Sensory Amnesia Or Sensory IQ: You Get To Choose…

Your body is your oldest and dearest friend. It is the map of your life. Your body has shared every single joy with you, and all the heartbreaks, too. The passing of your years is etched in your body, deep in your muscles; in the tell-tale way you tilt your head to laugh, thrust your hip in defiance, or shrug your shoulders in surrender. The grace of your bones moving through life, each joint molded by facia, tendons, and ligaments tells the tale of you. Do you notice?

When you listen close enough to your body, it has secrets to tell you; secrets of power and wisdom. Your body has the secret of the universes resting in the pulsing of your cells. Few of us realize the intricate power coiled in our gums, guts, and groin. Your body promises a power waiting for you to focus your attention and relax into your own wisdom. Do you notice?

Raw sensation is the language of your body. The un-sexy, un-glamorous primal immediacy of hot or cold, bitter or salty, bright and color, pungent and loud are the simple keys to your body’s power and wisdom…Do you notice? What do you sense right now?

Sensory Amnesia--“Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body,” said the Irish author, James Joyce. Mr. Duffy, a character in “The Dubliners” lived as many of us do. At best, rapt by the seductive stream of ego/thinking in our minds and split from the life of our bodies. The average brain thinks 70,000 thoughts a day (and sadly for most of us it’s the same 70,000 thoughts day after day after day).

Or at worst, many of us live afraid of the raw intensity of our bodies and craft lives disassociated from the sensations of touch, smell, taste, sound, and sight. Sensory Amnesia is what I call this divorce from our senses, our split from our basic body wisdom. The antidote for healing this great divide…

Raising Your Sensory IQ!

The absolute foundation for each of your Five IQs—physical, emotional, mental, moral, and spiritual--is sensation. Your body is riddled with sense receptors communicating non-stop with your brain--to the tune of 4 billion bits per second (Physical IQ). Every feeling has a sensation (Emotional IQ). Every thought, subtle as it is, has a sensation (Mental IQ). Every action, of course, has a sensation (Moral IQ). The flow of life force energy—prana or chi—through your body has a sensation; as well as every state of being—Joy, Peace, Gratitude, Big Mind, Compassion, Stillness of Pure Being--all have a sensation (Spiritual IQ).

Debbie and Carlos Rosas first introduced me to Sensory IQ dancing Nia in Santa Fe. Sensation is the language of your body; a language many of us have ignored (or misunderstood) for most of our lives. Feeling the sensations of your body is to actually experience yourself; raw, life coursing through you, present in the most immediate sense. The sensations of your body ALWAYS happen in present time. It’s impossible for your body to happen in the past, or in the future.

Martha Graham, the great American dancer and choreographer, said it this way, “The body never lies.” It is immediate truth. Your mind weaves the stories about what those sensations may mean—pulling you out of the raw experience—and into your stories, past or present. Stories never happen in the present moment; they are the creations of your thoughts and not the THING itself.

Sensing meditations have been around since the Buddha. A fundamental part of Vipassana (Insight) mediation is focusing the mind, gently, on the sensations of the body. This takes our awareness away from the stream of thoughts and thinking and onto the body and into the present moment. You have over Forty Thousand distinct sensations available to you through your senses. What! 40,000? Who knew?

Raising your Sensory IQ is noticing just how many of the sensations are happening in your body right now. Do you notice? n