Why bother cultivating sensitivity?

If being highly sensitive means that navigating our busy world is more painful/confusing/overwhelming then why would you want to deliberately cultivate it if you aren't "highly sensitive" already? In this episode I answer this question (and a few others) drawing from yogic philosophy and human anatomy to help you understand the gift of sensitivity available to us all.

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Transcript

00;00;12;03 - 00;00;36;21
Speaker 1
Welcome to the Sensitive Being podcast. I'm Michelle Marsh and on the Kundalini yoga teacher and a Aromanosis therapist specializing in cultivating and toning sensitivity. Sensitivity is a gift when it's balanced and tuned, but when it is highly charged and without toning and control, it can feel unbearable. Leading us to act, think and feel in ways which do not align with our true selves.

00;00;37;18 - 00;00;52;26
Speaker 1
The Sensitive Being podcast is here to help you to gain clarity through the synthesized lens of Western medicine psychology. Natural medicine, spirituality, and yogic philosophy. I'm so glad you're here.

00;00;56;19 - 00;01;27;00
Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to Sensitive Being. I'm Michelle Marsh, your host. And today we're talking about why bother cultivating and toning sensitivity. But before we get into that, let's talk about what we went over last episode, which was a quick intro into sensitivity, and we spoke about the different categories of sensitivity. So I just want to review that very quickly in a slightly different way, just to get a bit more depth on it.

00;01;27;01 - 00;01;54;12
Speaker 1
So sensitivity, we said that you can be highly sensitive, you can be not highly sensitive, and obviously it's not a switch that is on or off it. It's a scale of sorts. And, you know, we can move up and down this scale as well. And not only can we do absolutely move up and down the scale, but we tend towards either a high sensitivity, moderate or low sensitivity.

00;01;54;12 - 00;02;26;09
Speaker 1
But that can change, like I've already said. But within that sensitivity, you could also be either disregulated or aligned. And again, as I talk about being disregulated or aligned, highly sensitive, just know that I am I'm talking about when you're, you know, what's the majority of the time. And again, this can change. You know, we we can be our best highly sensitive, aligned selves.

00;02;27;04 - 00;02;57;08
Speaker 1
And then, you know, if you get one too many beatings from life, I think we all get them at different times. And that can send us into a disregulated spin. And so we can change. But obviously, what we want to do is tone over time so that we maintain alignment for the majority of the time. So what does that mean if we're highly sensitive but not tight or a disregulated sensitive, as I've called it?

00;02;58;00 - 00;03;23;21
Speaker 1
Well, firstly, what does toning mean? It means you've got a connection with the nervous system and body, as well as a sense of control with it. So if you like in the nervous system to say any muscle in the body, if you haven't worked that muscle, if you don't use that muscle, it becomes flaccid and it doesn't really do what you want to want it to do.

00;03;24;04 - 00;03;54;14
Speaker 1
So think of a dancer. They work all the muscles in their body all the time for movement. And that is why they can have fluid, graceful, beautiful movements, because they've really worked and toned those muscles. Right. This is if if you're not a dancer or, you know, thinking of I was going to throw my husband under the bus and say him, but he's actually a half decent dancer, but not as graceful as a ballet dancer.

00;03;54;27 - 00;04;16;00
Speaker 1
If you imagine somebody who hasn't done dancing or anything like that and they try and do something like ballet. They're not going to be able to do the same things when there's not going to be the strength in the muscle. But the muscle is also not going to move in the contraction and relaxation that you need to get those specific movements.

00;04;16;13 - 00;04;42;04
Speaker 1
So the nervous system is very similar to that. You know, it can go into a into spasms or it can completely bottom out and and not work or it can go out to be in that highly high sympathetic state way. Where you feeling fried? And so what's happening is the nervous system is moving of its own accord and there is no control.

00;04;42;06 - 00;05;24;13
Speaker 1
There's no direction over it as such. So that's what an untold nervous system is. And an example of that, what you might notice if you've ever tried holding your arm out to the side for a prolonged period of time, way past it. What you think you can do now, really interesting on this is lots of research in this type of stuff that you can you can look at and I can't remember the percentages off the top of my head, but let's say it's a brand, a bad you know, people can go say 20, 30% more or for longer holding their arm out to the side than what they think they can do.

