Posted by: Administrator IWC Team Member September 7, 2009, 3:33 pm
IWC Blog 8 - The Awareness Raising Bulls-Eye
The Inner Game Of Roofing And Other Things...
Hair-Raising or Awareness-Raising?
This summer I have embarked on a house renovation adventure and have been using my Inner Game skills to help me go more speedily and smoothly up a steep learning curve as I take on the re-roofing. All of which gives me an opportunity to share the workings of our 'Awareness Raising Bulls-Eye' which is now uploaded to the resources area on our main site: http://www.innerworkscoaching.org/Resources/IWC Awareness Bull's Eye.pdf
Here's one example of how I improved my roofing performance with some awareness raising:
Fear on the ladder.
I've always been a little more than wary of heights and I noticed that the aluminium ladder was providing me with amplified feedback of my fear by being very sensitive to knee-wobble! If I put my attention on the ladder shaking, it seemed to cause more tension and more ladder shake. It's interesting to note the change that can come just from asking observational questions - I became a bit detached, more objective and immediately felt somehow calmer even though the ladder was still shaking.
So, the answer to 'What do you notice', the first question on the outside of the Bulls-Eye, was ladder-shake - by itself, not a very useful thing for me to focus on. But asking myself more awareness-raising questions began to produce more useful insights. 'Specific What?'- the unnecessary tension in my body. 'Specific Where?' - tension in my shoulders and stomach and shallow breathing. I was a little surprised to find that the stomach area was the most useful thing to look at. 'Exact When?' - the best time to monitor the tension was as I placed my foot on the next rung up or down. 'How Much?' - monitoring the tension in my stomach area on each step-up by simply saying 'more' 'less' 'the same' became a bridge to an 'AHA!' moment - the centre of the Bulls-Eye.
My discovery from going through the Awareness Raising Bulls-Eye was that, after going up and down the ladder a few times in awareness mode, all I had to do was to place my attention on the centre point of my stomach area (similar to a martial arts focus on the Hara point) on each step and the unnecessary tension around my body was minimised. No more ladder-shake!
Pete*
Peter Farthing - IWC Team Member - Forum Administrator
Edited by user Administrator on September 7, 2009, 5:32 pm
You must be logged in to post messages to this board.
