WHAT IS CONSCIOUS AWARENESS?
Consciousness exists on many levels and involves our awareness of our own body, our mind and emotions.
The Body:
Body consciousness relates to not only our bodily functions such as breathing and digestion which is operated automatically by the autonomic nervous system, but it also involves our senses such as feeling, smelling, listening, tasting, seeing. We gain much knowledge of our environment from our five senses and its function is to keep us protected and reactive to potential threats. When we are in a threatening situation our nervous system becomes activated, this in turn triggers our flight, fight or freeze reaction which primary purpose is to keep us safe. When we have experienced trauma, particularly in our early years this fight / flight / freeze mechanism can be activated as if the trauma is relived, causing us to act inappropriately. Counselling and Psychotherapy can be extremely helpful in these situations.
The Emotions:
Emotions are a discharge of energy experienced within as a result of our life experiences. People who are aware of their feelings and can acknowledge and discharge them in a healthy way often have healthy relationships and generally feel good about themselves and their world. We all experience an array of emotions, anything from happiness to sadness, anger to calm, joy to depression but it’s the level of awareness that we have about our emotions and how we lose power to them or chose to acknowledge and release them, that is important for our well-being. Each emotion we experience, has an effect on our bodies in a different way as different chemicals are released into the body with each emotion that is triggered. Some emotions are positive and some are negative depending on our experiences and how we view them in our world. What is highly agitating for one may not even illicit an response by another, and therefore emotions will vary greatly from one individual to another. How we think also plays a huge part in our triggers and our emotional reactions.
The Mind:
The mind works very closely with the emotional body and interprets the energy so a decision can be made by you on how to act. To give you an example imagine you are reading a book peacefully at home alone, and large picture hanging on the wall falls off smashing the frame and glass and the loud noise startles you. Instantly your hearing picks up the vibrating sound of the picture frame smashing on the floor, (body senses), your physical body tightens up and your breathing constricts, (body reaction), you are startled and experience fear and alarm (emotions) if felt. Your mind (mental body) takes in all this information and processes it from your body and emotions then you make a decision what to do. You more than likely will go and see what has happened and make decisions to clean up the mess and maybe get the picture reframed. The mind is a very powerful tool so when we give more power to the mind over the emotions/ feeling body we become imbalanced and tend to shut down from our emotional body and lose emotional awareness and whole body sensation. This can cause a myriad of problems emotionally, mentally and physically.
Holistic Counselling is a gentle process of bringing balance, healing and deeper conscious awareness to the dynamic interrelation of our body, mind and emotion and how each of these components of the self are activated and triggered by the world we live in.