00;05;24;25 - 00;06;04;20
Speaker 1
They collapse, they stop before the muscle is even fatigued, say, well the muscles fatigued and had spasm, but the muscle can hold the arm up there much longer than what you actually think is possible. So yes, this is a mind set thing, but it's not just a mind thing. The mind is underpinned and held by the nervous system because what you find is that you start shaking and a lot of the shaking that is going on is the nervous system saying, no, we can't do this.

00;06;04;20 - 00;06;31;23
Speaker 1
This is not this is not where we go to this is not the tension that we hold. And obviously, you can take that example and you can overlay it onto emotions as well. How much stress is your nervous system used to been under before? It shatters before the body. The physical body starts to feel stressed in and of itself.

00;06;32;04 - 00;07;00;11
Speaker 1
We can tone ourselves so that the stress can be or stressful situations or stimuli can be coming in. But we're not actually physically feeling that that is a toned, nervous system that does that. Now it's also really important to note here that it is not the nervous system that is holding everything together. There is more layers underneath that.

00;07;00;11 - 00;07;33;13
Speaker 1
So the nervous system, I often think of underpinning the physical body and holding a lot of the functions within the physical body. And and then underneath that, you've got the subtle energy. You've got all these other subtle bodies that hold and direct the nervous system themselves. So I am I'm going to leave it there. We are going to talk about how to tone in the nervous system that's coming in the next episode in episode three.

00;07;33;24 - 00;08;07;14
Speaker 1
So come back for that one. But just to review a disregulated, sensitive of some of their experiences might be they are hyper emotional, overwhelmed, stressed. They feel anxiety, social avoidance, sensory overload, all of the things we spoke about last week. And it's not uncommon for a disregulated sensitive to become so overwhelmed that they head into shut down and then they can end up completely cut off from all emotions and don't even identify with being sensitive at all.

00;08;08;11 - 00;08;40;10
Speaker 1
So these people might say they're not sensitive, but they are sensitive. They're just completely dissociated from it. The thing is, you know, that that might sound really appealing sometimes if you're highly sensitive and especially if it's a real sensory type stimulation and it might be really nice, then, you know, I want to be dissociated because it's nice to be able to go out to a nightclub and have that loud noise and flashing lights.

00;08;40;23 - 00;09;06;27
Speaker 1
That doesn't overwhelm me now that I've dissociated from it. But the thing is, it's still coming in and it will still overwhelm the brain and the nervous system. It's just that it's not conscious and it's that the overwhelm then is doesn't become conscious, and therefore you don't remove yourself from the situation. And then that becomes a problem when it's repressed.

00;09;07;15 - 00;09;34;06
Speaker 1
So the highly sensitive person in this state who has dissociated then can experience things like So you think of the nervous system when it is depressed and it's, it's low. So it's gone from this high anxiety stage and then it's gone into the shutdown. So you're experiencing symptoms like depression, fatigue, a foggy mind or a scattered mind, lack of motivation.

00;09;35;01 - 00;10;03;17
Speaker 1
And this is where, like we had physical symptoms can start coming out because everything's been repressed and held in the tissues of the body. And then this is where the body, the physical body itself can begin to get really sick because everything's been repressed. And I've definitely experienced this within my own journey as a as somebody who was it was born as a highly sensitive person.

00;10;03;17 - 00;10;29;15
Speaker 1
Not that I knew that as a child, not that I knew that as a teenager. In fact, I only found out in recent years, five or six years ago, that that's where I was. But, you know, I learned very early on as a child because I had big emotional reactions. I was the child that would have tantrums as a child that, you know, things didn't make sense to me.

00;10;29;15 - 00;10;57;09
Speaker 1
So, yeah, there was a lot of emotional expression, but I learned as a really young child, not to have those reactions because it wasn't appropriate, because it's not okay to have tantrums, that that was the messaging given to me. And as I'm saying this, you know, I'm not throwing my parents under the bus. They were amazing parents. They were just doing what they knew to do because that's our society.

