AMR

AMR (Awareness Meditative Relaxation) is a unique methodology developed in Atmadarshan by Fr. Joe Kunnumpuram, SJ and his team for integral human liberation. It is the basic foundation for all Atmadarshan Programs and Retreats. AMR is based on awareness, meditation, and relaxation to bring about healing, empowerment, and spiritual integration within the human person for a new awakening. Awareness, meditation, and relaxation are intimately connected. Deep awareness of any reality is meditation and deep meditation brings about deeper awareness, and the end result is the experience of deeper relaxation in the body. This relaxation in the body results in a relaxation response highly conducive to bringing about harmony within oneself, with others, the cosmos and the divine. In this process the immune system is strengthened and the result is greater health and increased ability to fight against illness.

In pure awareness one dissociates himself/herself from all reality, external or internal, in a focused attention without the mediation of words, thoughts, beliefs, ideas, images, color, or light. In this process one perceives the impermanence of all phenomenal realities as they rise and fall away in one’s consciousness. In deep meditation one associates with that reality, external or internal, and gets identified with that reality to delve deep into that reality. In this process the illusion of the ego dissolves and the true self appears as created by God. When the illusion of the ego begins to dissolve, the effect on the body is an experience of deep relaxation. This experience of relaxation brings about harmony in the body, mind, heart, and spirit composite. The body experiences it as a felt sense of harmonious vibrations in the body, giving a sense of wellness all over the body as a body shift.

In AMR awareness is primarily focused on to the body sensations as they rise and fall away in one’s consciousness. These sensations come from the various states of consciousness. Some sensations arise from the conscious realties. Others arise from the hidden realities of the unconscious. The unconscious realities may reveal as the personal unconscious, collective unconscious, and cosmic unconscious. Some sensations also may come from the deeper self in touch with the Eternal Spirit. As the sensations arise from these manifest or hidden realities, we tend to hold on to these sensations. In general we have a craving for positive sensations like pleasure and aversion towards negative sensations like pain. In AMR the subject allows himself/herself to experience the full impact of a pleasant or unpleasant sensation without craving or aversion towards any sensation as it rises to the maximum and then falls away completely without any trace of it in his/her consciousness. This awareness is very conducive to deeper relaxation and rest in one’s body, a necessary condition for healing, empowerment and spiritual integration.