In my previous post, “What Is Home?,” I mentioned three centers of knowing as being central to being at home inside ourselves. Some of you might have been wondering what that means and how it might help you in the variety of roles you play: leader, colleague, neighbor, parent, grandparent, student. Let’s take a brief look into what three-centered knowing or three-centered awareness means and then how it might serve you.
Throughout my investigations into the brain, Feldenkrais body work, the process of Focusing*, and meditation, three things have become clear to me. First, intelligence is not just in the brain in our skulls, it exists throughout the body. Some even claim that we have three brains: one in the head, one in the heart, and another in the gut. Second, when all three cohere, insights arise that are often surprising and surprisingly accurate. Finally, I can help these three “intelligences” cohere through meditation and Focusing*.
- I. Gurdjieff (1867-1949), an Armenian philosopher and spiritual teacher, believed that human consciousness is distinguished by “three-centered awareness.” For him, such awareness involves three distinct systems of perception that he called the intellectual center located in the brain, the moving center dispersed throughout the body, and the emotional center carried in the nervous system concentrated in the region of the solar plexus. (The solar plexus sits just behind your stomach and diaphragm, and in front of the aorta.) To be a fully conscious human, Gurdjieff believed that all three centers need to be active and in communication with one another.
You could think of Gurdjieff’s moving center as the intelligence in your gut and torso and the emotional center as your heart. All three centers of awareness are instrumental to being able to perceive and influence the energetic fields in which you are operating. I also add spirit to this trio. You might consider your own definition of “spirit.”
In my experience, it seems that the insights coming solely from my intellectual center or brain, can be helpful but not necessarily wise. In other words, they concern the obvious or visible aspects of my life. When I tune into my body sensations and heart, I can often get a different, apparently “truer” answer.
For example, since I enjoy being useful and helpful, it is often difficult for me to say no when a current or past client asks me for something. If I don’t give myself time to check in with my other two brains, I often quickly say yes and then experience internal conflict as my heart and gut say or shout, “No! This is not what is right for you just now.” What ensues can be a less than whole-hearted commitment to the work.
I continue to learn that it is worth slowing down so that I can listen to my other two centers and provide an answer that comes from a deeper and wiser place. Finally, after all these years, I am getting used to saying, “I need to think about this and get back to you.” It is important to note that our cognitive brain or intellectual center works more quickly than the other two. The body and heart need time to cohere between themselves and with the brain in order to offer a more considered and truer answer.
Given the tendency to trust the intellectual center in our western culture, I invite you to check in with all three centers (or four) when you are about to make decisions that can be small (what should I eat for dinner?) or large (should I take this new job offer?) or even really large (how can I best take care of my health?).
Engaging all three centers seems to be the greatest source of discerning wise ways forward. I have used Focusing* as a guiding resource for 15 years to support this. Focusing* enables me to practice three-centered awareness and perhaps be, if not a fully conscious human, at least more of one at home inside myself as I play out my various roles in life.
How might three-centered awareness help you in your various roles?
*Focusing is a process developed by University of Chicago philosopher Eugene Gendlin. A long-time student of Gendlin, educator Ann Weiser Cornell, defines Focusing as a “body-oriented process of self-awareness and emotional healing. It’s as simple as noticing how you feel—and then having a conversation with your feelings in which you do most of the listening.” David Rome, author of Your Body Knows the Answer: Using Your Felt Sense to Solve Problems, Effect Change, and Liberate Creativity, offered an additional definition in “Focusing: A Practice to Complement Meditation” (Tricycle, Fall 2017). “Focusing, sometimes referred to as ‘felt-sensing,’ is a way of allowing our bodies to guide us to deeper self-knowledge, to psychological healing, and to working more skillfully with the difficulties with which life presents us.”