Each of the programs offered at Inside Awareness has the potential to increase understanding and clarity of each of these 12 levels of consciousness in the Dimension Levels of Consciousness Map using practice steps of skill development in the patterns of actions for day to day activities in one’s lifestyle. These qualities bring optimism, hope, self love and esteem in ordinary life experiences initiating fulfillment and contentment. Learn more about the programs in the link below, under the maps 12 Level descriptions.
Get 12 Levels of Consciousness Poster – Poster Link
The mind focus origins in psychology uses Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to describe the levels of behaviour evolution. These 12 levels of consciousness uses a somatic focus to initiate cognitive mindfulness. The descriptions interprets the balance of the two intertwined dimensions: the body and the mind. This pattern is designed to come into alignment through somatic awareness versus the conceptualization of the cognitive attributes.
Each of the levels are described in the 12 Levels of Consciousness available on Amazon Kindle.
Listen to a meditation for the 12 Levels of Consciousness: below on YouTube
Another New Addition for integration is listening to music for integration. This playlist is selection that would be played on a radio station. Young and interactive day to day topics that align with integration of new behaviour postures and conditioning. Add it to your playlist if you enjoy a selection of different genera’s.
For example, When Separation Dissolves – refers to #8 in the Levels of Consciousness.
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A mindful journal to plan, reflect, and align with your highest self. The Lotus Flower Summer Weekly Embodiment Actions Journal is designed to support this journey.
Like the lotus flower, growth often emerges through challenge. Each page of this journal is an invitation to slow down, notice what matters, and take intentional steps toward the life you wish to create.
Inside these pages, you will find space to:
Set meaningful intentions
Track habits and progress
Reflect on emotions and experiences
Practice gratitude
Strengthen self-awareness
Align your actions with your values
This journal has been created through 26 years of experience integrating somatic awareness as support for understanding and increasing clarity in behaviour through movement, communication and listening. The cognitive behaviour and somatic behaviours are intertwined and this author practitioner and mentor has recognized a lack of balance and understanding between the two. Mainstream guided pattern focus in education has mainly been on cognitive function and not on somatic experience. Therefore, the somatic reactions can be out of control without the skills to keep impulse control in check. This is demonstrated through a lack of body connections to how the skeleton functions at the core patterns and in the inner processing of information due to limited filters of understanding. The guided patterns in this journal support the integration of balancing the interrelationships between the body and mind responses.
Below you will find two more somatic oriented activates that engage the mind through guided patterns. One is meditation and the other through sound.
Connect to learn more about Lotus Flower Embodiment Learning Series that integrates functional movement and mindfulness for converting out of balance reactions into conscious responses.
Listen to Meditation to support Lotus Flower Embodiment Series:
Listen to Music Playlist to support Lotus Flower Embodiment Series:
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by Renee Lindstrom, founder Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning
This blog article below was written on this author’s personal website http://www.reneelindstrom.com recently. It is from a perspective of a somatic empath that carries the ability to identify the authentic somatic experience and the cognitive conceptualization that those not in their somatic experience believe it is. No judgement, simply a gap this author is bringing focus to. You can read this article by clicking the article link below or listen on You tube at link below it. I hope this content will be of interest in those sincerely interested in actively going beyond what they think they know from societies conditioning in accepting the stories attached to their mental, emotional and physical states of being. The first step to breaking free of acceptance to labels, assessments, and moral judgements, etc., is having clarity on the separation that supports it.
Below are two earlier articles from this authors personal web site on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs from an interesting perspective that may be interesting to read after digesting and integrating this perspective from a somatic empath. Understanding this first stage will support how society is perhaps being misguided by this lack of clarity by those who are seeking to meet their needs without compassion and empathy for others.
If you would like to connectto learn moreabout educational opportunities, coaching, mentoring , consulting or functional integrations
Feldenkrais®, Feldenkrais Method®, Awareness Through Movement®, and Functional Integration®, are registered service marks of the Feldenkrais Guild® of North America. Feldenkrais Method®
Copyrighted Property posted on Renee’s authentic accounts only:
by Renee Lindstrom, founder, Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning
Functional Breathing Patterns sensed with somatic awareness
Often when observing the breath patterns of an individuals I will see that there is a lack of skeletal movements in their patterns of expansion and contraction in the moving parts that could be recruited for fuller body supported whole movement for drawing in air and expelling it.
The body parts I refer to are the bones and joints that create flexibility, balance, expansion and contraction, and counterbalance.
Shown here in this slideshow.
