dissolve or help you to take appropriate action, depending on
what’s needed in a specific situation. The benefits are a life
lived fully and spontaneously because you are no longer pre-
occupied defending and managing things in a reactive way.
Joy, ease, and contentment can enter your life again. How long
this process takes depends on the intensity of your undesired
emotions and the strength of your inner container before you
started this process.
Watching a movie with conscious awareness can also help
you regain access to certain values, virtues, or capacities in
your everyday life with which you had lost touch. This process
can provide an opportunity for you to become aware of your
inner wisdom or higher self. You might reconnect with the
most mature and healthy parts of yourself. You may notice
some inner expansion or an intuitive, positive “aha” experience
with new deep insights. You might leave a movie theater with
an exiting new inspiration or an unexpected solution to a prob-
lem with which you have struggled. As a result of all these
processes, you may find it easier to be increasingly accepting
and compassionate with yourself and others.
How do we watch movies consciously?
Let’s first look at the connection between conscious awareness
and inner wisdom. When you experience a movie, or anything
else in your life with conscious awareness, you increase your
capacity to access your inner wisdom. Inner wisdom is more
than knowledge. Whereas knowledge is simply acquired infor-
mation, wisdom requires understanding on a deep level.
“Knowledge informs us, wisdom transforms us.”^3
Since our rational mind is only a small part of the portal to
your inner wisdom, I suggest a process in which you watch and
listen with your whole body, not simply your mind. Body
awareness helps you to access inner wisdom through a felt
sense rather than through mental perceptions. This approach is
derived from body-focused psychotherapy such as Somatic
“The more moments we
decide to stay put and feel
what’s here, the more the
confidence that we can
handle whatever is going
on grows.”
Tara BachWatching Movies With Conscious Awareness 45