As a dance facilitator and movement therapist I teach mindful movement. I ask people to move and relate in ways they don’t often know are even possible for them.  The biggest obstacles I face are the fear and judgment that come with self-consciousness, both in my clients and even within myself.  How confident am I that we can find common ground?  How much do they trust me to help them change something that feels unchangeable?  In witnessing our selves, fear and judgment differentiate self-consciousness from mindful awareness.  We fear what we don’t know, and so often judge ourselves incapable of significant change or growth.  Self-conscious, it is easy to be afraid I’m doing things in a way others won’t approve of. Feeling self-conscious, I believe I’m not doing ‘it’ right.  Ultimately my fear is that I will be ostracized.  When self-conscious, I’m judging myself as I believe others judge me, as if from outside myself.  In my own life, and in my work as an embodied mindfulness teacher, I find that self-consciousness gets us stuck in our heads.  Our thoughts stop us in our tracks, and nothing feels right.  The flow of physical motion is literally interrupted by these thoughts.  In contrast, mindful awareness can assist creativity, flow, and interaction.  In mindfulness I stay present with myself from the inside—a loving and supportive observer.  I suspend judgment whenever possible.  Much of our intelligence is intuitive and intrinsic, easily blocked if we believe we need to know everything before we’ve even begun.  Mindful awareness is the skill of noticing ourselves without getting in the way of our natural flow.  In short, when we start with awareness we’re doing ‘it’ right.  We give ourselves the opportunity to learn to do things over time, through experience, and with the possibility of surprising ourselves.  I don’t think it matters much what ‘it’ is.

Am I am judging judgment too harshly?  Aren’t there appropriate and even important times to judge our selves or our actions?  Certainly our actions have effects on our lives, each other, and our ability to reach our goals.  We must make decisions about our actions, and using our cognitive abilities to weigh information is an essential part of that process.  Lets break this down a bit to differentiate judgment from discernment.  Judgment is a determination of value.  We judge to say that good is better than bad, beautiful is better than ugly; something valuable has more worth than something useless.  Discernment is different; it is an interpretive process of making meaning.  A cat meows more than a dog, a line is straighter than a curve, and a car is both bigger and faster than a breadbox.  The value of meowing, straightness, or speed depends very much on the situation at hand:  Discernment offers comparison without an assignment of value.  I believe effective judgment follows focused discernment.  As a sensory, embodied process, discernment requires awareness, and may engage us in action to gather information.  I can discern the difference between a cat and a dog based on visual and auditory cues, and I may move my body to better look and listen.  We decode our sensory cues to generate meaning—a wagging tail and panting help me discern that the furry warm being in front of me is probably a dog.  I then make decisions about my actions.  Do I pet the dog?  How do I determine the relative value of petting the dog vs. leaving it alone?  I need to weigh the value of petting the dog against the possible risks.  This is a judgment call.

Before we make any judgment calls, lets further differentiate discernment and awareness.  Awareness arises from our ability to pay attention, gathering the data that we make meaning of through discernment.  Does the dog appear friendly?  Do I feel safe?  Is its tail wagging?  To discern my answers to these questions I must become aware of the tail’s shape, and how that shape changes.  I pay attention to what I see while looking at the dog.  Through my senses I can be aware of what’s taking place out in the world. I’m aware of the dog.  Internal awareness also affects my discernment. To know whether I am scared of the dog I can notice the feelings in my body.  Perhaps I notice a reflexive desire to draw my hands back toward my torso.  On another level, I can have awareness of my past experiences and the bias that my past experiences may bring to a situation. My son was knocked off of a porch trick-or-treating one year on Halloween by an enthusiastic puppy. Whenever we encounter dogs together I remember that experience, and it plays a part in how we interact with dogs. I am aware of how that experience affects my discernment and the judgments I make when I interact with dogs. When I begin with awareness, using discernment to guide my actions, I’m doing it right.

