an ode to the aspiring polyglots: sensations.
For the monolinguals out there who have passively envied the multi-lingual humans you’ve encountered, I have a gift for you: you too are multilingual. Well, at least bilingual. But it’s a language you may not have been aware of and you definitely weren’t taught it. It’s the language of your body: it’s called sensations.
A sensation is a “a physical feeling or perception resulting from something that happens to or comes into contact with the body.” Let’s extract a few key words: physical feeling or perception, resulting, contact, and body. Let’s paraphrase for better learning (and I invite you to paraphrase my words as well): when something comes into contact with our body, a physical or perceived feeling arises. Let’s clarify one small and profound point: the ‘something’ that comes into contact with your ‘body’ does not have to touch your body. As a matter of fact, we’re engaged in active learning around what the ‘body’ is. If we change the word ‘body’ for ‘soma’ and we acknowledge that the soma is ‘the living body in its wholeness,’ any thing that comes into contact with your organism as an entity (e.g., your mental, affect, physical body, imagination, and environment) will create a sensation. Take a few moments to let that penetrate.
When I think of speaking multiple languages, I think of access. I can go to different places and have novel experiences because of this access. So what’s so great about learning the language of the body and recognizing the sensations that are borne out of the multitude of ways our soma is receiving input? Simply put: whether we acknowledge them or not, sensations are the building blocks for the beliefs, patterns, and behaviors that we engage in both consciously and unconsciously. Feels like a stretch? Hear me out.
As neuropsychobiological beings, e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g is connected. When something enters into our kinesphere, we immediately assess it for safety. Our survival commands come online: rest, fight, flee, or freeze (faun and annihilate have also emerged as additional survival commands). Throughout this entire process, our thinking and reasoning part of our brain is NOT online. It’s just pure feelings babe. Before a thought can even arise, we are assessing with our sensations if the ‘something’ coming into contact with our soma is safe. Now, if we just concede the fact that some form of trauma exists in all of our bodies due to the oppressive systems that have permeated every facet of our life on this planet, and that traumatic responses are reflexive, in that they arise so quickly that there is no actual inclusion of the rational brain to separate memory from reality, then we can begin to see the significance of learning the language of sensations. In other words, learning the language of sensation can allow for different and novel perspectives, to otherwise unconscious and repetitive responses. More alarmingly, as Resmaa Menakem states “reflexive traumatic responses can lose context.” So it’s incredibly common to have something come into contact with our soma, a reflexive response occur that completely omits input from the rational brain, and a slew of stories, thoughts, amplified sensations, and decontextualized behaviors emerge.
Lose your mind and come to your senses. - Fritz Perls
What would it look like to train your rational brain to onboard simultaneously with the bodily sensations that occur, in any given environment or circumstance? What would it mean to learn the sensations of rest, fight, flee, freeze, faun, or annihilate? That at any given moment, when the body is undergoing a deep reflexive response, the conscious thinking brain is able to watch and witness those sensations, and more paramount, intervene on these survival commands to inhibit reactionary responses and disinhibit a conscious presence of the here and now? Exhale.
I think it’s about time we became multi-lingual.
Merging the Maps of Body, Speak, Observe:
BODY: Read these instructions entirely and then do. Sensations can be observed in three different ways: 1) temperature (e.g., warmth, heat, cold), 2) pressure (e.g., spaciousness, constriction, relaxation), and 3) movement (e.g., breath, heartbeat, meal digesting, trembling).
Find a comfortable seat. Take 5 diaphragmatic breaths, which is a fancy way of saying inhale down into the belly and feel it expand outward, and then match your exhale to the length of your inhale. Do this 5 times, or however many would help clear a space for yourself and allow you to drop down into your feeling body. For the expressions listed below, I want you to imagine a specific person that would naturally utter these words to you (i.e., try not to imagine someone you despise saying ‘I love you’), and track the sensations (via the 3 ways listed above) that arise for each one. For this to be truly felt, it has to be made relevant to your soma, so add the nuanced details needed for it to feel real.
1) ‘I love you.’
2) ‘I need you to start an hour early tomorrow.’
3) ‘There will be thunderstorms for the next 3 days.’
4) ‘You disappoint me.’
5) ‘You don’t belong here.’
As you track these sensations, mentally and manually jot them down. Be with them for longer than you think. The more you look, the more you will see.
SPEAK: Start to articulate, using language of the sensations in your body, what comes up when you experienced these expressions being said to you. There is a difference between mere mental answers and those that come from the body. The language of the mind is familiar, repetitive, tainted by memory and habit. The language of the body is present, alive, and fresh. Start by using the categories of temperature, pressure, and movement. See below for a sample list of sensation vocabulary:
pulsing
empty
burning
bursting
twisting
sharp
tingling
swirling
pressing
tense
numb
holding
racing
bubbly
electric
vibrating
throbbing
dull
tender
frozen
hollow
sluggish
heavy
OBSERVE: Sit for a moment with the sensations you’ve articulated. Check your words against the sensations in your body to see if they are a match. Allow yourself to just feel the entire experience of that expression. Feel into the global response in your body. This type of totality in response is called a ‘felt sense.’ Gather the felt sense of these expressions being said to you. Keep exhaling. Stay for an extra moment punctuating and connecting these expressions with the sensations in your body. Soften around the insights.
**schedule a complimentary un-earthing call with me here.
Love love. - aa
BONUS**
I witnessed unreleased works by Jean-Michel Basquiat on July 16th. I was moved considerably by his work, the way he told his stories, how he left his mark. I also witnessed a variety of sensations in my body when viewing his art. Feel free to connect with any sensations in your body when you view this image.