The ribs are connected to the vertebrae and sternum. They are as high as the vertebra at the base of the neck and down to the floating ribs that in some can be close to the bony ridges of the pelvic bones.
If you look at an image of the ribs from a frontal view you will see that the attachment to the sternum isn’t bone. Rather the bone has transitioned into cartlidge and forms a joint for expansion and contraction.
In this back view you can see how the shoulder blade comes up to form a socket where the humerus bone rests in the cradle of the socket. Above the blade at top is the end of the clavicle.
In this picture you can see the skull on top of the vertebra in this upright position. It sits over the rib cage and pelvis. It becomes obvious that the shoulder blades, clavicles and arms are add ons to the core body skeleton.
In this picture you will view the skull over the pelvis and the pelvis over the feet. If you look at the hip and shoulder joints you will see the round heads of the upper arm and leg bones resting in the cradle of the socket. This same round bone is in the ankle joint and the top vertebra where the skull rests. The skull forms the cradle.
You can observe the elbow, wrist and knee joints bend however do not have the circular round ball at the end that sits in a socket. Your wrists can move in a circular motion though. Perhaps not in the same way as the ankle, hip and shoulder joints.
The above slideshow demonstrates the moving parts of the skeleton that supports whole breath through core functional skeletal movement patterns.The focus of attention in these guided patterns is movement where the muscles, ligaments and soft tissue are spontaneously moving in response to the skeletal micromovements. These micromovements with a skeletal focus treats the muscle and soft tissue as partners that follow and hold the bones in alignment. This focus is on core bone strength and the resilience of the muscles that are not resistant to functional movement patterns. Muscle strength is separate from bone strength, yet often in cognitive intellectualization does not include the understanding of the bone movement in functional postural transitions.
The patterns in The Mindfulness Body Breath workshop and Audios focus attention on education of whole function through postural transitions to enhance and improve natural rhythms of breathing. The guided patterns balance the somatic experience with the cognitive conceptualizations for increasing mindfulness through function.
More on Body Mindfulness Audio plus added bonus below: Free Intro to expanding somatic sensing in video embedded down below
These guided patterns are from Feldenkrais workshop that Renee has held since 2007. The feedback after each workshop has been positive with appreciation expressed.
Core Body Functional Breathing Audio
The Audio for Core Body Functional Breathing will guide you through patterns of movement to explore breathing with the focus on micromovements to release bones held in rigid patterns to encourage fuller intake and expulsion of breath and that is a natural function and not forced through concepts. These guided patterns generate a conscious felt sense connection to contraction and expansion through movement. This increase in awareness can support consciously releasing the constraints to blocking the resilience through the patterns of opposites that initiate contraction and expansion through bone movement that is needed for organic fuller breath patterns.
Included in this audio lesson offer is an intro and outro for the intent to learn how to engage the sensory awareness using the five senses in harmony and partnership with cognitive function. It is this practitioners experience that integration and development of new neural pathways do not develop through thinking that is dependant on beliefs, opinions and evaluative thinking. Neural pathways are developed on new actions that engage growth through novelty, exploration and discovery.
Read more on the benefits of Somatic Body Mindfulness and research of Feldenkrais below
How to purchase and enjoy – Core Body Functional Breathing Audio
How can you move a body part through function when you don’t know what it is somatically or the ability to different it from your body mass?
Intro to how to use your senses of sight (visions) and sound to differentiate felt senses of individual body parts.
In this short video Renee introduces the potential of expanding the felt sense of the bones inside through vision and imagination. Using pictures of the bone parts through the sensory perception of sight and sound the listener can focus on integrating this knowledge into their somatic sensory perception that can create a connection to the bone through the sensory ability to feel them independently through *function.
Read more on the benefits of Somatic Body Mindfulness and research of Feldenkrais below:
increase relaxation and windows of emotional tolerance and self-connection
improve sleep and sleep sounder
increase body functions, cognition and emotional responses of calm, mindfulness and joy
Exploring the body anatomy through the felt senses increases inner awareness and trust. This body exploration is a different type of strength training. The difference is the focus of attention on the body, mind and felt senses through guided patterns designed to expand conscious awareness of the body function. The strength of feeling one’s body through moving joints and bones deepens awareness of physical connections as postures change, like in the shifting transitions from sitting to standing and back to sitting. Movement is a series of shifting postures. The functioning healthy body is not stationary, nor poses. It is designed for a continuous flow of integrative movement patterns.
