The Sensational Experience of Having a Body (Part 1)

The Sensational Experience of Having a Body (Part 1)

sen·sa·tion
/senˈsāSHən/
noun

1. a physical feeling or perception resulting from something that happens to or comes into contact with the body.

Our life is a sensational experience in the most literal sense. It is an experience governed by the experience of our body.

When we look at the definition above, we see that sensations result from "something that happens or comes into contact with the body."

So what are those "somethings" that come in contact with the body?
Well, lots of things. But for the sake of the newsletter this week, I want to focus on the interplay between thought and sensation.

Many of us, myself included, take for granted how powerful our thoughts are in dictating our internal states. We fail to recognize that calling a memory into our mind can and does illicit an emotional experience in the body.

In the case of thoughts, this "something" coming into contact with the body is happening internally, making it hard to catch, but it is still coming into contact.

Through a series of personal experiences and sitting with people as their therapists, it has become abundantly clear that many of us do not understand the power of this process.

And I don't mean this in the "Ra ra ra! Think good thoughts, feel good feelings!" sense. I am talking about the more nuanced layers of the mind-body connection.

We must understand what is happening internally before discussing how to improve the interplay between the two.

So, let me reiterate a piece of Buddhist wisdom known for thousands of years. YOU ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS.

Yes, say that with me again. "I am not my thoughts."

This gets confusing because, as I said above, thoughts can and do elicit sensations in the body, making us believe we are our thoughts.

This is a subtle distinction, so let me reiterate this in a different. While your thoughts can create an internal experience, that experience does not hold the definition of who and what you are.

In the therapist's office, I encourage people to speak differently about their internal states. So instead of saying, "I am an anxious person," they say, "I experience anxiety."

I know this can feel a bit trite, but it makes a world of difference and is a far more accurate description of what is happening internally.
"I am an anxious person" does not capture the nuance of being a human.

So, I will end here for this week and let this concept sink in. I will continue this series next week, dropping deeper into the internal processes going on, but for now, here are a couple of questions you can meditate on.

1. What are some of the sensations I experience that I identify as being me instead of something I experience?

2. What sensations do I feel that are unbearable or don't like experiencing?

3. When I feel these sensations, what do I do to avoid them? Or what do I begin to believe about myself?

4. What thoughts do I identify with? What thoughts do I let define who I am as a person?

Thanks for reading this week; come back next week while we continue exploring the sensational experience of being a body!

With Gratitude,
Christian