You should know what this is built on
Perhaps a sentence here hooked a tender part inside you. Perhaps one of the journeys speaks rather precisely to something you’ve been trying to ignore.
And perhaps, before going any further, you’d like to ask: What is this actually based on?
Good question. Especially when something asks for your time, your attention and a lot of self honesty…
Your body has something to contribute
You say you’re fine. Meanwhile, your jaw has apparently joined a different conversation.
Noticing that difference gives you something to explore.
Researchers use the word interoception for the sensing and processing of signals from within the body. This field examines how bodily signals relate to emotion, self-regulation and our experience of ourselves. It also distinguishes between paying attention to a sensation and interpreting it accurately. Those aren’t automatically the same thing. Got curious? Read more here Khalsa and colleagues, 2018.
In I AWAKE, guided body awareness invites you to notice what’s happening alongside your thoughts. Where body maps are included, colour gives you a way to record a sensation before you’ve found words for it.
A tight chest might accompany excitement, apprehension or something else entirely. The practice makes room to notice, consider the context and stay curious.
Your body gets a say. You get time to understand what you’re hearing.
The words you choose to describe something matter
There’s a difference between “I’m being ridiculous” and “I’m disappointed because this mattered to me.”
The second gives you somewhere to begin.
Research on affect labelling, or putting feelings into words, offers one reason to take emotional language seriously. In a laboratory study, naming the emotions shown in images was associated with reduced amygdala activity compared with other ways of responding to those images. That finding concerns a specific experimental task; it doesn’t mean that every act of journalling produces the same effect. Lieberman and colleagues, 2007.
I AWAKE gives reflection a deliberate place in the practice. You’re invited to move beyond a familiar explanation and get more particular.
What hurt? What did you hope would happen? What have you been calling “too much” because admitting you want it feels a little exposed?
The aim is an answer you recognise as your own. Even if it’s inconvenient. Even if you cross it out tomorrow.
Imagination belongs in the conversation
You can rehearse an awkward conversation so thoroughly that your shoulders tense before anyone has said a word.
Imagination already participates in your life. I AWAKE invites you to explore that participation deliberately.
Research on mental imagery describes its relationship with perception, memory and emotion. Imagining and seeing can involve overlapping mechanisms, while remaining different experiences. The form and vividness of imagery also vary between people.
Fascinating huh? Here’s where you can read more about it Pearson and colleagues, 2015.
Within the I AWAKE method, guided imagination offers another way to approach a question. An imagined place, a symbolic encounter or a possible future can become material for reflection: what do you notice, how do you respond, and what meaning do you give it?
The Circle provides a threshold into this practice. The wider symbolic world belongs to I AWAKE’s creative framework.
Research into imagery helps explain why imagination is a meaningful area to explore.
The particular symbols remain invitations to interpretation.
You decide what, if anything, they illuminate.
A convincing thought can still be questioned
Some interpretations arrive with astonishing confidence.
“They’re disappointed in me.”
“I’m not ready.”
“People like me don’t do things like that.”
You may know the voice. You may even have furnished it with an office.
Metacognition concerns how we monitor and evaluate our own thinking. Research distinguishes confidence from accuracy, including how well people recognise when their judgments are correct. Feeling certain and having good reason to be certain are different matters. Fleming and Lau, 2014.
I AWAKE brings that distinction into reflection through questions about what you noticed, what you inferred and what else might explain the situation.
This is especially relevant to the Hidden Hero’s Journey and its exploration of reality literacy: attending to the relationship between an event, your experience of it and the meaning you make.
You can take your experience seriously and still leave a little room around your conclusion.
Give an insight somewhere to go
You finish a passage, recognise yourself and think, Yes. That. I want to do something differently.
Then the phone rings. Life has excellent timing.
Research on implementation intentions examines how specific plans can help people act on their intentions. A substantial research synthesis found benefits from linking a recognisable situation with a planned response: when this happens, I’ll do that. Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006.
That principle is relevant to I AWAKE’s invitations to carry discovery into daily life.
“If I’m asked for an answer before I’m ready, I’ll ask for time.”
“When I sit down to work, I’ll spend ten minutes with the idea I keep postponing.”
A practical step gives you an experience to learn from. You can notice what happened, adjust and try again.
The discovery gets to leave the page with you.
Connected questions
These research fields meet different concerns across the I AWAKE universe.
The Sensual Hero’s Journey™ brings attention to sensation, emotional life, desire, boundaries and connection. Body awareness and emotional reflection are particularly relevant to this intimate territory.
The Creative Hero’s Journey™ explores what you want to bring into the world. Imagination, reflection and practical action meet questions of possibility, permission and capacity.
The Hidden Hero’s Journey™ explores how your inner world participates in the reality you experience. Attention, interpretation, imagery and metacognition offer useful perspectives on that inquiry.
The research helps inform the questions and practices. Each Hero’s Journey gives them a distinct human context.
The universe beyond this universe
The Swedish Institute of Inner Technology develops the broader framework surrounding this work.
Its research approach brings together questions of attention, discernment, embodied intelligence, creativity, agency and responsibility, including what happens to these capacities as artificial intelligence changes how we work and live. Its work includes framework development, interdisciplinary synthesis and the design of practice systems. Explore the Institute’s research approach.
I AWAKE brings these concerns into personal exploration.
What do you notice before you answer? How do you recognise an assumption? What helps you act on something that matters to you? How do you remain involved in a life that offers so many ways to run on automatic?
For the larger framework, research library and opportunities to collaborate, visit the Institute.
