Planting a seed

Auroville Today: How did the Awareness Through the Body programme begin?

Joan: In 1992, some teachers from Transition school were concerned because the children had poor posture and they wanted something done to improve matters. They approached Ursula, and through Ursula we ended up in Transition school with a few guiding ideas from her about what we were supposed to do. However, when we figured out the situation, we realized it would not be possible to improve the posture of students who had no sense of attention, whose attention was all over the place, and moreover had no interest at all in “posture”. So we started working on finding ways to address this. Simultaneously we also found ourselves working with the kindergarten children in the afternoons.

Initially, we called our work ‘Body Awareness’ but after three or four years we saw that this didn’t fit what we were doing and, anyway, body awareness is used for a wide variety of different approaches. So it became ‘Awareness through the Body’.

How did you work with the children in Transition school?

Aloka: We wanted to help them develop the faculty of attention, the fundamental building block of experience, through offering them activities in which they could have tangible experiences of paying attention in their bodies. Once they discovered how attention felt, they could begin to use it in their classes and in their life and to get to know themselves better. This is a basic aspect of the work of ATB.

Joan: We realized that many things we were doing already with adults could be introduced to children, but first we needed to catch their interest. We did this by combining different kinds of games. Some games produce quick, automatic attention and reactions, others generate focused, quality attention on one particular sensation, such as balancing a toy or balloon on one finger tip. In the beginning, we don’t look to sustain attention for long stretches, but rather for quality attention, even if only for a few seconds.

Aloka: Later on, when the children are older, the balance between quick dynamic activities and exercises that generate quiet focused attention, is gradually reversed. So we started with a lot of games, but we were not playing the game for the sake of the game but to bring a little bit of organisation into their lives. The qualities we were hoping to develop through it were attention, self-control, along with acceptance of the rules. The children learned experientially that if they followed the rules of a game, they could have fun playing it.

Joan: There were things that didn’t make sense to them at first. For example, if you asked them to make a line they couldn’t; they would be all over the place.

Aloka: Making sense of what we were asking from them took some time, but when we invited parents for our first Open House and we saw these kids able to arrange themselves in perfect lines, both of us had tears in our eyes! Another example of how we worked is that, at first, the girls and boys did not want to sit next to each other. So at the beginning of the class we would have a game where they ran around as fast as they could, and when we clapped they had to arrange themselves quickly into a sequence of boy-girl, boy-girl while we counted how many seconds it took. Soon what began with a game became natural.

Joan: After a time, the children began to be more present in the moment, aware of what they were sensing, feeling, thinking, rather than being pulled in every direction by the impulses and moods of the group. And they were beginning to regulate themselves, which is an incredible first step.

You also work with even younger children in the kindergarten. Do you use a similar approach?

Aloka: In the kindergarten we also work by using whatever catches their attention. We always work through games, with moments of pause, moments of not-doing, as part of a game. We use their sense of imagination for this. We say, “Now we are going to lie down on the top of a mountain and look up at the sky.” These moments bring them inside themselves, put them in contact with their inner world, and they begin to distinguish more clearly between outer and inner experiences.

Joan: Everybody, even a child of four years, can be helped to start paying attention, noticing different kinds of sensations and slowly developing the capacity to start using and directing their attention. At the same time they can start developing very basic mechanisms of self-regulation. From the age of four to fourteen years many things happen that could become settled habits in adulthood. When little changes happen at this age, it can result in big changes later in adulthood.

Aloka: At this early stage it’s like planting a seed. The seeds grow, and sometimes the teenager or adult might not realise that the seed was put there long ago, but at a certain moment, when he or she find themselves in a certain situation, something may click. And that’s not a mental click; it’s in the body, in the being.

Is it very different working with older students or adults who have not done ATB before?

Aloka: It requires some time for a child who has not been exposed to ATB in the kindergarten to get into. We had kids coming into Transition school who didn’t have that experience and often they needed up to one and half years to be able to deepen into what ATB could offer them. It’s the same with adults. If the adult is new to this type of journey, he needs to get used to it, particularly because some adults tend to experience things primarily through their minds rather than through their bodies. This is why Joan, in his adult classes, keeps repeating a kind of mantra, “Do not think the sensation, feel the sensation.”

Joan: Children tend to be very flexible, while adults have more deeply ingrained programmes. Also, some adults think of themselves as fully formed, which creates a subconscious resistance to new sensations and perceptions, as they take for granted that they are able to pay attention and be present. In reality, however, adults are similar to young children in the need to develop fully soft sustained conscious attention.