00;10;57;09 - 00;11;30;09
Speaker 1
That's what we have done to children in general, you know, and now there's a big movement of of trying to hold out children and and allow them to express themselves. And I will do a whole episode on that as well, because it's it's an it's another complete challenge to allow and allow children their own sensitivity and then in how challenging it is to deal with their emotions, especially if you're sensitive yourself.

00;11;30;26 - 00;11;56;08
Speaker 1
It can it can be overwhelming. But in short, yeah, I by the time I finished primary school, I was quite dissociated from my emotions. I remember graduation, high school graduation and I mean, sorry, primary school graduation. I would have been 12 and all my friends bawling their eyes out, you know, because everyone's going in different schools and it's the end of an era.

00;11;56;08 - 00;12;24;05
Speaker 1
And and I felt nothing, nothing at all. And I remember looking around and thinking, why are they crying? And when I look back now, yeah, that the tears were not there a lot, especially in public for me. I had already learned that that was not okay. And by the time I got to late teen years, early adulthood, I was experiencing a lot of fatigue.

00;12;24;06 - 00;12;50;10
Speaker 1
I got diagnosed with chronic fatigue at one point, although it didn't make complete sense in in what was going on back pain. I had sciatica and all these weird symptoms, but, you know, they kind of couldn't work out what exactly was wrong in the sense of there was no physical reason for all of this pain I was experiencing, which I had since childhood.

00;12;51;05 - 00;13;41;19
Speaker 1
Yes, since primary school years, I have experienced sciatic pain. And so all of these weird symptoms. And so that's from the the suppression, the dissociation from the emotion. But obviously all that stimuli was coming in and then it shut down and then I've shut down consciously for a time in my life. And then that has then expressed itself physically now as I have been on this growth journey, most of my adult life in in health, in sorting out the mind, in toning the body, the mind, the nervous system, all the rest of it, and cultivating my own sensitivity to come out and allowing that to come out.

00;13;41;28 - 00;14;18;05
Speaker 1
Then slowly, slowly, all of those symptoms have unraveled. And then so obviously when we come to being in a line sensitive, what does that mean? Sight in a line sensitive has higher sensitivity. So in the senses, like we spoke about last week, but it goes on beyond that. They are deep thinkers, they are intuitive, they're creative. But all of these things, this sensitivity, this awareness to the my subtle things, it's toned.

00;14;18;20 - 00;14;42;25
Speaker 1
So it means they're not overwhelmed easily and it means that they can hold space. And I want to explain here what it means to actually hold space. It's it's a phrase that is often bandied about. And, you know, well, it's a good time to think, what do you think holding space actually means? Just pause me for a moment here and think, what does that mean?

00;14;43;10 - 00;15;07;27
Speaker 1
And I used to think that it meant okay. It meant that I'm going to be silent while let another person talk or express their emotions and that they can be and whatever they need to be in that moment. And I am just going to be here and be okay with it and not try and change them in any way and just allow them to express themselves.

00;15;08;06 - 00;15;32;02
Speaker 1
But it goes so much deeper than that. So this is what holding space truly is. It's a sensitivity beyond the nervous system. So I touched on this a little bit earlier in the episode. It's we've got these subtle bodies like other layers. We've got our physical body, but then we've also got a subtle body. So a lot of people know about the aura is one of them.

00;15;32;12 - 00;16;03;15
Speaker 1
And then the radiant body is the 10th body. It's a light body and some body with a strong radiant body. They've got a really toned nervous system, but they've also toned and lightened and increased their radiant body. And somebody like that with a strong, radiant body, they're confident, they're calm and they're magnetic. They easily attract good things to them.

00;16;04;08 - 00;16;31;27
Speaker 1
And like the nervous system, the radiant body is not just something that is sensitive in this sense. It can gather information, but it also protects the self. And this is really important because somebody with a strong, radiant body will walk into a room and they'll easily attract attention because they're light and bright and they have this magnetic kind of energy to them.

