The Experience of the Intuitively Perceptive Multi-Sensory Energy Body
If you relate to being multi-sensory, you know that you can sense, feel and perceive more than your own field and psychology. It's like you are a radio station picking up on a number of channels at the same time. This level of perceiving can include other's emotions, thoughts, perceptions, patterns, sensations, symptoms and even illnesses. Your perception may also extend into sensing spiritual energies and other dimensions, including plants and animals, group/collective energy, solar system shifts, and perhaps even foreseeing upcoming events and changes. This can feel very overwhelming, collapsing and confusing without the tools to know how to accurately interpret what your highly attuned multi-sensory body is experiencing. This blog is dedicated to sharing a beginners tool to support you in learning to read your own multi-sensory system, so that you can a) take good care of it and b) understand the gift of its communication. Seeing life through the lens of the Tracker - A tool to help interpret your multi-sensory psychology Imagine if we could see our lives the way fish in a fish tank see the outside world. Its impersonal. Life is coming and going, and changing moment by moment. In a similar way, we can use a technical, impersonal lens to collect data on ourselves and the different situations our life presents us, much like fish peering through the glass of their tank as life continuously unfolds around them. If we can start to regard our bodies as an energy system, we can learn to see thoughts, sensations, emotions and urges as simply energy moving through our physical body. By doing this we can begin to witness our physical body as multi-dimensional. Because this is what it means to be multi-sensory: we experience multiple feelings, thoughts, perceptions, attitudes, patterns, sensations, and urges running through us simultaneously moment by moment, some of them belonging to us and some of them belonging to others. An example of this could be 1) feeling into the field of someone you care about who you know is suffering whilst simultaneously 2) holding the intention to parent your children with love and care at the forefront. Additionally 3) you may also notice anger rising in you when having a seemingly neutral interaction with someone, for which 4) your inner critic starts attacking you for. You may also be aware that 5) there is a distinct feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach for which you cannot identify its origin and with this 6) an urge to go source some chocolate asap to curb the discomfort of this uncertainty. As you can see, being multi-dimensional in this way, can sometimes feel very overwhelming and exhausting, without a guide to help us read the multiple strands of information we are experiencing. And the above example is a simple one. Imagine what walking into a mall or crowded space for a highly attuned person could be like, especially if the chips are down and resilience low! To witness, identify and name the different elements of our experience is what I will refer to as your Tracker. This is a force within you required to be cultivated to simply collect data, taking note of the factual information at hand without judgment. It is a grounded and technical way to discern the data running through your physical body. By naming what is true for you in any given moment is what we could call taking a read on the data. If you notice you are flooded with too much data, try taking a moment to write down the different components of your experience. This exercise, in and of itself, may help to calm an energy body that has become information-flooded or empathically overwhelmed. And if that doesn't help, the 'instruction' from a body out of balance is always to 'source ways to help it back to balance'. Our body needs our help and our job is to assist it. Once it comes back to balance, clarity of perception naturally emerges. Taking a read on the data The accuracy of our intuitive perceptual skills will only ever be as good as the shadow work we have done on ourselves. We need to clear the clutter and debris of our own psyches to see reality clearly instead of through the outdated black and white filters of conditioning or trauma. We have a tendency, as humans, to project away what we don’t want to see in our own psyche. For example, if we have been taught by culture to shut down emotionally, we struggle to discern or empathise with others' feelings, even as highly attuned people (and especially for males in a culture that has taught them that their strength lies in disconnecting from their emotions). So we need to know and hug in our own insecurities, fears, and places of shame, mapping them out well enough to understand what could trigger us into reactivity. This is ultimately a form of esteem work, and when we are comfortable with the truth of all of who we are - the good, the bad and the ugly - reactivity tends to dissolve and life simply doesn’t trigger us in the same way. Locating the wounded parts of ourselves and their recruited defence patterns takes time and can initially be a bit of messy process, but I will be offering some information on the patterns I see getting in the way of peoples clarity, in due course, to help you on the journey of tracking your own psychology and understanding your own inner landscape. For now, however, I encourage you to practice using the neutral pattern of Tracker; to discern your truth in this now moment, without judging or making any part of what you are experiencing wrong in any way. Accessing your Intuitive Truth: an example of using the technical lens We can