Cultivating your body’s ability to receive, discern, and broadcast messages.
KEY POINTS
- Your body naturally picks up on a wide variety of energy flows, then processes and amplifies them.
- Your body does the same with internal signals—informing you of subtle changes inside your body. Biologists call this interoception.
- Your body also constantly sends signals out into the world.
- Your power of discernment emerges from your body’s ability to receive and amplify signals.
Your body is a finely tuned and highly sensitive antenna, as well as a receiver and an amplifier. It naturally picks up on a wide variety of energy flows, then processes and amplifies them.
This is not woo-woo. Most of these energies—such as subtle changes in pressure, speed, direction, temperature, duration, frequency, volume, and tone—can be measured with electronic devices.
Other energies that we can’t yet measure electronically—for example, what we often call vibes—are very likely different combinations of these elemental flows. Some that currently seem mysterious—or instance, the sense that you’re being watched—may turn out to be quantifiable, once we figure out what to measure, how to measure it, and/or what measures to combine. Not that we need to measure such energies with anything other than our bodies.
Your body doesn’t just pick up on and amplify external signals. It does the same with internal signals—informing you of subtle changes in the pressures, temperature, and flows of electricity inside your body. Biologists call this interoception.
Nor is all of this a one-way process. Your body also constantly sends signals out into the world, using many of the same organs and processes to broadcast information that it does to receive it.
One of the most important—and most often overlooked—aspects of our body as an amplifier is that it can naturally amplify resource. By resource, I mean any source of grounding, flow, settling, courage, commitment, resilience, or affirming energy. For more on the process of cultivating resource, see my blog entry “Understanding and Cultivating Your Resources.”
A complex system of diaphragms, bells, bowls, chambers, and other biological structures naturally handles all of these functions. Five aspects of this sending and receiving system are especially notable:
Our brain is the center for processing, screening, and routing a variety of signals in all directions.
Our skin is our largest organ. An average-size person is covered with twenty-two square feet of skin—about eight pounds’ worth. Our skin is deeply sensitive to subtle changes in pressure and temperature, as well as to a variety of other vibrations and rhythms.
Our soul nerve (also called the vagal nerve) is the unifying organ of our nervous system. It reaches into most of our body, including our large and small intestine, our kidneys, our pancreas and spleen, our stomach and liver, our heart and lungs, and our throat. Our soul nerve is where we experience love, compassion, fear, grief, dread, sadness, loneliness, hope, empathy, anxiety, caring, disgust, despair, and many other things that make us human.
Our gut has about a hundred million neurons, more than are in our spinal cord. This is why we sense so many things in our belly—and why some biologists call the gut our “second brain.” Our gut is where our body experiences flow, coherence, and the rightness or wrongness of things. The largest part of our soul nerve is embedded in our gut. So is most of our soul muscle (see below).
Our soul muscle (also called the psoas). This muscle attaches to the spine and helps create the curve that enables us to stand and walk upright. It is highly attuned to the flows of fluids throughout the body. Psoas educator Liz Koch calls the soul muscle “bio-intelligent tissue…an organ of perception—juicy, delicate, tender, and responsive.”
Your power of discernment emerges from your body’s ability to receive and amplify signals. Discernment tells you when another body’s signals are strong, clear, and consistent; when they are mixed or contradictory; when they are weak and easily subject to change; or when they are actually noise, distractions, lies, or dog whistles. It helps you decide whom to trust and whom not to, what to believe and what not to, and whether a particular body or situation is safe.
When the words someone utters or writes do not match some of their other signals, your discernment will help you pause and look closely at the inconsistency. When your cognitive brain tells you one thing but other parts of your body tell you another, your discernment will prompt you to pause and carefully examine the competing messages.
To survive in a world suffused with white-body supremacy, many of us with bodies of culture learned at an early age to closely read other bodies’ vibes, movements, leanings, recoilings, glances, voices, and facial expressions. We had to learn these because they often provided the cues that told us when we were in danger.
That said, everyone can benefit from growing their discernment. The body practice below can help you cultivate your body’s ability to accurately receive, amplify, discern, and broadcast a wide range of messages and energies.
Body Practice: Your Body as a Receiver
Do this practice when you’re with someone who is important to you—and when their body broadcasts an emotional or judgmental vibe that doesn’t match the words they’re saying.
This could be any emotion—fear, worry, contentment, delight, frustration, anxiety, dread, grief, shock, desire, anger, joy, etc. It could be any form of judgment—approval, disapproval, doubt, disgust, or caution.
Their signals might be directed at you—or they might have nothing to do with you. For example, a person might be talking calmly about their neighbor, while giving off signals of anger and dismay.
When you find yourself in this situation, pause.
For the next few breaths, carefully note what you experience in your own body. Note any:
- vibrations (the charge or energetic quality that your body picks up from a person or situation)
- images and thoughts
- meanings, judgments, stories, and explanations
- behaviors, movements, actions, impulses, and urges
- affect and emotions
- sensations
Pause again. What does your body’s response tell you about what the other person is experiencing?
On its own, this practice will help you build your discernment and temper and condition your body. But, if you sense an opportunity to go deeper, also do this:
Settle your own body. Look the other person in the eye in a curious and non-confrontative way. Then say, “I hear you. I’m also picking up a sense of (whatever urge and/or judgment you notice). I could be wrong, though. Maybe it’s my own energy I’m experiencing. What are your thoughts about this?”
Asking this question may open up possibilities. It may also open up potential peril. The person may get angry at you for probing. They may verbally deny the signals you’re picking up from their body—perhaps while continuing to broadcast those same signals.
If this happens, pause again. Notice what their body is doing. Also, notice what you experience in your own body.
If you like, write about your experience. As always, pay particular attention to any:
- vibrations
- images and thoughts
- meanings, judgments, stories, and explanations
- behaviors, movements, actions, impulses, and urges
- affect and emotions
- sensations
In the future, you can use this body practice whenever someone’s words and actions—or words and body energies—don’t seem to align.
This post was adapted from my new book, The Quaking of America: An Embodied Guide to Navigating Our Nation’s Upheaval and Racial Reckoning.