Sensation: a Simple Method to Finding Your Center and Recovering Vitality

For most people, the oldest and most constant connection outside of our mothers is sensation. As babies, when we feel the sensation of hunger, we turn our heads to our mother’s breast. When we feel discomfort, we cry out to be held or touched, or to be covered to get warm.

As we get older, we become more and more separated from the world of our sensation. Through out life, most of us are directed in a way that separates us from sensation. In the short term, ignoring sensation can get us out of discomfort. In the long term, ignoring sensation will predispose us to illness and injury by the loss of awareness in our physical, emotional, and mental selves. By losing this awareness, we lose insight into what we can do to prevent and heal ourselves, resulting in dependence on systems and people outside of ourselves to “sense” for us.

Try this simple exercise:

Bring your awareness to your hands. Notice the sensation of your hands, do they feel cold or hot? Stiff or relaxed? Breathe in and out. Then as you breathe in, allow your hands to softly curl the fingers into a gentle fist. As you breathe out, allow the hands to fully let go. Do this several times: as you wake up, as you go to sleep at night, in situations where you may feel activated, angry or reactionary. Very often doing this so before you say something can prevent a situation from occurring.

As you get used to the sensation of your hands, you can bring awareness to different part of your body, as you hug your child, and how your arms and heart feel in holding them. As you eat and drink, be aware of how the food and drink rests in your belly. We are sensory creatures and much of our environment can act in our favor to help and sustain us; by using our senses, and becoming aware, we can enjoy ourselves that much more in life.

Reconnecting with bodily sensation gives you power, vitality and deep insight into your own well being so that you can take the steps you need to take care of yourself. The beauty of this is many fold:

-fosters independence – more awareness gives us the information we need to act on our own behalf immediately;
-balances hormones – shifting to a body focus allows the mind to detach from situations and issues, allowing the body to recalibrate when under duress;
-brings about peace and joy – body sensations gives us a relative position next to something much larger than ourselves, such as nature and God;
-keeps you safe – we often know in our body when something is not right, if something is trying to separate you from this sensation, that is enough of a reason to leave that situation;
-cultivates harmony through the integration of intuition and the logical mind – just because something does not “make sense” to the logical mind does not mean that is not right, sensation is the interface between the soul and the mind and when and how to act.

And one note to this:
It is not that we give in to the senses and live by them, we are cultivating the senses as a way of being aware. I am not talking about stimulating the senses, but being aware already of what is right here through the felt sense of our experience.

May in your day you enjoy taste, touch, sight, smell, and sound…and in so doing, opening the gateway to the ultimate sense of intuition that can guide and keep you well. Namaste.