start to practice using the Tracker lens right now as you read the information shared here. When I am sharing information, it is simply information; not good, bad, right, wrong....but just information that your physical body will either resonate with, or not. Knowing what resonates and what doesn't through your subtle sensory system is you discerning your personal truth in this moment. For example, notice when your ears prick up, something registers deep inside, you experience the 'full body divine tingles', a sense of 'dots joining', or a sentence or word gleaned that peaks your interest….we can pay attention to these kinds of invaluable signs running through your highly attuned physical body to move you towards or away from something. Equally, we can NOTICE when we are triggered by a wounded, unresolved part of ourselves that needs to be hugged in and attended to. The difference here is that it won't be a moving towards or away from feeling, but more of a rattled, discombobulated feeling. You may feel emotional, irritable, unwell, flooded, overwhelmed, exhausted, angry, perhaps even disassociated. A reaction like this is your ally: a signpost to wounds that need healing or conditioning that is outdated. This requires our attention to clean the distorted filters that get in the way of getting a handle on reality as it actually is. Once our energy body becomes a neutralised container we naturally find that we can hold different situations, beliefs and points of views, with ease. Keep in mind, however, there can be another type of triggering which may be entirely appropriate to a situation. We all have a conscience, an innate moral compass of sorts, which is connected to the core of who we are. This part of us also speaks to us through our physical body's sensory system. Violation of any kind; mentally, emotionally, spiritually or physically can require an immediate response that could look and feel like a triggered reaction. The closer we are to our integrity and conscience, the more confidence we have to speak assertively into the topics that are truly important to us, and we can step away from these moments with a sense of peace that it was the right thing to do, even if our reaction may have rocked the boat or appeared uncharacteristic for our personality at the time. A good way to check this is to ask yourself, 'had I not reacted in that way, would I have been haunted for not speaking or stepping up in that moment?' As an example of using my own Tracker to drill down on one aspect of my now moment experience, let me share with you my real-time processing of one of the bouts of reactivity I experienced in my physical body yesterday around a frustration of people being so black and white, steeped in deep bias and prejudice towards that which they hadn't taken the time to understand. As I write this, I am processing the fact that 1) I feel sad that parts of humanity are still so closed in their perception due to unchecked black and white conditioning, and 2) the Idealist in me grieves that this hasn't changed yet. Tears are running down my cheeks as I write this as I 3) release somatically the energy of sadness out of my physical body, grief that we are not yet where I would prefer us to be as a human collective. Simultaneously 4) I am aware of my faith-based beliefs/knowing that everything is exactly as it is meant to be at this point of time, and that change is not only possible but inevitable. This brings peace and relief to my mind, body and spirit, so that there is room for me now to move more fluidly throughout the rest of my day, without the extra added layer of stress of repressed grief being carried around in my body. This unexpressed grief could have otherwise created a low mood and heavy energy in my psyche, and a narrative that there is no hope; this being just one of the many examples of the different expressions grief could potentially take if it gets stuck. In Summary: Change is constant and resistance to change causes suffering, as Buddha has wisely taught us. Our physical body is changing moment by moment, so staying attuned to ourselves and our multiple senses, never making them wrong, but instead honouring the data coming through us, we have an opportunity to get to know ourselves at a deeper level. What needs to be cleared from our system, can be cleared. What needs to be taken heed of, can be honoured. What needs to be transmuted for the better, can be healed. And as we get more skilled, with the helpful neutrality of our Tracker, what is data or information about others, can be used discerningly and conscientiously. And finally, what you intelligently discern to be the greater collectives that has landed in your physical system, can also be released. By befriending our many channels of information we learn how our multiple senses are trying to communicate with us and we can utilise their gift of communication for the benefit of ourselves and the greater system of which we are a part. Whilst this may seem like a challenge at first, as we learn to track our multi-dimensional physical body for data, impersonally and without judgment, it can become an extremely interesting pursuit, and one of the most loving acts you can give yourself as an antidote to the shame-based messages you may have received growing up in a 5-sensory culture as a highly attuned, multi-sensory being. It is this act of self-connection that enables you to see more clearly than ever before, honouring your physical body, your temperament and its gifts, and touching into experiences of transformation and healing that you may have never thought possible for yourself and the greater collective of which you are a part.
