Welcome to the second sequence.
In the first sequence, you were invited to focus on the sensitivity of your hands, and discover how this physically tiny — but territorially huge in terms of our brain map — part of our bodies can be used to bring articulated consciousness to other parts of ourselves.
Working with the hands can be a powerful way in… just think of any baby you know, grasping and exploring the whole world with their sticky paws.
It sounds kind of funny, when talking about something that sounds so complex and “sciencey,” that we look to babies for how to do it.
But in fact, infants and toddlers are the MOST skilled beginners.
While exploring the delicate clarity of our hands, I invited you to notice that learning and creativity take place in this sometimes elusive state: not on high alert laced with performance anxiety and striving to do our best, and not simple relaxation. It’s engaged parasympathetic learning.
In this second sequence, we’ll look at how to sustain that state — and bridge it to the process of writing.
The nervous system likes to look for differences. When it’s in a parasympathetic-dominant state of growing and learning, this is what it does. This is where we were when we did the most learning and growing during our first few years alive (see: sticky toddler hands all over everything), when we were teaching ourselves how to roll over, to move, crawl, walk… how to be in the world, both internally and externally. This is how our neural paths branch out and grow.
This sounds like it could be chaotic, just noticing a bunch of differences — an overwhelm of sensory input. But in fact, when our nervous system is in a modulated state, we don’t have to willfully rectify the differences. We don’t have to “overcome” them and aim toward balance and harmony. The nervous system has everything it needs to integrate these differences for exactly what it needs to learn in that moment.
Norman Doidge, the chronicler of neuroplasticity, talks about this in describing his view of the five stages of neuroplastic healing. The last stage is differentiation and integration — and Doidge uses the Feldenkrais Method to illustrate it.
In this Sense Writing sequence, we use similar strategies to access this agile preverbal state and enrich our emotional and imaginative landscapes. You’ll discover how to get into this modulated state, and stay in it, so you can experience this enhanced differentiated sensation and see how much spontaneous choice emerges in your expression.
That desire for that spontaneity can sometimes spur us to try to shortcut the process a little bit… even when stressed, we try the antidote of “being open” and end up getting overwhelmed (as I mentioned last week).Because our nervous system has other plans when it’s focused on surviving. So just showing up with wide eyes and insouciant wonder doesn’t work for long (no matter how much I tried this).
Luckily, the actual answer is easier: give your nervous system something to pay attention to.
By re-experiencing an intuitive learning process we’ve all already been through, we become skilled beginners. And in doing so, our ability to absorb, imagine, and remember grows — and ironically, by starting in such a so-called beginner’s state, we end up maturing our process, our voice, and our writing.
The last sequence of this series is coming next week. For now, you need a place to lie down and a notebook and pen!