Feedback On Body Mindfulness Introduction
“I am excited!!! This is great! It is like you are there with me step by step. It’s what all of us are looking for, real Feldenkrais support” S
“That was great, Renee! You have such a calm and lovely voice. I’m happy to add this to my calming strategies.Thank you. ” H
“I really like this sort of thing and would welcome further “installments” in the series and/or a revised version of this one. I liked the pace at which you spoke, not too rushed and left enough time to do the exploration of the particular area of the body to which you were drawing attention.
I liked that you offered options re leg position (straight out or with bolster under knees) but wondered whether one position or the other is preferable. Or is it just that one would notice different things, depending on how the legs are positioned?” K
Feldenkrais®, Feldenkrais Method®, Awareness Through Movement®, and Functional Integration®, are registered service marks of the Feldenkrais Guild® of NorthAmerica
by Renee Lindstrom, founder, Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning
The nine life area goals identified in the poster above were painted as a creative personal connection to intentions in each area and framed last night as the calendar is about to shift into 2026. This poster is hung facing the door to my office/creative space as a visual reminder as I move about and sit at my desk. This interactive poster is placed prominently with the intention of manifesting life through creative expression in living and learning. It is a visual focus of intention for creative living in 2026 that expresses from a thoughtful core connection. It is my ‘Shining North Star’ guiding my 2026 experience. A Shining North Star that contains what is alive and meaningful in the present moment of reflection. Each year is a stepping stone on an elusive journey, and this poster identifies the present location of this North Star on this pathway. It creates groundedness in the spontaneity of living an interactive and innovative lifestyle.
Shining Star
by local #yyj artist from my children’s school in ’01/’02
In the center of the Shining Star, in the above drawing, one can imagine the burst of creation. Creation that creates form. This activity, shown in the poster above, demonstrates intentional action for creating an interactive board that connects to what is meaningful at a core level. It is the elusive structure that contains the form for bursts of spontaneous action in alignment with core intention.
The board replaces outside influences and realigns my decision-making focus to make independent choices in alignment with what is meaningful, rather than seeking outside advice and opinions. It has proven to be a strong support that eliminates the unnecessary projections of others that do not have the same inner patterns for processing information. Each of us has an inner pattern for processing information that is unique. No one can duplicate another person’s inner filter or processing patterns or tell someone what to do effectively, based on the separation between inner programming. Programming that I identify as social and cultural conditioning.
In simple terms, this means that the poster above reflects a lifestyle model where consideration was given to determine important next steps. These stepping stones guide the coming year at a core level and become the source for checking in for reassurance and guidance that outside actions are in balance with inner values. My yearly considerations go back to 2013 or thereabouts. Each year became a stepping stone on a journey that unlocked a natural and organic model of elevating conscious awareness. It is one of the pillars that has become an educational pattern for expanding beyond the constraints of learned social and cultural behavioural conditioning. How? It has replaced outside authorities with an inner one.
What does outside authority versus an inner one mean?
Outside
An outside authority is exactly how it is written. In this context, it means looking to others (false guru’s) for guidance on what is right and what is wrong based upon their opinions, belief systems and limited living experiences. Anyone with a closed mindset that looks outside themselves at status (what others have) and self-image (how things appear) has limitations in clarity and life experience. It’s all contained within a closed circuit and small-mindedness. If they have a title, it is even harder to discriminate, as the Indoctrination creates a false belief system of superiority.
Google writes: Indoctrination is teaching someone a specific set of beliefs or ideas, often political, religious, or ideological, in a way that discourages questioning or critical thinking, making them accept it as truth without examination, like brainwashing, but can also be a less harsh form of cultural teaching. It’s about instilling a doctrine or viewpoint repeatedly until it’s accepted uncritically, differing from general education which encourages independent thought.
Inside
An inner authority means checking in mindfully or thoughtfully to tap into what is meaningful in the present moment. This suggests a structure for learning core values, and trusting them in a sea of outside opinions, perspectives and beliefs. It suggests owning one’s own power, instead of being in the habit of giving it away. This is an action of leadership that can be challenging. It means letting go of blame and shame to justify the action one is taking, or has taken.
An example of blaming others for personal actions. As a kid, I blamed a sibling for taking an action to shoplift. I was 7 years old. I told my dad …….made me do it. Only,………wasn’t there!
Not only is considering intentions for the coming year important for cultivating awareness of personal needs, its accountability training. It can be an elusive pattern with a spontaneous outcome. It shifts the blame and shame learned thinking behaviours into a focus on self-value and accomplishments.
