Maybe it's just my Feldenkrais background, but when I think about body awareness I almost automatically think about movement. Awareness Through Movement, and all that. But I think there's more to it. After all, there are all sorts of sensations that aren't strictly movement.
What got me thinking about this was reading a blog post about the brain in the stomach. It pointed out how the digestive system is rich in nervous tissue. And it seems this "enteric nervous system" and the central nervous system communicate all the time. What's going on one place can be reflected in another.
Interesting, I thought, but not really that compelling, at least not enough to be blog-worthy. But then as I was reading a comment to a piece on how the brain might sort of truth from untruth (there's not much research to shed light on this), I began thinking about how the two posts might be related. Is there some sort of conceptual tie between the enteric nervous system and the idea of models in the brain put forth by the commenter in the second article?
And that brought up the idea of focusing. Not focusing like with a camera or your eyeball, but a formal awareness-based technique from the world of therapy. My understanding of the technique is that you put your awareness on internal sensations, and then use a specific set of steps to reveal any connection between those enteric sensations and what's going on in your mind. My brief explanation certainly doesn't do justice to the focusing technique, but it may explain some sort of tie between the two nervous systems and a way to tap into that.
I'm wondering if I need to say more about all this here, but my gut tells me that's enough. For now.