What am I doing right, and for whom?  I’m making the best judgment call I can in any moment based on my sensory awareness, situational discernment, and my past experiences.  I’m deciding whether to pet the dog.  I’m doing it for myself, for the dog, and perhaps even for others who are tangentially involved, like the dog’s caretaker.  I’m doing it right when I start with awareness because I can’t possibly know what will actually take place.  Perhaps the dog will bite me, or the caretaker will yell at me. Perhaps we’ll have a pleasurable moment of connection together, all three of us.  Perhaps.  I’m doing it right because I’m participating in the flow of experience, connecting with the world both outside and inside of me.  I’m aware that I’m still slightly traumatized by the experience of my son being knocked off the porch, so I discern that my reflexive reaction to pull away from the dog likely comes from past experience; not the actions of this particular dog.  I am aware that this dog is wagging, and I discern that the caretaker is calm and smiling at me when I look at them.  So, I choose to pet the dog, end up in a friendly conversation with the caretaker, and come away from the situation feeling connected.  I also resolve some of my trauma about dogs.  All is well, and clearly I did it right.

Now lets imagine instead that the dog had bit me or that the caretaker had yelled at me.  Did I do it right?  I still made the best judgment call I could in that moment given the wagging dog, the smiling caretaker, and my awareness of bias.  I cannot control the world—only my actions within it.  I attempted to participate fully in the world even though I did not know what would happen.  I’ll probably question my discernment, and might judge my self, the dog, or the dog’s caretaker harshly.  It’s easy to jump to blaming self or others when the world gives us feedback we don’t expect.  Yet, this blame isn’t particularly useful.  Re-evaluating my relationship to dogs may be—perhaps my discernment requires further awareness.  Perhaps it was bad luck.  I’m doing it right when I stay aware and keep participating in the flow of life despite troubling feedback.  Instead of letting self-consciousness prevent me from interacting with dogs and their caretakers, maybe next time I ask the caretaker if petting their dog is a good idea.

Have you noticed situations in which you alternate between judging yourself and others negatively, as if one must be the truth?  I think we can tend towards one of these more overall.  I often perceive and do things differently from others—it’s just my nature.  I’m prone to feelings of self-consciousness because as soon as I discern variation between my behavior and others’ I worry that I’m not doing ‘it’ right.  Then, far more often than I like, if I decide to approve of my own actions I judge others’ with righteous indignation. They’re not doing it right!  Does this ever happen to you?  What if you read the first paragraph of this essay and you identified yourself as tending to be self-conscious?  Perhaps you became afraid that you wouldn’t get this difference between self-consciousness and mindful awareness; that on some level you’re just stuck?  Ironically, then, reading the essay intended to support you in mindful awareness just shut you down, furthering a cycle of self-consciousness.  It works similarly in the other extreme:  What if in reading the first paragraph you decided that I’ve got it all wrong, and that there’s nothing worthwhile here for you?  Yet, you kept reading and have gotten here just to collect more reasons to feel superior, yes?  This is a form of self-consciousness too—a judgment being formed as if from outside yourself to ascertain your value.  Rather than moving on in the flow of your own experience, you’re stuck in your head just to prop up your belief system.  When we do this we’re trying to create some external sense of ‘truth’.  What if this is a complete waste of energy?  What if it comes from not trusting our own awareness and discernment?  Yet I find that these examples happen for me all the time. I often project an outer standard for all experience that doesn’t matter and that probably doesn’t even exist under most circumstances.  Mindful awareness begins by noticing from the inside, rather than in the frame of this imagined outer perspective.  Ultimately, you’re reading this for whatever reason suits you:  Notice and play with that, and you’re doing it right.

Other people’s needs and beliefs matter; we are not alone.  Yet, self-conscious judgment doesn’t actually require other people. To be self-conscious is to judge our selves through the mirror of any imagined external consciousness.  Self consciousness is about what ‘they’ are probably thinking.  This does not mean we should avoid weighing the effects of our actions on others:  We are social beings, and our ability to be conscious of our selves in a frame that includes others is the basis of morality. Relationships, from families to civilizations, depend on some level of shared value.  We do ascertain value through a process of judgment.  Yet, the perspective from which we examine the value of our own actions is from inside ourselves.  If we don’t ask, we can’t truly know what others are thinking.  To be vulnerable enough to ask others how they perceive us, and then to listen without defensiveness, panic, or judgment, is a powerful act of moral attunement.  And still, we cannot believe everything we hear about ourselves—our internal awareness, discernment, and judgment filters the communications we receive. When we take the time and are vulnerable enough to simply listen, we’re doing it right.

