASTE!  

GENERAL DIRECTIONS:  for five minutes or so focus your attention on the way several mouthsful of food feel, change and taste. Try not to talk to yourself as you do this. Feel the texture of the food as you bite or sip it. Feel the shifting texture of the food as you grind and change it with your teeth, lips, palate, and your mouth working all together. Try the difference between bland foods and tasty foods; between soft and crisp foods, hot and cold. Focus your awareness on the bite of food as you chew and chew! until the food is liquified. Chew the food much longer than you ordinarily chew. Don't swallow the food until it is absolutely liquified. Focus your attention on the gestalt of eating all the while, then isolate elements of eating.

When you attempt this experiment prepare bite sized bits of food as well as a whole carrot, apple, turnip or other biteable food. Find out the difference in your perception of liquifying meat or vegetable.

SOUND MIRROR  

Buy several short endless loop tape cassettes from Radio Shack or elsewhere so that you have 5, 10 and 20 second or longer tape loops. Record words and sounds and listen to them. Increasingly make your sounds less intelligible and more emotional. Laugh, sob, scream, make the sounds of retching. Listen! Remark your emotional response. Listen for pure sound. Listen for meaning. Palpate your feelings with your attention.

Remind yourself that you are a fairly hi fidelity recorder yourself and sort through your memory of the tape loops you have made. Sit quietly and listen to your memory of your own sounds.

MIRROR, MIRROR!  

Look into a good sized mirror. Look without any comment at all, discover if you can shut up your interior voice. Stop the interior dialogue. Then tape record a report of exactly what you see. Then comment on how you feel.

If you have a TV camera, record yourself doing simple things: sit in a chair; turn around; squat; stretch; stand on one foot with your eyes closed; make faces; talk. Play the recordings in short pieces of a few seconds. Tell your tape recorder what you see. Write down what you saw.

REMEMBER, REMEMBER!

"HERE'S THE CHURCH, HERE'S THE STEEPLE! make a steeple with all the people outside. Open the steeple, watch your unconscious mind close it. As the steeple closes, close your eyes. As your eyes close go to a safe place in your mind, remember or imagine the safest place in the world. As you settle yourself into a safe place then remember a moment in your life that was sweet and good. Delicious! Remember everything about it. Who was with you. Details. Place, time, feelings. What did it smell like? When did you next eat? What had you eaten before?

Using your mind as a recording camera play for yourself other scenes from your life, always coming back to the safe place, and the happy time. Remember a time when you were angry. Come back to the happy time in the safe place. Remember a time when you were excited. Come back to the happy time in the safe place. Remember a time when you were frightened. Come back to the happy time in the safe place. Remember a time when you were sad. Switch it off and come back to the safe place.

Remember, and change the memory. Edit your memory just as if it were a TV tape. Change the person. Change the place. Change the ending. Edit your memories. Remember as it wasn't. Remember someone there who was not there. Pretend you did something different. Remember it as completely different as if everything were opposite. Remember it as if it were a movie running backwards.

Remember a movie. Remember a catalog of movies and TV shows. Try to find one for each year since you were 12. Remember a book as a movie. Remember a story as a movie.

Remember something that never happened at all. Invent a memory that wasn't in a book, story or movie. Dream a brand new dream.

NOW, NOW, NOW!  

GENERAL DIRECTIONS:  As you sit quietly make statements to your self about exactly what you are aware of at this very moment. Make every statement begin with "Now I ..." or "At this moment I ..." or "Here and now I ...". Be aware of as many things as you can. Is your heart beating? Are you breathing? Tell all this to your tape recorder. Then listen. Write down what you were aware of. Talk to yourself alone. Then try to be aware without talking at all. Try to quiet the interior dialogue, be still! Discover if you can be absolutely silent inside yourself as you notice what you notice.

LEFT, RIGHT!  

GENERAL DIRECTIONS:  as you quietly sit or lie down sense your body. Make a random inventory. Then begin to compare left against right. Compare the way your right arm settles to the left. The whole side against the whole side. Front and back. Inventory each portion of your body. Bounce your awareness from point to point, or allow your awareness to flow. Sense how each section of your body hangs together and compare to the other side - right/left, front/back, top/bottom.

MAKE FACES!  

