Beyond the 5 senses.
When yoga teachers talk about sixth, seventh and further senses they often invoke an emotional, spiritual or even a mystical vocabulary. Where this language does speak to me, I tend to use more biological terms.
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For years I've beeen working to help myself and others improve our VestibularSense and Proprioception, or our sense of balance and our sense of where our bodies are and how they are moving in space.
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I've been deepening my meditation practice recently however, and I've been suprised to notice how regularly I am beginning to notice my digestion activating as I get deeper within.
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I knew theoretically that meditation could help supress our fight-or-flight sympathetic nervous system activity while allowing space for our rest-and-digest parasympathetic nervous system to do its thing, but it's great to now be getting some experience of this first hand.
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What I didn't know till recently is that this awareness and recognition of what is going on inside of us has a name, interoception, and is often considered our eigth sense.
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I've blogged before about lessons I've learned in following my heart and listening to my gut, but I'm happy now to be learning a new language to be able to describe these personal lessons.
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I'm curious to understand how others' bodies speak to them. What have you noticed for yourself? Any insights to share?
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Thank you.
