SadEyes said:
Hi SadEyes,
What is your aim? What kind of results do you wish to obtain from these exercises? The answer to these questions would help decide the answer to your above question imo.
I have not experimented specifically with the kind of exercises you mentioned here. However, since you mentioned awareness, I will share my experience of working with awareness. Regarding the aspect of work on the self, my aim is to increase "self-remembering" along the lines of Gurdjieff's meaning of the term. By my understanding, this means to develop/strengthen a form of awareness that can stand apart from the pull of instincts, emotions and thoughts (narratives) driven by them. In other words this awareness is like that of an observer who is not
identified with all the "little i" driven drama that goes on perpetually as mental chatter. A practical way of doing this is to focus on breath and body sensations. I do this not only during EE but periodically through out the day, asking myself questions like "what is my believed thought at this moment" to effect a "stop" when thoughts tend to run away driven by emotions and then uncouple emotions/images/thoughts from the sensation of the body. The basic principle is as outlined by Peter Levine in his book "In An Unspoken Voice" discussed here
regarding transmutation of negative emotions .
fwiw