GENERAL DIRECTIONS:  for about five minutes make all the different faces you can imagine. Calm faces. Extreme faces. Feel everything about yourself as you can while you make the faces. Make faces at a mirror. Join with a partner and make faces at each other. Carefully look at everything your partner does. How do you think she feels? Think about her feeling as you feel. Think about feeling as she feels. Get a small group together, no more than six, and make faces at each other. Make all the same face, then make different faces. Turn your backs to each other in a circle and make faces outward.

BODY TALK! 

GENERAL DIRECTIONS:   for about five minutes express emotions and actions in as many ways as you can with your body. Keep checking all your sensations and awareness. Don't forget to communicate to yourself by tensing up all the parts of you appropriate to what it is you are expressing. Face a partner and express actions and emotions to him without talking. Join a small group and express to each other. All of you do the same thing. All together. One after the other. Then do different things. Turn your backs to each other in a circle and express outward. Sit down. Lie down. Lie down and relax and then express the first action or emotion which floats up in your mind.

Any of these experiments can be used in association with the others or one at a time.

MOVE, MOVE!  

GENERAL DIRECTIONS:  sit quietly and create a simple movement. Focus on everything you are doing. Isolate the movement. Get up and walk across the room, return and sit. Get up and then lie flat on your face on the floor. Get up and have a glass of water. Get up and open a window and return. Sense all your movements, motions and adjustments. Feel all the parts of your body as you move.

Observe another's movement. Move a limb into your field of vision and move slightly, repetively. Increase the range of the movement, increase the complexity of the movement. Close your eyes. Really get into the sensing of the movement.

BLIND MAN'S BLUFF! 

GENERAL DIRECTIONS:  try to operate for 5 minutes while blindfolded. How do you feel? Sit down immediately after the experiment and tape record or write down everything you can remember about the experience.

Blindfold yourself for 15 minutes, 30, an hour, longer.

The next day sit quietly and remember as much as possible about the experience.

DEAF MAN'S BLUFF

Efficiently stop up your ears. Try being deaf for a while. Then try deaf and blind. Do dumb - how long can you manage it?

THINKING AND REMEMBERING!

You may want to repeat these experiences as thought and memory experiments. You may find it useful to imagine what a different form of the experiment would be like. Attend to the actual and the imagined experiments. It alright to analyze but try only attending.

Write or tape record your impressions, thoughts and feelings.

I LIKE IT/I DON'T LIKE IT!  

GENERAL DIRECTIONS:  for about five minutes look around the room focusing on objects and parts of objects. To each separate thing say "I am looking at ... and I like it;" or "I am looking at ... and I don't like it;" " I really like it;" "Ugh, I hate it!"

Tape record or write down a list of things you like or dislike. Specifically note what it is you like or don't like about things or actions or experiences.

Evaluate yesterday in terms of "I liked it", "I didn't like it".

Practice telling other people about what you like and what you don't like. Remember, "there is no accounting for taste, said the lady as she kissed the cow".

Think about things that you like, tastes, shapes, colors, houses, people, situations, experiences. Describe them to yourself as feelingly as possible. Inventory all your feelings and describe them. Put a value judgement on everything. "My stomach feels a bit tight and I don't like it." "My arms feel ready to work and I do like it." "I feel very rested and that's nice." "My head feels a bit stuffy and I don't like it."

Work on things you do and don't like. Describe them as luridly and feelingly as you can. Play COMPLIMENT. How many nice, good things can you think to say about someone else? Play CRITICIZE.

How many nasty unliking things can you think up about someone or something you don't like?

Try to compliment everyone you talk to today. Don't just describe the nice thing, but tell the person how nice you feel about it. Is there someone you really like? Tell them.

Describe to someone else every nice thing that happens today. Try to do it as it happens. Is the food good? Say so. Is the air particularly fine? Say so. Do you like a sound, a particular arrangement of houses, or bushes? Say so."

Try as much feeling-talk as you can. Describe some complicated thing you like, a person, a painting, a dish, and try to describe all the elements about it that you do like. Practice self disclosure. Give the individuals you meet some free information about yourself. "I'm starting a class in belly dancing."

"It's my son's birthday today." "I just took my daughter shopping."

Separate feeling from evaluation. "That color is bright and I like bright colors."

"I feel he is going to come." A prediction.

"I feel like the test is going to be hard." An evaluative prediction. "I feel she cares." An evaluation, opinion, belief.

