Sensing your practice
Most of us are aware of our five senses: Smell, Taste, Touch, Hearing, and Sight. Some of us are aware of our six senses, the sixth being your “subtle precepts”, the ability to sense things before they occur, a connection to otherworldly things or the spiritual realm. You may have experienced your sixth sense when your pores raise or it may be the voice that tells you not to travel in a particular direction. You might have found yourself saying something like “something just told me to call you” to a friend that was in need. Its a knowing that can sometimes be unexplainable. There is also a seventh sense. It is one that has a shamanic quality. It is one that allows a download of information into being. Its the ability to know how to all of a sudden do something you’ve never known how to do. I believe this sense is guided by a certain emotional state or a state of feeling. Then there is the eighth sense, a sense that allows an attunement to what your body is experiencing physiologically. A simple example of this sense is that it tells you when you’re hungry, when you need air or when you need to use the bathroom. This sense is also directly connected to emotional states and your self awareness. It helps us to regulate our emotions and thus our actions.
During this time of Covid-19, we are in desperate need of all of our senses and how to operate them effectively. How can you effectively operate something if you aren’t fully aware of its existence? How do you fully put it into practice? Every thing begins to make sense when you practice. Every sense makes you when you are your practice. This is where our ninth sense comes in. It is the sense that tells us we can go beyond our mental, physical, emotional, physiological capabilities or perceived capabilities. This is the sense of balancing one’s self. It is the sense that grounds you in every other sense. It decenters you in order to shift the reality of gravity you are experiencing. I believe it is this sense that teaches you how to become your practice instead of just practicing something. Now, what in the hell does that mean? I’m going to do my best to explain this to you based on my experience of it.
The last few days have been mentally overwhelming not because of Covid necessarily but because presently, I feel like I have more tentacles than an octopus. I’m simultaneously exhausted and actively doing my best to reach goals and manage my responsibilities. This includes the responsibilities to myself, the organizations I lead, participate in and support, the people I love and my students whom I also love. I am actively doing my best to keep from gaslighting myself by thinking I am a burden to the people that support me, having imposter syndrome, thinking I’m not as a valuable as I am, and feeling like I’m doing too much when I stand up for my worth. It all became overwhelming and I felt it coming on for days. On top of all of that, I have money in limbo that ultimately left my food situation in limbo. Now the thing about me is I tend to like limbo. It’s a dance that I find resilience and magic in. It often opens up my 7th sense so even when I’m feeling low, my spirit can usually find its height. However today, I hit a wall. My irritability was beginning to block my ability to download, my willingness to connect to my sixth and seventh sense and all my other senses started to starve almost immediately.
There was a project I had been putting off for several reasons, and all of them seemingly valid in the moment. The project required physical work, precision and frankly my best self which didn’t feel available to me because I was hungry and spent the day fussing with the bank over the whereabouts of my money. Frustrated and weary, I completed the task I had been putting off, not necessarily to the best of my ability but settled that was what I had to give today and then took a walk to the shop. When I returned I sat in my gallery sipping on some lime juice I made with the last bit of brown sugar in my house and began feeling a sense of defeat because I had no more brown sugar. As I swallowed the last bit of lime juice dreading its end, I thought to myself, how pathetic. Immediately after having that thought I said out loud, I am abundant. I knew this temporary lack of brown sugar was just that, temporary lack. Although this feeling of lacking brown sugar was literal, it is the perfect metaphor. For the past few days I had been lacking my sweetness, my fertility, my jazz, my vitality. I walked to the kitchen and kept repeating out loud, I am abundant, I am abundant, I AM ABUNDANCE. The more I said it I felt myself getting lighter. At this point, my body felt like I needed to lay down, my eighth sense was kicking in.
I got on the bed and thought maybe I should read but I almost immediately felt drowsy. I fell asleep for a couple of hours and woke up still undecided about what I should be doing to be productive. I remembered that I had cooked a veggie meal so I heated that up and enjoyed it to the last bite. Honestly, I was still hungry but my gratitude levels felt high and I was so grateful that I had remembered the food was there and now in my belly. Feeling a sense of practicing my calm, I started to casually browse the internet when I came across a young lady that resembled me doing her yoga practice. She was fluid and formidable. As this generation says she was goals! I felt inspired because I started to think about my own practice and how far I had come and how far I still wanted to go. Without hesitation I got up off my bed and rolled out my mat and started to stretch with an intensity and breath I wasn’t able to conjure in days. I started to feel joy bathing my entire body as my sweat dripped into my eyes and ears. As I wiped it away, I started to feel my sweetness returning to my lips, my eyes, my organs, and my spirit.
As I was finishing up this hour of my unconsciousness invading my conscious through movement, the hunger left, only joy and motivation was present now. I realized that I had flew into a space of being my practice. The affirmation of “I am abundance” had covered my flesh, activated my bones and was swimming in my blood. I remembered that I had been saving some money that I could use until the bank sorted itself out and I sat down to write this blog which I couldn’t wrap my head around for weeks. My ninth sense had arrived. Nine is the energy of change. It is a warrior number. It is a number of resilience and being inside it was the beginning of sensing my practice. The doing had transformed my being . That’s when the thought exploded inside me. Everything makes sense when you practice, every sense makes you when you are your practice. I’ll leave you with this, whatever you might be going through, I need to remember you have nine senses and walking the path through the valley of each one brings you to the height of yourself or better the height of you being your practice. Try it or better said, Be it.
I wish you strength, light, power and the infinite abundance and sweetness of yourself.
Cover Photo: Adrian Fanus
Hair: Adrian Fanus