ABILITIES · AN OPEN INVESTIGATION
What can inward
exploration reveal?
Inward exploration can reveal unexpected ways of experiencing the body, the mind, and the sense of self. Practitioners report what their own minds discovered through sustained exploration. Here, that orientation becomes accessible experiments with attention, imagination, sensation, and perception.
Begin where you are. The direction is toward calm, clarity, tranquility, and happiness through working with your own body and mind. Happiness is a direction of practice, never a result you must perform.
Begin with Attention →CHOOSE A QUESTION
Follow a question.
Begin with contact, perception, or imagination.
Choose what invites your curiosity today.
Attention
The faculty behind everything else.
Hearing
How much sound is already here?
Seeing
Looking is not the same as seeing.
Body
How fixed is the represented body?
Space
Where does “here” come from?
Mental Construction
What can you represent deliberately?
Memory
What can you recall—and verify?
Mind Made Body
Build, inhabit, change, and release.
Mental Fortress
Explore protection. Make room for openness.
For a concrete start, estimate a sound’s direction and look, or estimate a hand’s position and check it. Mind Made Body explores building, inhabiting, changing, and releasing a construct.
Give imagination room to work.
A fortress, a protective boundary, another form, or an unusual capacity can be worth exploring as a mental construct. Building it, spending time within it, changing it, and setting it aside can reveal how attention, safety, agency, and attachment feel. Its value need not depend on describing an external physical event.
A little less grip from “me.”
Notice how sensations, images, and the thought “this is me” come together. If comfortable, explore relaxing a defended boundary or letting an experience be present without needing to own or control it. Nothing about your identity has to disappear.
Keep contact with the seat beneath you. Notice breath without forcing it, relax any unnecessary effort you can, and return to an ordinary activity. Explore whether a little more ease can accompany you.
Notice what happened. Leave room for uncertainty.
Describe your experience, compare what changes, and verify claims about external events where possible. No change is also worth noticing.
Observation
“I distinguished three sounds.” A report of what you noticed.
Inference
“I may be getting better at separating sounds.” An interpretation that needs comparison.
Hypothesis
“Repeated practice might improve accuracy.” A question for testing.
Speculation
“Perhaps the boundary I experienced as fixed is more flexible than I thought.” A possible interpretation to explore.
Unusual does not mean advanced.
Keep this brief, seated or lying safely. Stop at dizziness, panic, disorientation, an unsettling sense of unreality, or other concerning effects. Use the return steps. Do not push through; if effects persist or worry you, seek professional support. Unusual does not mean advanced.
A simple return
Look around and name familiar objects. Feel the chair or floor. Move your hands and feet. Stand or walk only when steady and appropriate, then resume ordinary activity.
Choose the question you need.
Core practices offers a gentle beginning. Self explores experienced boundaries. Insight investigates what is happening. DBT helps you choose a response to the current moment. Abilities explores what attention and imagination reveal, and how that exploration meets embodied life.
Notice what is already here.
Include a little more.
Listen for what changes.
And return when you choose.