Recovering Sensation

Hakim Archuletta, 2005

RECOVERING SENSATION

These exercises make use of the Felt Sense to awaken, or put more accurately, to recover, the natural ability to be "present in the body."Recovery of sensation enhances our feeling and experience of being present in the world.

Reflection, awareness and attention to what we are experiencing in our bodywith all its qualities while moving through the world is likebeing aware of the smells, colors and beauty of a forest as we travel through it. This can awaken or bring to life our feelings of "hamd"(praise) and "shukr" (thankfulness), to experience life less in a realm of abstract thought or ideas and more as an experiential reality.

Grounding our experiences and ourselves in the world by sensation enables usto automatically carry an awareness of a physical boundary, of how andwhere we actually are at all times in relation to all things around us. We thenunconsciously carry with us a sense of that subtle limit of where we end and the restof the world begins. To always have this awareness can bring more to our lives than we may realize.

Allah subhana wa ta'ala has placed us inour bodies and in this physical world, and while we may be aware of theworld to come and live with that in our hearts and minds, we also acceptthat we do this, by Allah subhana wa ta'ala's design, while being present in the world around us.

Being present in our bodies was more natural when we were children, and for most of us this "being present" was gradually programmed out of ourconsciousness or shut down by trauma, feelings that were overwhelming, or bya lifestyle in which we learned to live outside of ourselves altogether.Placing a three year old in front of a TV, finding something that will"occupy" her so that mom can get on with all the work she has to do, or soshe can find a moment to talk with her friends, is an example of the kind offoundational training that teaches us to live outside ourselves. Successwith occupying a child in this way is a prime way to teach her to avoidpersonal, live contact or action in the world in favor of abstract andseemingly "real" distraction. Most children will feel some sense ofloss or separation in this reoriented focus, but they will eventually learnto "live" in this artificial world rather than the actual one. At the sametime, many children object strongly to this and begin to act out theirdispleasure at being left alone. Abandonment to television becomes one ofthe most compelling foundations for behavior in our world today, thehypnotic trance-like state, the pain and false pleasure embeddedin it helps account for much of the energy that drives the industry itself.

From these kinds of foundations, we begin to learn and develop more elaborate systems of distraction derived from feelings of separation, andbecome addicted to their use when facing overwhelming events, or even thevery simple events of everyday life. In the case of most men, as aresult of their particular training and upbringing, distraction is used as astrategy for avoidance and survival in the face of any feeling at all. Our addiction todistraction and avoidance takes us from the act of fully experiencing pleasure or pain and eventually from the real experience of life itself. For those people who have experienced or are experiencing severe trauma, abuse and more obvious neglect these needs of distraction are evenmore compelling. The abstraction from experiencing life on a feeling level takes us further and further from the ability to know what our actual needs are. We become lost in superficial experience and lost in superficialremedies as well.

Western and American culture and society is rife with many more such examples. Our modern age from theturn of the 20th century onward is marked by an enormous proliferation of images and the development of a plethora of abstract experiences outside ourselves. Photo albums have replaced the extended family, movies and TV have replaced adventure and friendship. All this has created a narcissistic culture in which we live in the space of an image of how we are supposed tolive and not how we actually feel. All of this entails being divorced fromsensation and feeling. Eventually whole parts and layers of our being becomesenseless and abstracted until we no longer really able tocare about things verymuch at all. We continue to go through the motions and postures of "caring,"since we think and believe this is our responsibility, yet somewhere insideus we know how things really are, even if we are no longer able to embodythis in our lives. This creates a terrible disconnect and feeds the sense of hopelessness.

All this in turn impacts our physical emotional and spiritual well being.These widespread needs to be distracted from being fully present are no moredramatically represented than they are by the largest growth industry in theworld, illicit drugs, and the other enormous industries that supply prescription mind-and-emotion altering drugs, as well as the legal drugworld of alcohol and tobacco. TV, of course, fulfills this same need on a massive and profound scale. The list goes on and on of popular distractionsthat enable us to feel we can survive in a state of separation from our feelings, but just surviving means not living our lives to their fullest.The irony of this is that our need for connection, the loss of which is assuaged by distraction, chooses a strategy that ends up creating even more separation.

