Immediate Impact
What experience arises in you when you see this photograph?
Reflections from the Sensory Awareness Workshop in Berkeley, March 29, 2023
By Shelley Hainer
A weekend of Sensory Awareness in-person gathering of practitioners can be an intense, revelatory, relaxing, and renewing experience of being alive in cooperation with healthy tension. “Healthy tension” a phrase my colleague Helga used in describing something Charlotte Selver had said. Our muscles work, healthy tensions allow us to stand and move with gravity’s hold. We are grateful to be held. When we yield all we carry in our bodies, our minds, and our hearts, even the best of us who are self-aware, are never always able to see everything. The practice makes it so, and alright. These experiments practice, like childhood play, allows the freedom of no-guard. Do you know the feeling of no-artifice?
The fact is there is always something hidden, unconscious, not yet illuminated, even right before our eyes. It is the nature of the mind, true all the time, everywhere and yes, all at once. A conveyor belt sense of life’s continuance through the senses allows us to latch on, grab hold, wake up, join and coalesce at any moment with apparent present reality. It’s all good news, and that’s great news, because as the driver, the conductor, or even the porous consciousness that is the apparent ‘you’ the safety of that knowledge, becomes the wisdom of being in partnership. The muse of yourself, genie in your bottle, best fortune cookie, or the flap of a one ounce not for individual sale, Sun-Maid California sun-dried Raisin Box. Mine reads “You are more precious than all the stars above.” Not all the flaps were so effusive yet the messages always relatable and relevant. I don’t especially like raisins but our experiment with the raisin before lunch was to queue us up to taste not just eat.
In another experiment we played with paper, tissue paper, fresh sheets not yet handled, still smooth with folds, and old sheets of used tissue paper, crumbled, and wrinkly. “Explore the paper, its weight, with gravity,” Anna suggested. We wrapped ourselves with it, our hands, feet, or wore it on our heads, across our faces, tore it, explored our relationship with it and then with each other, too. Each person with their paper connecting and relating to the other person with theirs. In my case height always matters. As I was partnered with a tall friend. The colors of the papers held together now, blending, about to be torn down the center to reveal the top of a head, a peak with gray hair looking very much like a snow capped mountain. That’s my imagination for you! I recalled reading Autobiography of a Face, a memoir by Lucy Grealy.
Playfully we all ignite the child within, free, we abandon how it looks, letting go into the wonder and amazement, readily available, and how easily the joy arises. It’s silly, too, or profound. Parts release, cobwebs clear, endorphins fire, other neurological ah ha’s happen. What meaning is given comes from you, an authentic and complete sensory immersion below the radar of the thinking mind. Although the mind is there of course noting things as they pass by, thoughts as clouds, associations as weather conditions moving through the heart, emotion typically tied to some memory or story, the good ones, the not so good ones, and then being free of story to just be with the paper, the light in the room, the bodies moving through space, the slipping out of thought to pure being with the elements in space in time coming into the present moment, fresh, vital and alive.
Like Anna the leader of this experiment, my own love affair with paper makes me a collector of handmade, textured paper, one sheet turned into lamp shade, another hung in a double glass frame to see through it, pure art. Paper made from vegetables, one mounted in my kitchen, a sheet from my favorite shop, Calligrane, in Paris. They bring handmade paper, the art of making handmade art out of paper made by hand, to a whole new level. For me, the pleasure in the paper experiment was pure confection. My crumbled piece was pink with sparkles. The flecks of gold remained on my clothes and near my seat as a celebration.
When I reach for a tissue now with the workshop over, I discover the tissue, a soft ply paper registering in my consciousness differently. Ah, yes, tissues are paper, too. This discovery is even more fascinating than before. Noticing the texture of various paper, folding it and the ripping it. I love the ripping sound. I love the vigor, the energy release with a good rip. Aggressive energy frees when I tear, or rip, for example, all the junk mail. I make a nice thick pile, like a strong man chopping a block of wood. I remember my friend Adrienne piling up her empty envelopes and ripping them in half. Sometimes I rip mine in half and in half again, or down to the tiniest squares, as if to say, “Take that.” The unseen aggression releases, like emptying the cache.
In another experiment we each had a short measure of twine to investigate, and asked to make knots on it, any kind of knot, many, or few. We sat with them for a bit before passing our piece of knotted twine to the person to the left. All through this simple doing was the inquiry, the metaphor, the reflection of knots and sharing them, letting them go, moving on. Next, in pairs we took turns leading each other. One led the other with eyes closed, each holding an end of the string. Being led, I felt vulnerable and safe and protected all at the same time. I dazzled my partner, like a GPS changing course and re-centering numerous times. Stepping up on a step, sitting down on a sofa, his blind faith open to variety. Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot came to mind. The character of Lucky tied with a rope to Pozzo, who leads him.
When I put on my sneakers, I always double knot. Taking the time to attend to this detail allows me to feel secure. I know I wont trip. At least not on the lace. But today I worked harder than usual to unknot the double knot on my sneaker. I typically don’t pull so tight, so the knots come undone easily. Today the knot needed more attention. I remembered the twine, the knots I made, and what I said about letting go of the twine with its knots passing it along to the next person during our experiment. It felt like the twine was a child with a problem going into the world with safety and security and assurance. I knew it would be fine. In the simple daily action of tying my shoes, untying the double knots, I am brought back to myself, my sense of safety and security and assurance that I can knot and unknot myself in situations. The activity of knotting as we had explored it in our session with our leader was a wonderful slowing down. Exploring the ordinariness of making a knot, tying a bow, and investigating its depth carried over for me simply by putting on my shoes. This integration of expanded awareness reconnects me with the savory and palpable heart felt intention that sensory awareness delivers in daily living. In these tiny moments, the-in-between transitions of my day I am there, and I know I am there. These connections, reflections, and self-awareness grows and extends out into the world.
Sensory Awareness is self-awareness, an innate knowing. With practice the depth of intimacy and relating to oneself, and others, opens into a richness of living ever more present in the true now of the living process. Cultivating this inner-outer relationship is why we come together to practice. Our leaders are practitioners just like the participants. Those that lead have decades of practice in our community of friendly practitioners and bring this daily approach to their lives. Happily, a new generation of leaders are practicing, training and emerging. Spread the word and inquire for yourself.
Ultimately, the joy found through the connection with the senses begins to inform life with an enhanced ability to meet all the difficulties with heart felt, authentic, compassion and friendliness. This positivity allows our human experience to be savored. We are all sensory artists exploring the art and science of living. Art springs from the sensory life. Exploring the beauty that arises naturally out of one’s own true nature allows for the meeting of, and release of all our knots. These knots may be known, or unknown. Regardless, we discover how to move into the wonder and awe of the everyday.
Sensory practices are essential, connection with nature is noted by artists of all sorts. Dancers and actors use their bodies as their instrument. All sense memory work, all sensory imagination resides in the realm of the sensory life of the individual. Gaining access to the richness that is inside, learning how to skillfully apply the ability of recall and recreation of true-life moments is the essence an actor seeks to develop. Given the corporeal nature of the sense gates, the body-mind-heart, agility adapts to a suppleness, responsiveness, and spontaneity. This innate ability develops skill and fluency, enhancing creativity, and self-expression in life and in art making.