"I like it that she seems to care." A feeling statement. "I'm anxious about the test." A feeling statement. "I'll be happy if he comes." A feeling statement.

Try to separate opinions, evaluations, beliefs and predictions from feelings.

Even a statement like "I feel sad" is incomplete. "I feel heavy in my eyes, my mouth feels dry, my back hurts, my head is light" are all examples of direct feelings. Get into the details of your feelings - where in your back do you hurt?

Think of a series of statements about how you have made yourself feel in response to experiences, events and things. Focus on your own responsibility for your own feelings.

REPORT, REPORT!

Write down or tape record a report of some event in your day. Try to do it quickly, right after the experience. Try to put in a lot of detail. Be exhaustive, tell all.

Wait a while and write about the experience again. Use first person and present tense. Express your feelings. Give a lot of detail.

FAIR WITNESS!

Both REPORT,REPORT! and FAIR WITNESS TRAINING will be more usefully explored as a game with two players, one cheerfully pushing the other to follow the rules. But you can apply yourself to yourself alone.

In REPORT, REPORT! make an attempt to describe an incident including everything, value judgements, guesses, implications, feelings and nuances. Report lots and lots of detail and immediacy.

REPORT, REPORT! is an especially useful experiment with kids immediately after an argument, fight or other incident. It may astonish you to learn how 'distant' an event may seem to a youngster and yet the action occured a microsecond ago . It may be valuable for you to ask your spouse to REPORT! on an event in his or her day. Ask her to describe with great particularity any interesting occurance in the day. Question and interrogate with intense attention to detail. Exactly how did such and such occur??? How did you feel? What do you predict will happen because of the incidents? What do you think was going on in the minds of the participants?

FAIR WITNESS! reverses the intense preoccupation of REPORT, REPORT! with projection and evaluation. While you are being a FAIR WITNESS! you want to describe the scene in absolutely clinical detail without any inferences at all. "The house was white on the side I observed." "His mouth was turned up."

It is a good idea to practice FAIR WITNESS! with photographs. "The kittens are happy because they are looking at their mother." If this is a description of kittens looking out of a photograph you must work to correct the description, "three kittens in a basket are gazing off to the left." Permit no inferences, allow no interpretations, no mind reading, no speculations. This is a Sgt Friday exercise, "Just the facts, ma'am."

Try to give a concrete, precise, limited, exact, literal, true and only true recitation about a picture or an event.

SEMANTIC DIFFERENTIAL

REPORT! and WITNESS! help you prepare for a three way experiment in which you must have two assistants. While you can modify the experiment for two , and by using a tape recorder can even do it by yourself, the full impact is achievable only with three (or more) participants.

Each of you will play each one of the three role, Gifted Liar, Fair Witness, and Trainer. The Gifted Liar makes up a story about an event which didn't really happen to him in the last year. While he is telling the story the Fair Witness gives an ongoing description of exactly what he is doing. The Fair Witness must describe speech, rate, rhythm, intonation, facial gesture, posture, volume, and other characteristics of the tale telling as a physical event.

The Fair Witness must not draw inferences or conclusions or impute motives or emotions to what he describes. Nor may the Fair Witness use higher order abstractions to describe a physical gesture. (The lips are curved up, it is not a smile.) The Gifted Liar may be moving his fist rapidly in an up and down motion as he speaks loudly and rapidly with his mouth in a shape resembling biting. But, the Gifted Liar may not be described as angrily gesturing and speaking bitterly.

All the while the Fair Witness is describing the observable movements of the Gifted Liar the Trainer sits with his hand on the Fair Witness' knee and whenever she detects the Fair Witness slipping into abstractions she presses his knee and comments "the mouth is turned up" (as a correction for "he is smiling").

You will learn that this exercise is difficult to sustain so that 3 minute segments are adequate, but do rotate through the roles so that each has an opportunity to play every part. It will be valuable to repeat the experiment.

SUMMARY

These experiments in perceptual gestalts are designed to enlarge your perception and expression of yourself. They will create and deepen your skills at meditating. They will help you turn off your inward voice and stop your interior dialogue so that you can experience life more directly. In addition you may learn to observe the emotions of others more clearly and usefully.

Please write these exercises down on index cards, and take the time to practice whenever you find yourself with time on your hands. Plan, also, a regular time to experiment, if only for five minutes. Do not make your falling asleep time the only time you do these experiments, but do at least one each night as you go to sleep.