What is Awareness?

What is Awareness?

Here at True Balance Karate in Downers Grove, Illinois, we have a social-emotional learning program called True Character. I’m Master H, the owner and chief instructor here at the studio. I have two master’s degrees in education. I was a special ed teacher for 15 years, and we’ve developed this curriculum to meet the needs of our youngest students who are three or four and our oldest student who is 85.

This month, we are talking about awareness.

Awareness in Young Kids

We explained it to the kids in terms of paying attention and asking great questions. The kids really understand it more when it comes to not running into somebody, being aware of where your body is in space, being aware of how close you are to somebody, or how far away you are to somebody, and not touching somebody when they don’t wish to be touched. Kids are really aware of that idea.

We’ll do different drills here in the studio and we’ll say to the kiddos, “Has anybody ever said to you? Look out! You almost ran into that person.” That’s the kind of awareness that we’re working on, that we’re developing, especially in our younger ages.

Awareness in Older Kids

As kids get older, we start to talk about feelings and emotions, and we start with the easy ones: I’m sad, I’m mad, I’m angry, I’m happy with the younger kids. Like, what are you feeling right now? And then as kids get older, they’re more aware of what caused that feeling.

Then it comes to being aware intellectually, what do you know? What do you don’t know? So, as we go through this month, we’re gonna talk about body awareness, emotional awareness, intellectual awareness, and then being overly aware, being hypervigilant of, “Are they talking about me right now? I think somebody might’ve said my name,” and that kind of awareness, which can actually be somewhat detrimental for us.

Physical Awareness

This week we’re actually gonna be talking about that physical awareness that I went into a longer definition over. “Watch out. You almost ran into that person.” Being aware of where we are in space, how we’re moving around the studio, our classrooms, our homes, that kind of thing. When the kids are younger, it’s that, you don’t wanna be a bull in a China shop. You don’t wanna be a bulldozer running over everything.

Then, when they get to be 13, 14, out riding their bikes in the neighborhood, going about wherever they’re at, maybe with a little bit more freedom, now they have to be physically aware of where they are there. Did you almost run into a person with your bicycle? Where did you leave it locked up? Did somebody walk too close to you and make you feel somewhat uncomfortable? Were you in a space that you didn’t like any longer and you had to figure out how to get out of that particular place or extricate yourself from that particular situation? Physical awareness of that kind of thing.

Situational Awareness

My two kids are recently new drivers. Now we’re talking about the awareness of what the other cars on the road are doing. Is that car gonna speed up and accidentally cut me off? Or that one’s swerving, and why is that happening? We go through these different scenarios so that we are aware of things. As adults, we’re still aware of where we are physically in space. Where do we need to go? What do we need to buy? Where did all that get left?

When I moved to the house we’re currently in, and we went to the local grocery store, it was like walking into an entirely different place. This was a chain, so none of the stores were set up the same. We had to work on our physical awareness and reading the signs and figuring out where to go. When we’re traveling, what do we do with ourselves at that point? Where are we sitting? How are we getting there? Are we taking a train? Are we taking a plane? Where do we go from there? When we get to where we’re going, where’s the hotel or the house that we’re staying in? Who’s meeting us?

Learning How to be Aware

We have all of these things that we have to be paying attention to. In order to be successful at it, we have to ask great questions. We have to find the information board to know where we’re going. We have to read the signs to find what we’re looking for, and we have to have that awareness of what’s happening around us with people as much as where the information’s coming from. This month we’re gonna tackle awareness in three different ways and then what happens when we get overly aware of things around us.

So, I’ll be seeing you on the mat, thanks!

True Balance Karate was founded in 2012 by Master Sue and Paul Helsdon.

We offer kids karate lessons for pre-school children ages 3-6 and elementary age kids ages 7 and up. These lessons are designed to develop the critical building blocks kids need — specialized for their age group — for school excellence and later success in life.

Our adult martial arts training is a complete adult fitness and conditioning program for adults who want to lose weight, get (and stay) in shape, or learn self-defense in a supportive environment.

Instructors can answer questions or be contacted 24 hours of the day, 7 days a week at 630-663-2000. You can also contact us here. True Balance Karate is at 406 Ogden Ave Downers Grove Illinois, 60515 (next to CVS) Check out our Facebook!