There are countless ways to explore and awaken the felt sense, and there aremany that we can discover directly for ourselves. Remember, these are exercises to recover that which is innate within us by Allah subhana wa ta'ala's design at the inception of our creation, and something that was at onetime more easily and naturally available to us-something original in us thatwas intact and fully operative. But we recognize that the ability to shut down feelings when things are too much for us to handle emotionally is alsoa Mercy from God to us, enabling us to continue functioning even if it maybe on a less conscious level.

They do work, by Allah, even though it seems small the result, if there is intention , can be someting amazing, insha'Allah.

THE EXERCISES

(If you have difficulty with any of these exercises and find them to betoo much, consider finding a well informed somatic therapist for additionalwork and support. These kinds of exercises, if practiced regularly andexplored in various ways, eventually become natural and do not have to bedone as exercises at all. Your body is a complex whole system that hasmemory on many levels. By reprogramming your system towards its naturalstate, your nervous system will gradually begin to remember and theexperience of feeling grounded in your sensations will naturally increase.)
There's a lot here so take your time with each one, one at a time.

1. Recall the last time you felt a strong emotion. Was it anger, joy,sorrow? How did you know you were angry or sad? We don't think sadness oranger, we feel sad or angry. We feel with our body, a simple truth oftenoverlooked. Recall the experience of that strong emotion and pay attentionto your felt sense, to what you feel in your body. Can you recall where inyour body you felt angry or sad? What was the sensation that youinterpreted as sad or angry? What do you feel now in your body?

2. Using both hands, begin slapping your skin, alternating each hand using arhythm as in clapping hands, right, left, right, left. Moving from neck tolegs, cover as much of your body as you can. Slap hard enough to elicit somewarmth and even some tingling without it being painful. Do this for aboutthree minutes. Cover as much of the surface of your body as you can. Stopslapping and pay attention to the overall sensations and experience what youare feeling. Take some time in simply observing. See what you can discover.Doing this daily can bring about surprising results.

3. When in the shower, pay attention to the sensation of the water as itstrikes your body. Focus on the physical sensations you experience. Examinethem closely. Do the same in the wind, rain. Eventually you might noticecarefully the feeling of different cloth materials on your body as you move.Try walking barefoot and observing what your feet are experiencing on different surfaces.

4. Observe your sensations in different settings. When you enter a room orstep into the outdoors, when you are in traffic, in a crowd or alone, or inthe forest, overlooking a vast landscape or any other environment, closely observe differences in the sensations of your body. Compare the differencesin relation to the different settings. Notice where the sensations aremostly taking place: chest, arms, head, neck, etc. Observe and explore thequality of your sensations. If the sensations are pleasant, see if you can identify specifically what it is you are actually physically feeling that enables you to consider it "pleasant." If unpleasant, do the same. Make note of the two kinds of sensations if you can. Then, compare them andrecognize that these different sensations all occur in YOUR BODY with specific physical qualities. Recognize that these sensations occur asphysical experiences, with specific qualities, although they may also beassociated with a judgment, memory, analysis or thought. Simply doing thisis a big step toward grounding our experiences in bodily sensation.

5. Look at some old photos, one at a time. Spend some time to see if yourbody experiences differing sensations from different photos from differenttimes and of different people. Observe what the sensations are, where theyoccur and what the qualities of the sensations are.

6. When you are passing time such as waiting, observe what sensations arepresent in your body. Experiment with shifting attention to various parts ofyour body and observe the differences and how the part you are attending to may come into and out of focus. Note the strength of the sensory experience.

7. After some practice with the above, try observing your sensations invarious circumstances, meeting an old friend, dealing with a difficultperson or an old problem, when some good news comes to you. Notice if paying attention to the physical experience makes it any easier to manage a difficult experience or to make a pleasant experience more so.

With some practice you will find that chronically difficult exchanges or experiences are almost always made easier by being "grounded in your body." This grounding will make it easier to have a choice in how you react in different circumstances.