Reading more posts on Cultivating with Goals on our Goal news webpages:
In the above post, Renee, founder of Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning, explains the origins of the seed intention at the core of the lifestyle learning programs. Since 1990, she has actively pursued clarity on the duality she was witnessing in people’s behaviour with themselves and others, and the influences of it in the environment and community. This behaviour has crossed all hierarchies and social conditioning. It expressed itself equally through opposing forces, for example, advocacy for environmental causes. The force of aggression was equal in the entitlement displayed on both sides of the table.
A choice to respond to life through the somatic sensory awareness while balancing thoughtful and mindful attention
In the personal post linked above, she shares a personal journey resulting from a year of transitioning through losses that triggered an activation in her stream of consciousness focus. Prior to that year of losses, there had been a heartbreak event called broken-heartedness in the Buddhist Teachings of the Shambhala Center. There is a heart opening in this state of being that is tender and soft. Combined with the shift into heightened levels of somatic sensory awareness and perception, there was an experience of expanded consciousness beyond the limitations of a socially conditioned and educated left-brain experience. She eventually identified this experience as the state of mindfulness one finds in a committed sitting meditation. The difference is that it was an active living experience, and not an organized practice of achievement. It was an obvious experience that could be defined as different than those around her. The shift into this somatic led state felt like spontaneous combustion was a four-year transitional period of little combustions leading up to the major eruption. The fifth year was dedicated to stepping back to fully immerse in the potential for understanding and finding answers. The answers didn’t come in a year, and it took years of commitment to tap into and explore patterns that could cultivate the awareness that was being sought out. This even meant entering educational programs where the mentors described themselves as having achieved what she was longing to learn, only to somatically discover they had not yet achieved it. The choice was always based upon the model of doable patterns that was being taught and integrated from someone else’s innovative teaching origins. The balance between the left brain and right brain had not been achieved yet, and they themselves didn’t know it. Why? They hadn’t experienced it yet. You can only know something when you have experienced it. This meant they were never offering their own system. It was only borrowed patterns where they assumed authority over with a sense of ownership. Even with many of these programs focused on somatic awareness and mindfulness, they did not recognize anything outside their closed perspectives. The only way she could know this is that for two years, she was in this creative connected state of being without any loss of her developed left-brain experience. The difference was that the left brain did not dominate in this experience and instead, collaborated.
They say all things happen for a reason, and now in hindsight, it may be fortunate that she experienced a mother’s emotional and mental absence, or abandonment, as a child. The basic physical needs were met, yet it lacked loving kindness. For her, it resulted in a continued state of early somatic learning that wasn’t corrupted by a shift in focus that didn’t encourage the same somatic awareness through the five senses. By corrupted, Renee is suggesting this means attention shifted to critical thinking and institutionalized learning.
Insight & recognition of the value in somatic sensory led mindfulness awareness for the aging process
Those early challenges now provide insight and recognition of their value. The clarity is a benefit for understanding the differences in socially conditioned behaviours. As a somatic empath experiencing the maturing students and their aged logical and analytical processors now, Renee finds they have difficult transitions into retirement and old age. They have long lost their connection to early somatic senses and continue trying to navigate through their focus of attention placed on outside strategies to fix their physical, mental and emotional functional losses. In their disconnection from engaging with their felt senses, she recognizes the loss in their abilities, mentally, emotionally and physically, for supporting themselves. They lack trust in their mental and physical abilities to support themselves. Without a connection to their five senses, they do not trust themselves and are fearful of their own bodies. As a practitioner who engages them in learning to connect through their five senses, Renee observes a shift in their levels of confidence and fear where their trust in themselves increases.
Learning gap in education is creating inner combat between critical thinking consciousness & felt sense consciousness
When a child enters into an adult-generated learning model, it becomes the dominant educational conditioning pattern, and the loss of connection to the five senses begins. The aging process lacks the conscious awareness of the five senses. At some point in early learning, the child is redirected from their inherent spontaneous early learning patterns using the five senses and into a focused structure of organized learning. Renee stresses that this is a significant challenge in the aging process. It also shows up as a challenge in processing emotions and throughout childhood development. If a lifetime is lived with no self-directed learning choices in behaviour, reactions will be childlike with no logic. When acting out it will be through the trigger of the somatic senses without control of it. The gap in learning from the adult-designed educational patterns is eliminating the maturation that comes from processing through the five senses and understanding how to process them. Instead of processing them through the stream of consciousness that is activated, those children are being spoken at from another stream of consciousness. effectively forcing the felt senses to be stymied and judged from a perspective of right and wrong thinking. Imagine for a moment having one stream of consciousness in conflict with the other within one’s operating system. Our education is setting individuals up to do battle within themselves, critical thinking versus somatic felt senses. Incredible!
