Gestalt Cycle of Experience - Awareness

The Gestalt Cycle of Experience is a theoretical map used in Gestalt Therapy to describe the process by which needs, emotions and interests come into awareness and are satisfied. You can read my introduction to the cycle here. This month we are going to look at the second stage of this process, 'Awareness'.

Awareness follows the stage of sensation and comes before the building of energy of mobilisation. In the context of the arising of needs, interests and emotion, the awareness piece of the cycle is an important element where our ways of meaning making come in to influence what comes next.

If the process is working well, awareness might come in to say, oh that dry mouth and dull feeling means thirst, I need a drink. Or, ugh I've got lost in my thoughts and everything feels like its closing in, I probably need some contact with someone. Or, I feel tense when that thing happens, maybe I don't like it or don't want it. Or, I'm excited, I'm interested in that thing, I want to move towards it.

Awareness is an expression often used in psychotherapy and counselling in relation to developing self awareness, meaning something like self understanding and deeper insight into patterns of behaviour and ways of being. In eastern contemplative spiritual traditions like Buddhism and Yoga, the word awareness can be used to describe the qualities of consciousness that experience things as they are without the overlaying of habitual assumptions and meanings.

In the cycle of experience awareness is a process where meaning is made of sensation, supporting the mobilisation and movement of energy towards action in the direction of the need or interest. This requires both the self awareness to know something about ourselves, and also that quality of awareness suggested as a goal of mediation practice - to be able to perceive and experience out of the grip of habitual reactions or archaic expectations.

The extent to which our awareness is configured by past experience, particularly painful experiences in important relationships, will cloud our perception of what is possible in the present. As I write this I want to clarify that it is completely human to make assumptions based on our experience and that a journey of developing and refining our awareness is probably a life long process with no final destination.

Things can also go awry in the flow of experience through the cycle when we haven't learned to make sense of the signals from our embodied selves (e.g. sensations) and the needs they might be pointing to. Or, if we have been taught or required to attend to others and not ourselves the signals themselves might be lying dormant, not expecting to be tuned into.

I'm imagining awareness being a bit like a point in a train track where the track forks in a number of potential directions. A place of potential choice. When we are operating habitually and with an underdeveloped sense of awareness of what's behind our choices and actions, the train will continue to go down the same piece of track. The other options may not even be in awareness, with an accompanying sense of inevitability, this is just how it is, how I am, how its always been. Some examples of this might be to habitually numb discomfort, distract with over work, or to project our needs on to others and get busy trying to help them. Without awareness operating the signal box and directing the train it is easy to get lost.

The influences of the environment we have been brought up in and are surrounded by are important in shaping what is included in our awareness. What we prioritise, what we notice and don't notice. I'm remembering being in a village in southern Spain and a friend remarking on the overwhelming smell of figs from the surrounding trees. I couldn't smell anything. As we talked about it, she spoke of her upbringing in Israel and the familiar smell of figs in the summer. This smell was catching her attention in the present. I, however, having grown up in Scotland, having no experience with fig trees was oblivious to this fragrance and couldn't pick it out. This was such a striking moment for me, bringing to life how our different experiences contributed to us being aware of such different things in the present moment.

Working with awareness, what is in awareness, what is out of awareness, and how this shapes our experience of ourselves in relation to others and the world around us is a central aspect of Gestalt Therapy. I hope this exploration of the place of awareness in the cycle of experience has given you something to thing about.

Perhaps next time you start to sense you need or want something, or conversely want to stop or don't want something see if you can pause for a moment and let yourself linger on that experience. How do you feel as you do that, what associations come to mind, memories, assumptions, beliefs, expectations? Does something get in the way of you moving towards or away from the thing in mind. What is in your awareness as you hover in that place?

Next time we'll have a look at 'mobilisation', where the energy is gathering towards taking action.