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Te Whare Tapa Whā - A Maori Model of Health and Wellbeing Māori health expert, Mason Durie, developed the Te Whare Tapa Whā model of health in 1984. This model encapsulates a Māori view of health that has five dimensions: Whenua (earth/environment), Taha Wairua (spiritual health), Taha Hinengaro (mental health), Taha Tinana (physical health) and Taha Whanau (social health). Different parts of a wharenui (meeting house) represent each of these dimensions. Without these different parts, the wharenui would collapse, exemplifying the interdependence between, and powerful influence each dimension has on the other. In Māori culture, taha wairua is acknowledged to be an essential requirement for health, but as Durie points out, it is an often misunderstood approach to wellbeing because, although it is universally experienced by humans as a subjective ‘felt sense' experience, it defies translation into words so is infrequently spoken about. Taha Wairua includes experiencing times of spiritual connection which could encompass the 'felt sense' of awe, wonder, interconnectedness, faith, hope, insight, meaning and purpose. This could be, for some, felt via the experience of karakia (prayer) or equally, for others, the awe experienced watching the sun go down. Taha wairua also pertains to unseen energies and spiritual awareness. It is believed that without spiritual awareness and knowledge of the things that uplift the human spirit in a 'felt sense' way, an individual can be considered more prone to ill health and lack wellbeing. Taha wairua also includes things that bring meaning and purpose to one's life, encompassing a quest for wholeness and knowing who you are, a search for hope and harmony, belief in a higher being or beings, one's connection to ancestors, a sense that there is more to life than the practical and material aspects of it, and activities that give value and meaning to people’s lives. In Māori culture specifically, it can include things like whakapapa (genealogy), atua (ancestors), karakia (prayer), sacred whenua (places) like Marae, sacred taonga (objects) like pounamu, spiritual concepts like mana (power, essence, presence) and mauri (life force energy), and tikanga (custom). Cultural devaluing of Taha Wairua and with that, our 'felt sense' experiences The Enlightenment period, swiftly followed by the Age of Reason, was a period of history from the 16th to 18th centuries in Europe of cultural and intellectual revolution. At this time, European society underwent a staggering transformation, in part as a reaction to both the superstition and control fostered by the medieval church. This period initiated a profound advancement in the liberation of the intellect, doing society a great favour in overturning the absolute power of state and church, which included its scapegoating of witches (the witch hunts across America and Europe in the 15 and 16oos) for the many religious, economic, climate, war and conflict misfortunes at the time. As the West's love affair with logic, intellect and science continued to grow and gain momentum during this period, what was now regarded as unreliable and subjective, including our innate intuitive skills and spiritual beliefs and practices, began to be devalued, initiating a process of gradually writing off the domain of faith, moral instruction, and spiritual direction held dear to humans for millennia. People who were intuitively, spiritually and mystically inclined, found both inside and outside of religious structures in the previous centuries, retreated to positions of lesser social authority and status. Mystics, who were influenced by both their passion for mind and reason, as well as God and Soul; and Shamans and Healers, who often worked with plant medicine and different spiritual energies, were much less welcomed as legitimate contributors of value to society at large. For millennia, up until the Enlightenment and Age of Reason, spiritual belief systems and concepts have acted as a bridge for humans into a direct connection to God/the Divine/the Sacred and were regarded as essential in navigating life’s inevitable uncertainties and challenges. One example of this is the practice of prayer, found across most, if not all, religious and spiritual traditions. Prayer induces a state of FAITH in asking a higher intelligence to show us how to best show up in the world and to illumine the right path and course of action for us in challenging times, as well as to assist us in our personal and moral development. It is the ultimate act of asking empowering questions, in a 'felt sense' field of grace and trust, where we can expect to receive the guidance and strength we are seeking. There is no greater placebo effect than this (in rational scientific terms) when faced with the unavoidable challenges of the irrational, unpredictable and uncertain aspects of the natural universe of which we are a part. In Gratitude to Taha Wairua: a bridge to reclaiming our Spiritual Senses and Multi-Sensory Temperaments In a culture in which there is currently a spiritual void for many, and in the face of dealing with challenging situations that require us to go beyond the rational mind in our approach, taha wairua is a doorway to restoring balance between our rational, logic mind and the cosmic human heart. As we enter an age where more and more people are seeking a spiritual pilgrimage into the depths of what it means to be a whole person living a meaningful life, taha wairua offers a legitimate pathway back to a spiritual foundation which ultimately supports the overcoming of adversities, understanding our own unique callings and life path, and the ethical and personal development of our character. As a therapist, I have come to understand that solely bandaging the practical issues arising in one’s life in a rational step-by-step way, to be inadequate for a human soul starving for spiritual replenishment in a mainstream culture devoid of such conversations, let alone practices. It is to taha wairua, I personally hold the deepest gratitude, for its support in opening these much-needed conversations in contemporary times where we find increasing openness and receptivity than in the centuries prior. |
AuthorKira Follas is a qualified counsellor and works as Wellness Practitioner and Group Facilitator in New Zealand. She is also a survivor and thriver of multiple physical and mental-emotional adversities and is a Mum to two awesome teenage lads :) Archives
September 2024
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