I was thinking about this the other day – what does ‘a way of being’ mean to us. For some it might mean mindfulness. For others it might mean attitude and how we treat others. It might even mean gracefulness in the way we move and go about our daily activities.

But all these meanings refer to separate parts of ourselves.

Mindfulness refers to the ‘mind’ and how we think about things.

Attitude refers to how we react to things and people in given situations.

Gracefulness describes how we are physically.

‘A way of being’ could refer to the whole of us, the whole self – the way we think, the way we react, the way we act and the way we move and use ourselves. Instead of dividing ourselves into separate bits we could see ourselves as whole beings with a unified all-encompassing attention. We are constantly dividing our attention in every day life – we send our attention ‘out’ very often and forget what’s happening to ourselves. Or we bring our attention ‘in’ so we only focus inwardly on ourselves, not noticing what’s going on outside of us.

It is an interesting experiment – to begin to notice when we are dividing our attention. What happens when we only focus on an object outside of ourselves? Do we tighten up? Do we concentrate and furrow our brows? Do we feel tense and pressured?

What would happen if we looked out and in – if we were aware of what was going on around us as well as where we wanted to go?

Are we dividing our attention more often than we realise?

Let me know what you notice.

Go to my Youtube link on my website and you will find a lovely video – a BBC programme from 1984 called ‘A way of being – Posture and Pain’. It gives a fascinating insight into the Alexander technique.

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