SUBTLE FEELINGS & SENSATIONS 

Journeying deeper into Self

We all have a thousand feelings and sensations per day.  Many of those feelings & sensations we don’t fully register.  For example we often don’t register the feeling of our butt on a chair unless we have been sitting for too long, nor do we feel our feet on the ground unless we deliberately focus on those feelings.  Instead of feeling every nuance our nervous system does something that is called accommodation.  In this way we learn to tune out or become less aware of all the “ordinary” feelings and sensations that we have on a day to day basis.  

This accommodation or tuning out function has pros and cons.  On the pro side of things most of us don’t want to be feeling every single sensation that arises as it would become distracting.  We would never get things done because we would be feeling every aspect of every moment.  It would be hard to be focused on anything else.  Also for people who tend towards vigilance and/or hypersensitivity, feeling every aspect of their experience would feel overwhelming.  For these reasons the accommodating function of the nervous system is beneficial.  

Now for the cons.  On the journey of deepening into self-recognition it is helpful to have gateways and pointers.  Due to the fact that we are physically focused right now we have these bodies with nervous systems that can perceive sensations and feelings.  These sensations and feelings are pointers into developing greater awareness of self.  If we’ve simply accommodated to say the sensations of our fears or anxieties to the point that they don’t register with us than we lose valuable access points into our patterns, which means that the patterns go unchecked.  When a pattern is unchecked it runs the show of our life, but does so unconscious to our knowing of it.  

The dance then becomes the selective attunement to the subtleties of your feelings and sensations.  For some this means coming out of automatic mode and noticing those feelings and sensations that you’ve been overriding without knowing that you’ve been overriding them.  Slowing down enough to recognize that you are having a feeling or sensation that perhaps isn’t overt, but is present.  For others, particularly those that tend to be more sensitive to sensations or feelings, it’s the willingness to feel them rather than going into overwhelm or victimization to them as if they are somehow bigger than you.   

TECHNOLOGY OF AWARENESS 

Going through the sensation portal

There is an obvious difference between an overt sensation or feeling and a subtle one.  When we override the subtle ones than life has to speak to us in louder ways to get our attention for our own learning, healing and growing.  We’ve collectively agreed to call those louder ways that life speaks to us physical symptoms, which come with a set of labels and conditions.  However the subtle feelings and sensations are the ones that, if we can tune into them, the current medical model says its all in our heads because they have no way to measure them.  Its clearly not that they don’t exist inside of our experience, but instead that our current level of technology can’t attune to it.  

Good thing we don’t need to rely on external technology to tell us information about ourselves.  We have within our body some of the most advanced technology available on planet earth and in fact in this entire universe.  That technology is called our awareness.  Awareness is alert, awake, clear, attentive, and conscious.  This entire life journey is about becoming more awake, conscious of ourselves and of this awareness that we are.  One of the prime ways this occurs is through paying attention and noticing what is in our experience and what it is pointing too.  Through investigation of this we learn what those sensations and feelings are all about and why they are created in the first place.     

One fundamental thing to understand is that all sensations and feelings, subtle or overt, are simply catalyst for learning.  They arise to teach us something about ourselves, about the way we do life, about who we are and who we think we are, about what we are here to share and be.  That is really it.  No more meaning than that.  We can try to make them into problems and things that need to be fixed or changed, but in truth that is not what they are.  The perspective of seeing them as problems is viewed through the lens of wrongness and trying to make the forms of life permanent when they are not and are not meant to be. 

The more you can shift your focus to the perspective that life is about learning rather than trying to make this human experience consistent or permanent, the more flexible you will be in navigating subtle and overt sensations and feelings.  The more willing you are to slow down the more you will tune into your subtle nature and less you will bypass, overlook or accommodate to those sensations and feelings that are portals into greater understanding of yourself.  The more you prioritize self-growth, self-recognition and self-mastery the more energy that will become available to you to penetrate through all of the relevant sensations and feelings so you can see what they are actually made of, which is a conglomerate of thoughts, ideas and beliefs about self and life.  The freer you will become.  The more stable in self you will feel.  The less fear will arise because you will have seen through the roots of it.  These are the rewards of tuning to the subtleties and going in and through the sensation and feeling portals of life.  Utilize what’s been given to you.  Rather than see it as an interference, be curious and come to know the gift of it.  It all arises for your benefit and growth.  There is no other reason.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado