What does it mean to be self-aware?

How different life would be if one were to be fully conscious of the movements within one’s body, of the movement of thoughts within one’s mind and the feelings and emotions that affect one from time to time! If we were to develop this level of consciousness with regard to all three aspects, it would be relatively easy to go through life. No matter what the situation, one would be able to quickly evaluate and respond to it while being completely present in the moment. More often than not such responses would be wise and prudent for that point in time.

At Imara, the effort is to make the children respond rather than react to situations; to enable them to focus and concentrate – body, mind and emotions – entirely in the moment; to not get tangled up in the stories of the past and the imaginings of the future but to remain fixed in the present. 

The journey for the child at Imara is a journey to increasing states of self-awareness. As learning happens – be it academic, social, physical – the child is encouraged to go within and understand why the process appears fairly simple and straightforward at times but difficult and complicated at others. The child begins to see the resistances within them that hamper the learning process. With this, they learn how to first acknowledge them, and then deal with them so that they no longer set up obstacles on the path of learning. As the child gets to do this more and more independently, they are evolving to higher levels of self-awareness.