Dual Awareness: Tracking and Working in Two Time Zones

As we covered in Module 2, dual awareness refers to the ability for the health professional to divide their attention between observations of the client and inner observations of self and to simultaneously track both or pendulate between the two at will, moment-to-moment.

This interpersonal mindfulness practice allows health professionals to maintain awareness of their own reactions and responses to the client’s process and any countertransference, to tune into clinical intuition, and to consciously modifying their therapeutic presence in service of the client’s process.

Dual Awareness

Dual awareness for the client involves attention spanning both aspects of present moment experience and whatever content and feelings are being explored, often related to the past. If a client is too absorbed and ‘time travels’ into the past while losing track of the “here and now,” they run the risk of re-experiencing traumatic memories as if they were happening all over again and thus of being retraumatized in therapy. By contrast, if part of the client’s attention can remain in touch with the present, there is greater opportunity to slow things down if needed, to pendulate between attention to the here-now vs. in inner landscapes of the past, and to integrate what happened then into a new and more supportive and resourced reality.

What aspects of the client’s presentation can be tracked?

Aspects of the client’s presentation that may be tracked include:

  • Content of speech

  • Intonation and prosody

  • Body language and movements

  • Facial expression

  • Physical indicators of nervous system activation (such as pupil dilation, respiratory rate, pulse rate, pale vs flushed, and muscle tension like jaw clenching)

As health professionals track clients, they are also encouraging clients to track their own internal experience. Contact statements serve to shift the client’s attention to “the various things going on outside of the flow of conversation; to experiences” (Kurtz, 2004, p. 40) via ‘labelling’. The health professional can empathically resonate with the client’s internal state, and communicate it back with prosody, body language, and words that reflect a more regulated form. For example, “As you spoke about your brother’s challenges, I noticed your shoulders slump forward – did you notice that?”.

References

Kurtz, R. 2004. Level 1 handbook for the Refined Hakomi Method. Retrieved June 15, 2022, from http://hakomi.com