Basically we are working with human consciousness, and all we are doing is facilitating a few possibilities. But the thing itself, the realization in the body, has to come from inside each individual, and this can take a longer or shorter time. We are all evolving beings, children and adults alike, and learning happens at any point in our lives. In some cases, and in some aspects, one could say that there are children who integrate the work done in ATB more easily than adults, and vice versa. So what makes the difference? One is age, but there are also other factors like exposure, the degree to which individuals have been stimulated beforehand to be in touch with themselves, and then there is nature, for some people are naturally more inclined to this work than others.

Sri Aurobindo and The Mother reported that the physical mind is the most resistant to change, to transformation, and that it is better to begin with cleaning and transforming the mental and vital levels as a preparation for it being enlightened from above. By beginning with working on the body, are you not inverting that process?

Aloka: I don’t think so. I started to work on the body when I was in the Ashram, and I started to work on it to open it up, something which Mother insisted upon. The physical mind is different from the body mind, and is different from the body consciousness. I’m not trying to do anything with my physical mind. Let it be there with its chitchat, I don’t need to identify with it. I’m simply trying to open myself to Their light and force, and the only way that works for me is through the body, through becoming conscious of what is happening in the body.

The body has a sincerity and a clarity that the mind and the vital do not. But as the different planes are completely mingled, as soon as you go deeply into one of them, the work ripples to the other levels, too. It’s all connected. But I don’t like to give names to these things.

Joan: Naming is not important, the personal first-hand experience is. Although there are general directions common to all, there cannot be one process that works for everybody, because we are such complex beings and we are all different and in different life moments from one another. But if you are doing integral yoga, you need a clear framework, a direction, so that you can recognize what is happening and where you are, and Sri Aurobindo has provided us with an incredible work of reference.

The best approach is to go back to basics, to start by developing a sense for open soft attention as a body-felt sensation, and from there to start making the consciousness conscious.

So what is the simplest way to do this? To start paying attention to the sensations that are happening in the body. If you do this, you start noticing there are a lot of things happening there, and you can start to differentiate the levels and layers of perception and experience. Over time, you can first notice and then change how your attention has been conditioned by your mind – for the mind can be very deceptive – and begin to get clear body-felt sensations which are meaningful, not imagined. You start getting clarity and if you can remain open, gradually you will become more plastic, more transparent, and more available for changes to happen. For each person the process is going to be different, but I believe that any part of the being, from the most rooted and tamasic to the most elevated, can change through bringing attention to the body in this way.

ATB can be useful for anybody because it will help them to feel better within themselves, they will find ease and they will come to know what is meaningful for them. An individual may not need or want to go any farther than becoming self-aware, self regulated, with a sense of a deeper self. However, I think it can really help people in integral yoga because, although ATB is not integral yoga in itself, it is fully based on Integral Yoga. When you bring ATB into your practice, it can help bring clarity into your being and everything will become more open, more receptive to the process, even your physical mind.

For example, ATB offers an opportunity to practice freeing sensations and perceptions from judgments and preconceived ideas. When we remain in this detached “observer mode”, we are able to notice all our inner and outer movements more clearly, without filters, and over time we can dis-identify our core, our deepest centre, from our thoughts, feelings, emotions, reactions and physical sensations. Ultimately, this is the goal of all the work in ATB.

Aloka: Since we follow Sri Aurobindo’s teachings, our ultimate aim is to find that innermost centre or the psychic being, and then to align the different parts of ourselves around this core.

Perhaps there was already a good foundation for ATB work in Auroville. For example, in the early years there was a huge emphasis upon working in matter, and people talked openly about the transformation, even supramentalisation, of the body. At the same time, there was a certain distrust of the mind; spontaneity was elevated above being ‘too mental’.

Joan: We encourage moving away from the critical mind in ATB, but not from the reasoning mind. Until, through an inner movement, it is dispensed with, we need its ability to discern, discriminate.

Aloka: Often we delude ourselves with this talk of transformation. We need to have a real and solid experience of transformation to talk about it, otherwise it’s just words. And what do we really know about the supramental? If we have not yet reached a fully true mind, what do we know? Before getting to the supramental, we need to attain the higher mind, live in the higher vital, work on them by discerning what comes from where, work on our emotions on the movements of our mind, and establish peace and quiet in the whole being.

However, in reality it is not us who are doing the work. We are being worked upon. So the only thing that we can really do is to become more open to Them, and say ‘O.K. work on me’. And They are doing it in the way which is best for each of us. Today they are going to scrape down into my depths and tomorrow They are going to put a light somewhere else. So all I can do to help this process is to open up and be receptive. And, for me, the easiest way to do this is by diving deep in the body and by listening to what is going on there, becoming aware of my being.

Awareness through the Body in the Kindergarten: First steps towards cultivating attention, relaxation and self, available from the usual outlets and on auroville.com