I used to have a recurring dream of being in class at my elementary school and suddenly realizing I was naked.  I was always so embarrassed—panicked really.  I felt hugely self-conscious.  I’m no longer all that concerned with nudity, but the story remains for me:  There are still many things that embarrass me when I imagine them being exposed.  I practice playing at this edge, attempting to offer whatever gifts my own vulnerability might provide for others.  My hope is that in revealing myself in certain ways I am helping others find more flow, awareness, and discernment for themselves.  Yet, sometimes I may be over-sharing:  However willing I may be to run around naked, it may actually be inappropriate or even traumatizing to others depending on the context.  Imagining how others are affected matters.  How do I know when self-consciousness is serving my relationships with others and when it’s preventing me from full and mutually beneficial expression?  I grapple with this in sharing with you here.  I am mindful of my emotional state as I write, noticing when I feel more or less connected to what I’m communicating.  Editing, I stay with my ideas until they feel true from many angles, carrying both logic and emotion.  Being aware of others’ needs while communicating from my own center, I’m doing it right.

Mindful awareness suspends judgment in favor of curiosity, playing in the flow of experience.  The self-assurance mantra “I’m doing it right” is a method for entering this state of curiosity and flow because it counters the freeze responses of fear and doubt.  In the space of suspended judgment we have the freedom to improvise, and to trust intuition.  Yet, what about when we’re not doing it right?  What if we start driving down the wrong side of the highway and endanger people, singing softly to ourselves that we’re doing it right? That’s why we must begin with awareness. We can create safe containers to consciously explore, further developing awareness.  If you don’t know if you’re driving well, go to a big empty parking lot where you won’t be able to hurt anyone.  Practice your driving there and most anything you do will be right.  Explore nudity in the wilderness before trying to bring it to the city.  If nobody is going to get hurt nothing is lost.  We can seek and create appropriate containers to develop our awareness and discernment step by step.

I teach mindful movement and dance.  People are commonly scared to dance; afraid they will make fools of themselves.  And yet I still hear many stories of self-consciousness even from people trying to dance alone in their living rooms.  Who is judging?  Who is at risk of being hurt?  The dancer is judging, and they are hurting themselves.  Dancing with others is of course a riskier event, and yet the same question holds its power:  Who is at risk of being hurt?  Unless we physically impact each other, the only risk is social judgment.  Indeed, just as a dog may bite, it is possible that I will be heckled or bullied by others for my dancing.  Coming from the mantra “I’m doing it right,” with the qualifier “when I begin with awareness,” it’s clear to me that I as a dancer am not hurting anyone.  If someone wants to make fun of me, so be it.  My discernment may help me find contexts for dance that minimize my exposure—being heckled can be draining—but I do not need to be self-conscious.  I have worked through my own self-consciousness specifically by dancing in public places.  I have been both supported and heckled, and have even come to perceive certain heckling as a form of support.  People heckle me to see how I respond, and when I respond generously towards them they often show appreciation.  The dancing is a gift of vulnerability that allows them to feel less self-conscious in their own bodies.  Public dancing can be quite healing because it is a safe container to practice suspending self-conscious judgment.

I teach partner dance through contact improvisation, and this is a more complex situation.  When we are touching and dancing with each other there are physical risks.  It’s important not to control others in contact dancing—sensitivity is paramount.  An uncoordinated or insensitive motion can injure another person, especially if that person has been grasped or controlled so that they cannot get away.  And yet, the mantra “I’m doing it right when I start with awareness” still holds. Mistakes happen, and people do occasionally get injured physically or emotionally when interacting, but the healing potential is far greater than the risks.  When we are vulnerable enough to interact, to flow together, and to stay sensitive as we do so, then we can grow beyond the fears the prevent our flow. When we practice dancing with awareness and discernment we learn to dance better, resolving the cycle of self-consciousness that might stop us from trying.  Because dancing is so activating of self-consciousness, it is also a spectacular place to practice removing it from our lives.  The apparent fool may be the wisest in the room, having quieted the self-consciousness that would have prevented their full expression.  To be whole in oneself while mindful of others is a place of power.  Once we judge the container of our interaction safe, we need not judge our selves or others further.

Dance is truly the safest container I know to get curious about life. There are infinite possibilities for dancing well, from mastering steps, rhythm, partnership, and choreography, to freely expressing inner impulses.  With practice the specifics of dance can be honed.  What I most love about dance, though, is that you’re already doing it right.  There is no one recipe for dance, or for life.  The dance floor is a microcosm for the power of awareness in flow.  Don’t control people, don’t run into them, and don’t judge them.  If you start with awareness, you’re doing it right.