Wheel Of Awareness

Wheel of Awareness originaly introduced by Dr Daniel Siegel is a practice that aims to explore and integrate all internal and external senses.

Transcript

Hello,

This is Tomek from Synergy Lab Sydney.

Welcome to this session.

Wheel of Awareness is a practice initially introduced by Dr.

Daniel Siegel.

Its aim is to integrate all your external and internal senses and bring your body and mind into the state of coherence.

Let us begin.

You may do this practice either lying down or sitting in your chair,

Whatever makes you feel more comfortable.

If you sit in your chair,

Allow your feet to rest comfortably on the floor.

Your hands in your lap,

Facing up or down.

Your back straight but not rigid.

Imagine you sit in a dignified position.

Feeling natural flow of your breath.

Now you may allow your eyes to close.

To relax your body just a bit,

Let us start with a couple of deep breaths.

Breathing in through your nose,

Holding your breath for just a moment and then exhaling through your mouth,

Letting out all the tension,

All the stress,

Anything that may get in the way of your relaxation and your comfort.

Breathing in,

Hold and out.

In through your nose,

Hold and out.

In,

Hold and out.

Now breathe normally and relax.

As your body slowly relaxes,

Bring to your mind a wheel.

A wheel in the center of which there is a hub.

We will call it hub of awareness.

This is your safe haven.

This is the place of your return when you feel safe,

Secure and protected.

In order to ground yourself and center inside of the hub,

Bring your attention to your breathing.

Breath is a natural point where you can anchor your awareness.

As you breathe in and breathe out,

Recognize this part of your body where you can feel your breath the best.

Perhaps it's the tip of your nose or upper lip.

Perhaps you can feel expansion and contraction of your chest as you breathe in and breathe out.

Maybe it's a rise and fall of your belly.

Or you can feel the breath through your entire body.

Whichever spot you choose,

Stick with it through the entire practice.

When you have chosen your anchor,

Simply allow yourself to sink in and relax into your breath.

There's no other place to be,

Nothing to do.

Simply being here with your breath,

Giving yourself permission to spend this next 20 minutes or so with yourself.

Your breath and the hub in the middle of the wheel of awareness,

It's the starting point for your journey.

From the center of the hub,

We will discover all the senses.

Now imagine yourself shooting a spoke of awareness from the center of your hub to the outside rim of the wheel.

The first part of the wheel contains all five of your physical senses.

First bring your awareness to the sense of hearing.

Allow all the sounds to come to your ears.

Whatever comes to you,

Simply allow it and keep your awareness at it.

There's no need to change anything or adjust.

Now from the sense of hearing,

Bring your awareness to your vision.

With your eyes closed,

You may still perceive the darker and brighter points in front of your eyes.

It's not important at this stage to have a clear image.

You simply move your awareness from one sense to the other.

And now move your awareness to your sense of smell.

What can you perceive through your nose?

It may happen that you can't smell anything and that's absolutely fine.

You simply recognize this sense in your body.

Now from the sense of smell,

You shift your awareness to your taste.

How does it feel to engage your taste buds,

Engage your sense of taste?

Simply from the sense of taste,

Shift your attention to your touch.

Perhaps you can recognize how your skin touches the clothes.

Your feet are resting on the floor.

Simply allow the sense of touch to be integrated within your awareness.

And now drop all the five senses and as you dissolve the spoke of awareness,

Return yourself to the center of the hub.

By taking one deep breath through your nose,

Hold and exhale through your mouth.

And now you are back inside of the hub of awareness,

Anchored in your breath.

And every breath you take is your opportunity to relax and deepen the practice even more,

Grounding yourself and centering with every breath you take.

And now imagine once again you should add this spoke of awareness to the outer rim of your wheel.

This time we will explore your internal senses.

Imagine by examining all the senses that come from the top of your head.

The inside of your head,

Sensations from behind your forehead,

Muscles behind your eyes,

Muscles and bones inside of your cheeks.

Now move along and shift your awareness to your neck.

Imagine any tension and discomfort that may come from this part of your body.

Now include muscles in your shoulders.

Imagine scanning for any sensation that may come from this part of your body.

Include your arms.

Moving slowly towards your elbow and your hands.

Once you can scan each of your fingers separately.

As you come to your fingers you may feel a tingling sensation.

Now move back to the area of your chest.

All the muscles surrounding your rib cage.

Reach inside of your chest and if you listen closely you may perceive,

You may hear the sound of your heartbeat.

Now bring your awareness to your solar plexus.

Include your abdomen.

Feel your tummy with gentleness.

Allowing all the sensations that are coming from this part of your body to come to your awareness.

Now include your sit bones.

Do you sitting on a chair or lying down.

Recognize how gravity holds you down.

Bring to the picture muscles and bones inside of your legs,

Thighs and your calves.

All the bone structures in your ankles and feet.

Then move your awareness to your toes and once again if possible explore each of your toes separately.

Include your entire body and that gentle gaze.

Receiving sensory information from inside of your entire body.

And you may find that there are parts of your body that you feel a bit more.

And that's fine.

Simply allow those sensations to arrive to your awareness.

Now by taking another deeper breath through your nose,

Dissolve the spoke and return to the center of your heart.

And out.

Being safe,

Secure and protected.

Gently anchoring yourself in your breath.

And with each breath you relax even more.

And now once again shoot out the spoke of awareness to the rim of the wheel.

And now we explore all the emotions and feelings that will arise.

Ask yourself how do you feel right now?

There is no need to change the way you feel.

You're simply being yourself,

Acknowledging your current emotional state.