Anger tantrums at 55, 65, 75, 85, 92……
Imagine being sixty-five and still reacting from the age of five somatically while in reaction. Imagine feeling so out of control at 65 and not being able to differentiate feeling reactions. This is serious at sixty-five, as one is considerably stronger physically than at five. If not outer aggression, consider the inner fear, panic and anger. By sixty five the smallest event will trigger survival. Remember, the logical left brain doesn’t feel emotions, and it is not spontaneous.
Perceiving through the five senses and using the left brain with more efficiency for cultivating mindfulness & awareness in the present moment
From a living experience and a focus as a somatic functional integration practitioner, Renee considers how a baby is born with the ability to learn somatically through the five senses and no verbal input. A baby has all the tools they need to begin shifting their weight to physically roll over, get up and function through walking, thinking and talking. There is a name in Buddhist Meditation that is called “Beginners mind.” This name is a pattern of someone starting a mindfulness meditation. This meditation is for engaging somatically in the environment while focusing the left brain abilities to calm down and become quiet enough to follow the somatic sensing. This pattern is not maintained by Western culture, and the pattern is reversed. The mind controls the somatic experience
Summary
Renee has recognized two streams of consciousness. She once differentiated it as left-brain and right-brain dominance. Expanding her programs to include the somatic five senses has increased her willingness to begin to articulate the two streams of confidence she observes. This ability to engage from the origins of the five senses first, as in early childhood, while harnessing cognitive function to follow the sensory input, versus leading from socially conditioned learned patterns, has been a game-changer in student abilities. This suggests increased mindfulness and empathic states of being are valuable qualities for supporting students through physical, mental and emotional constraints that are limiting. These limiting experiences often translate into pain, anger, sadness and an inability to support themselves. The student will have to choose which side of the fence they are going to lead with. There are three choices, believe it or not.
Perceive through socially conditioned critical thinking.
Perceive through the five senses, sight, sound, taste, smell and touch, in the filter of power and control of critical thinking.
Perceive through the five senses, sight, sound, taste, smell and touch and harness the thinking function beyond trained critical thinking, for balance and collaboration that creates living mindfulness.
Feldenkrais®, Feldenkrais Method®, Awareness Through Movement®, and Functional Integration®, are registered service marks of the Feldenkrais Guild® of North America. Feldenkrais Method®
Copyrighted Property posted on Renee’s authentic accounts only:
by Renee Lindstrom, Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner,’07
Cultivting awareness through felt sense movement guidance
Before an Awareness through Movement workshop yesterday that had a focus on the jaw joints, I wrote a short blog post to put myself into the mindset of the intention for the upcoming lesson being introduced. I write spontaneously as though through some elusive inner direction. This simply means I do not have an outcome in mind when in free writing mode.
Arriving at the workshop space and while setting up the room, I was approached by someone ahead of time who inquired if this workshop would benefit them. They mentioned their jaw experiences that I was able to confirm it would be, all the while thanking whatever inspiration it was to have me free write on it before coming. It seems the statement from that post about creating a safe environment was going to be the dominant theme of the workshop! It was the intention, only I didn’t know it at the time of writing that statement. I did my best to create a deeper opportunity for the experience of safety so that the participants could release their habitual holding behaviour in their jaws they have patterned to protect themselves and their jaws. By this point, it is their protection!
I slowed my roll down (flow of words) and began to guide participants with more words than usual to give functional reassurance. Needless to say, it was a powerful workshop for many. I wondered partway through if everyone was benefitting, or not, due to the wordiness in the verbal guidance. Remember that the guidance is not focused on cognitive strategy thinking patterns. Rather, it is all practical micro movements, yet the focus is on the somatic senses. Basically, it is helping people to tap into their felt sense awareness using some of the five somatic senses we all have, yet ignore.
While I was focusing on creating a safe environment and the patterns, the participants did experience something as beneficial takeaways. I heard about this after that reassured me that everyone benefited from my decision to use words to support a deeper inner reassurance for them to test out the patterns I was talking them through. It was a reminder that Awareness through Movement is just that, ‘awareness.’ It is not rule-oriented, which shuts the door on one’s expanding conscious awareness, no matter what way you look at it. It is open exploration with a curious mind. That is what I heard as feedback. Many responses of how much people took in that they had no connection with before the workshop. That is what brings me joy. To hear the feedback that the participants discovered something new within, increasing their potential. It’s called self-discovery. In a nutshell, that’s what I facilitate, a practice of self-discovery.
For information on the next class series or workshop, hit link below.
Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning 