Note: With all the coming exercises, a deep level of relaxation or the trance state are NOT required. Light relaxation is quite adequate. Just close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and allow your mind to wind down and settle for a few moments, and begin. This is all that is required. I also suggest that you do not use a bed for these early exercises unless you have to. Sit in a comfortable armchair with your shoes off, place a cushion under your feet, wear loose clothing and do not cross your legs. But this is not mandatory and if an armchair cannot be used, please adapt and use whatever is necessary or available. For example, if you have spinal injuries as I do, sometimes it may be physically impossible to sit upright.
Targeting & Highlighting
With all the coming exercises, lightly scratch or rub specified body parts as needed. This is a learning aid which helps highlight and target specific areas on the physical body. Body awareness can then be focused more easily and accurately. Use a small stick or ruler if you have difficulty reaching some parts of your body. This scratching and rubbing is not necessary when you become used to the technique and can target specific areas with body awareness alone; which for most people does not take very long. Repeat the MBA exercises below without scratching and see how you get on without this aid. Try and do this with your eyes closed so you are focusing with body awareness only, but please use your eyes if you need to. As with scratching, the use of the eyes for targeting should be done away with once this can be comfortably done with body awareness alone. The reason for this is that some of the exercises given later in these tutorials do not allow the use of the eyes for targeting body awareness.
Localizing Body Awareness
To demonstrate shifting your centre of body awareness and targeting specific areas on the body, please do the following exercises:
- Lightly scratch the skin of your left knee with your fingernails to highlight it. Do this just hard enough to leave a slight tingling sensation there after you stop scratching. Close your eyes and feel for this tingling area with your body awareness. Become intensely aware of that area as you focus on it. Highlight it with your body awareness until it stands out. You will feel your knee tingling and will easily be able to locate and target it. Feel for this tingling area with your body awareness alone, with your sense of touch; your sense of feel. Focus on the target area and forget about the rest of your body for a moment. Move your knee slightly and feel for more of the same knee and become aware of it as a whole joint. Feel its outline and shape and really get the feel of it with your body awareness. Your centre of body awareness is now focused entirely in your left knee.
- Shift your point of awareness to your right knee, scratching it first to highlight it. Feel its shape with your awareness. Your centre of body awareness is now focused entirely in your right knee.
- Shift your point of awareness to your right big toe. Scratch it on top of the large joint where it joins your foot. Wiggle your big toe to help get the feel of it, so you can zero in on it with your awareness. Feel the tingle on top of it, then feel its shape with your awareness. Your centre of awareness is now focused entirely in your right big toe.
- Shift your body awareness to several other parts of your body (anywhere you like) highlighting them first by light scratching. Feel these areas as you target them with your new sense of, now mobile, body awareness.
Increasing Body Awareness Sensitivity
To improve body awareness sensitivity, do the following exercises as often as you can until you get the hang of it. They will progressively improve your body awareness sensitivity, which is extremely important for later exercises and techniques within these tutorials.
When first learning to move a point of body awareness through the surface of your body, it helps if you trace the pathway along your skin with fingertips or a paintbrush, to highlight the path your point of awareness will be taking. This teaches your body awareness the pathway, making it easier to follow this with a point of awareness alone. If this is not enough, lightly scratch a small pathway along your skin with your fingernails or a ruler, to highlight it more strongly. Follow the slight tingling sensation this leaves behind on your skin with a point of awareness alone.
For tracing and learning wider energy pathways, they can be stroked repeatedly with a hand, or a paint brush can be used of an appropriate size. You can do this by yourself or have a partner do it for you, while you follow the sensations caused by this touch with your point of body awareness.
- Trace a pathway from the base of your left thumb, along the sensitive inside of your arm and on up to your left shoulder. Close your eyes and concentrate on the feel of the brush or fingers touching and moving along the surface of your skin. Ignore the hand doing the brushing and concentrate solely on its touch. Repeatedly stroke this pathway, from thumb to shoulder and back to your thumb again, following this with your body awareness until you have a good feel for the action.
- Repeat the above exercise with your right arm.
- Next, trace and follow a path from your left big toe, up over your foot to your ankle, up the outside of your shin to your kneecap, and on up the outside of your thigh to your left hip joint; then back down to the same big toe again.
- Repeat the above exercise with your right leg.
Practice this technique until you can trace a pathway to anywhere on your body with a point of body awareness alone, feeling your way along the surface of your skin without having to follow a manually highlighted pathway. Please rub and scratch and highlight, however, as often and for as long as you need to while learning this technique.
If you are training with a partner, you can help each other by stroking and brushing each other's body to stimulate pathways, or with a slow, stroking massage. Massage is a good way of learning how to focus and move body awareness. Have your partner give you a massage and follow the touch of their hands with a point of awareness. Have them trace pathways up your legs and arms, and up your back, following their touch. It may help if they use only one hand at a time, at least to start with, making it easier to follow their touch with a point of awareness. Soon you will progress to being able to split your awareness and work with two points or more of body awareness at the same time.
M.B.A. Exercise
Focus a point of awareness in your right knee until you can feel it well. Slide your centre of awareness slowly down the outside of your right shin. Keep your awareness moving until your centre of awareness comes to your right foot. Move your awareness slowly out to your right big toe. Feel this toe with your awareness. Wiggle it a little and make sure you can really feel it and are targeting it well. Move your point of awareness to the toe next to it and feel its shape and outline. Tense, move, wiggle, touch or scratch each toe, as needed, to highlight and target each of them one at a time.
Next, move your awareness across to your left foot and feel your whole foot with your awareness. Flex and tense your foot slightly to get the feel of it as a whole. Now centre your awareness in your left big toe. Slide your awareness back to your ankle and then slowly on up over your left shin until it comes to rest in your left kneecap. Keep it moving, sliding up your thigh to your left hip, and then slowly on up the left side of your body until you come to your left shoulder. Move your awareness down the outside of your left arm, moving slowly past your elbow to your left hand. Feel your whole left hand with your awareness. Move and centre your awareness in your left thumb. Feel its shape and outline with your awareness. Wiggle it a little if you need to highlight it. Feel all your other fingers, one at a time, with your awareness.
You have just moved your centre of body awareness all around your body, targeting and focusing a point of body awareness in many parts of it. Without knowing it at this stage, you have also been stimulating your energy body in the process. As your centre of awareness moved through the surface of your energy body (energy body = etheric body) you may have felt some peculiar tingling, fuzzy or heavy sensations. These are caused by energy movement within your energy body. They are quite normal for this type of awareness exercise.
In order to effectively stimulate your energy body, it is necessary to be able to focus your point of awareness at a single point on your body, and then to move and manipulate that point of awareness. This is done with active body awareness, with something I have called Tactile Imaging. Tactile Imaging is very easy to learn and use. You have already learned the skills required for it and will soon get the hang of it - it just takes a little practice.