Being gentle.

Understanding your emotions with care and kindness without trying to change them in any way.

You can see how those feelings and emotions come and go and they don't stay the same.

You may perceive how they arrive as a wave of heat or tingling or tightness in one of the parts of your body.

Use your awareness to gently examine each of those rising emotions.

And if you pay careful attention you may catch the beginning,

The middle and the end of that emotional wave.

Change is the only constant in the universe.

As everything,

Emotions and feelings come and go,

Rise and disappear as a wave in the ocean.

Use this opportunity to observe those waves.

And now once again shift your attention from your emotions and feelings back to the center of the hub.

And with one deeper breath dissolve the spoke of awareness.

You are back in the center of the hub of awareness.

And grounded in the natural flow of your breath.

And you may find at any given point that your mind drifts away distracted by a sound or a sensation in your body or a thought.

And that's absolutely natural and normal.

Simply recognize and acknowledge there's been thinking,

There's been a sound,

There's been itching and also gently return yourself to safety to the center of hub of awareness,

Grounded and centered in your breath.

Now for the last time let us explore the outer rim.

This time shooting out the spoke of awareness and discovering our connections with others.

Find that spot on the outer rim of the wheel of awareness where you connect with your loved ones.

And bring to mind a picture of a person that is close to you,

A family member,

A partner,

A friend.

Do not try to choose one or the other.

Simply focus on the very first person that comes to your mind's eye.

And that's usually the best choice.

And as you hold the picture of the person in your mind's eye,

Recognize what kind of emotions and what kind of feelings arise.

Perhaps you can perceive those emotions and feelings in your body through open spaciousness or tightness or warmth or coldness.

Seeing that person in your gentle gaze,

Start sending all the love and all the kindness towards that person.

You may imagine a beam of white light coming out from the center of your chest towards that person.

And that light surrounds him or her,

Enveloping in feelings of love and kindness and compassion.

In each breath is the opportunity to send out more of those warm feelings.

At the same time,

Allow yourself to experience all that interaction,

All the feelings that may arise.

Once you've finished exploring the connection with the loved person,

Take another deeper breath through your nose and dissolve this fog of awareness in your deep exhale.

Now you are back to the hub of awareness.

Once again feeling safe,

Secure and protected,

One with your breath.

And you may take a minute or two,

Breathing in and breathing out.

And you may take a minute or two,

Breathing in and breathing out.

To conclude this practice,

Bring your awareness to your body.

Recognize how your body is being held down by the gravity,

Bringing yourself more and more to the room,

The place where you are.

Feeling all the sounds,

All the sensations coming from outside.

You may also slowly and gently move your toes and move your fingers.

And whenever you're ready,

You may open your eyes.

And this is the end of this practice.

Reviews

Thank you for a longer meditation practice! It is amazing!

Thank you Tomek🙏🏽I just discovered this meditation🙏🏽wonderful ❤️

Love it. Plenty of space. Would love to have an updated version that includes bending the spoke of awareness back to the hub as well as the mantras of well-wishes for all beings, myself, and “mwe.” (When listening to Dan Siegel’s Aware, I got the impression these were later additions.)

Thank you for this beautiful meditation Tomek. I love that this tool of Dan Siegal’s has the music added to it. Thank you.
For the final spoke it would also be lovely if the focus was not just on one person, but rather other beings.
One of the great powers of this practice is it’s ability to increase empathy - so I feel that the opportunity for people to expand awareness, feelings of connection and care into the more-than-human world is vital. The fourth part of the hub is “all our relations”, not only human and in a world where we increasingly need to evoke our instinctive loyalty to this living planet this feels like a point that is important and I wanted to share it.
Thank you again for this wonderful practice.

Thank you, wonderful practice to explore oneself 🙏

Wonderfull practice, deep and effective. Thank you 🙏🏾

Wonderful exploration inside and outside the body and emotions.
Thank you

Great feeling. I could feel each heart beat in my chest.. Wow!

I loved this. Thank you so much for your thoughtful, calming words and visualizations.

Wonderful! After reading about Wheel of awareness in Daniel Siegel's book, your voice and guidance made me experience it with the whole being. Grateful to you and to Insight Timer! 🥰🤗

The best one yet Tomek, the shift was very evident.

Namaste 🙏🏼

That was great. Very nice instructions and soothing tone of voice. Very deep practice. Thank you. ☮💖🙏

I studied the wheel a long time ago. This was such a nice fresh return to it. Perfect length and rhythm. Thank you.

This is an amazing meditation! So grounding and soothing. Thank you!

Today I came upon Dr Siegel's Wheel of Awareness and was delighted to see one of my favourite IT teachers had recorded it! Half an hour went so quickly, as I really went deep. Thank you so much for this. ✨💖✨

Thank you. I was able to experience deep presence and stillness within.

I could feel a real change in my mind after this practice. Thank you!

Fantastic meditation to re-connect with your elements. Thank you Tomek

I chose this meditation based on a recent recommendation from your Circle of friends, and found to be very centering, especially as my day is drawing to a close after more social activity than I’ve had lately. My day’s events included a funeral service for an acquaintance and some follow up support for a couple of mutual friends who knew her more intimately than I. Yesterday included a lot of heavy yard work and seeing a couple of my grandchildren after a long separation. So each of the topics along the wheel addressed a great deal for me, even physical, from the yard work, and slipping on some stairs today!! I’m fine, and even better now, following this Meditation. Once again, I thank you, Tomek 🙏!

Thank you Tomek for your skillful facilitation with this wheel of consciousness practice.