A Mindfulness Experiment
Reconnecting our mind and body through integrated awareness
What is mindfulness, really? Is it different from awareness, and how does it apply to our body?
It’s hard to deny that we’re highly interconnected beings. It can be harmful to separate what we think from how we feel, yet doing just that has become normal practice in our daily life. In our recent workshop with District Vision in New York, the collective aim was to help reconnect these parts of ourselves. It’s through this integration that we can achieve a deeper understanding of ourselves, and a truer harmony within our mind, body and soul. We do this by acknowledging that we are not separate - neither within ourselves or from one another.
Writer: Ryan Willms
Photographer: Austin Withers
I’ve been fans of District Vision for some time, having seen the way they integrate movement and mindfulness through practices that align with our view of living in balance. We initially connected with them to create a shared experience and, with open arms, Max Vallot accepted our invitation. Max suggested we also collaborate with meditation teacher Manoj Dias for a more dynamic experience.
Our goal for the workshop was to combine movement with mindfulness, in order to cultivate a deeper awareness and connection to our bodies. By integrating our bodies with our minds, we can tap into the wisdom that’s always been available to us, but we can’t always access. Sadly, we often choose to ignore the messages our bodies send us - living in our heads, cut off from the universal knowledge, and remaining enslaved to our much more naive, egoic states of being. So, how do we break free from this basal form of existence?
The answer, I’ve learned—from my personal experience as well as in this workshop—lies through mindful feeling and shared experience. Re-learning how to “feel” mindfully after years of deprogramming can be a challenging process to begin, so having a guide is extremely helpful to just start feeling again.
I started the workshop with some simple breathing exercises, followed by a series of energy-building movements aimed to create awareness of the subtle energy in our physical bodies. Getting into our bodies can help us get out of our analytical thought patterns - at least for a moment.
With our bodies primed, Manoj began by providing context to his own practice, his story, and some of the key teachings that have helped him. One of his key emphases was what he learned from not listening to his body - and how that led him to an internal crisis—which as many of us know, can often be a precursor for an awakening.
Then it was time to look inwards, using our cultivated awareness to feel into our bodies. Manoj guided the group into a place of sense and gentle exploration, then gradually introduced us to stress - asking the group, “When did you feel embarrassed?” He suggested exploring how that embarrassment felt within, as our nervous systems began to kick in. Once we were each submerged in our own embarrassing thoughts, his next question was “Now, can you share that experience with the group?” This was, expectedly, greeted by a collective silence—was I really going to tell the group about peeing my pants while playing hide-and-seek when I was ten? Before anyone spoke up, he thankfully let us off the hook and we were spared from volunteering our embarrassing moments with the group. It was an effective exercise - while we ultimately didn’t need to share, we did learn to feel - and then we shared what that process of feeling was like with one another.
Nurturing a practice of feeling mindfully and observing our thoughts is the foundation of this process, but once we can begin to grasp what we discover, being able to share it in a group makes the experience even richer. Sharing this vulnerability with others and listening to what they experienced offered profound insight into just how different we each are - but also how similar we are, too, in the ways we relate to our version of what’s happening. After Manoj took us to the brink of stress, we could identify it and move past it with more ease; letting it go with a smile, together.
Finally, Max’s calming tone came in again. He centered on the interest of cultivating the awareness of awareness itself, asking the group, “Who is being aware?” The deeper our practices become, the more volume there is to each of the questions we ask ourselves. This guided introspection allowed us to explore the space within ourselves created over the previous 90 minutes - watching what came up, how it felt in our bodies, and maybe even where it came from.
This practice is life-long, but through a shared experience and the integration of our mind and body, we can connect more deeply with ourselves and with others. And it’s through this universal connection that we can truly grow, heal and make better choices for everyone and the world at large: I, We, All.
A special thank you to Outer Reach for hosting the workshop and Mon Fe Fo for providing refreshments