00;16;32;19 - 00;17;01;14
Speaker 1
But if they sense negativity, that radiant body is also a protection. And when it's strong, it actually changes the energy of everybody else in the room or the room's energy itself. And so these people are also being very good because when other people are around them, they feel better, they feel held, they feel strong. So there's that word held, right.

00;17;01;14 - 00;17;37;09
Speaker 1
And that that is actually what holding space is. It means you've worked on yourself to a point where you are so toned and aligned that people within your presence just feel better because of your presence. And from a therapeutic point of view, if there's any other therapists like myself that are listening to this, you know, that is what the Therapeutic Alliance is that the therapeutic relationship actually is.

00;17;37;17 - 00;18;27;25
Speaker 1
And that's why there's so much research that actually says within therapy that that relationship, that that holding of the space is the most important part of therapy beyond any word that is spoken or action that is taken. And so it really comes back. Then again, we have to work on ourselves first and foremost before we think that we're going to go out into the world and make any difference anywhere else, whether you're a therapist or a mum or somebody at the checkout, we're all interacting and affecting everybody else every day and say, Yeah, we need to stop pointing the finger elsewhere.

00;18;27;25 - 00;18;52;29
Speaker 1
And truly just go within and work on ourselves first. A little bit of a deviation there, but I feel like that's such an important point. So yeah, a set, somebody with a strong radiant body is obviously going to be the best align sensitive. That is the ultimate that's what we're looking to achieve and to be able to hold because it's one thing to achieve it.

00;18;53;07 - 00;19;22;04
Speaker 1
It's another thing to hold ourselves within that space long term. And then so obviously there's people at the other end of the spectrum that don't feel like they're not they're sensitive and all say, I'm not talking about being highly sensitive and dissociated, but the sensitivity just hasn't been cultivated for whatever reason. And, you know, if this is you, you might be wondering why bother increasing your sensitivity.

00;19;22;14 - 00;19;46;27
Speaker 1
And so that's what we're we're here to delve into a little bit more now. But like we spoke about last week, there's gifts to being an aligned sensitive. The sensitive that is toned, you know, those gifts of high intuition, creativity, clarity of direction, being able to create change just by being around other people because of who you are.

00;19;47;05 - 00;20;22;13
Speaker 1
But you might still be thinking, is it actually worth the risk of increasing your sensitivity? Because like we've spoken about, what if you increase your sensitivity and the timing just isn't there or life becomes so stressful that you become disregulated because it's not a pretty picture that I've painted. Right? And if you've experienced it, you know it. And if you're not sensitive already, you might be thinking, well, you know, I might just stay in my not sensitive place where everything's just kind of okay.

00;20;23;05 - 00;20;51;06
Speaker 1
You know, the thing is, you might not have a choice. I feel like I'm the bearer of bad news here, but I think it's great news because it is I with any story, with increasing your sensitivity, even though sometimes you experience it in a disregulated way. So what are some of the reasons why you might want to? Firstly, we've come into what's called the Aquarian Age.

00;20;51;15 - 00;21;19;20
Speaker 1
We've been in the Pisces in age for I think it's like 2000 years from memory. Please don't quote me on that. I should really go look it out. But I'm not going to say in a nutshell, the Aquarian Age, which we've just newly transitioned or are transitioning to, depending on what texts you read, but basically everything's speeding up and we can all sense this.

00;21;19;20 - 00;21;44;28
Speaker 1
The world is changing. You can see it in the physical reality of things. How often do you say the years are passing? Quicker and quicker? I remember as a kid a whole year would drag on for so long. Even my children are saying now, my gosh, that you went so quick, so quick. So they're experiencing time speeding up as well.

00;21;45;18 - 00;22;17;25
Speaker 1
There's more information than ever before, but what's happening at an energetic point of view is we are all becoming more and more sensitive all the time. So I spoke about this in the episode one where, you know, our children generationally are being more at been born more sensitive all of the time. But what's actually happening on an energetic point of view is we ourselves are upgrading.

00;22;17;25 - 00;22;58;01
Speaker 1
We are becoming more sensitive, whether we like it or not. And part of that is because of the stress of the world, is forcing our nervous systems, forcing the energetics of what's happening within our subtle bodies. It is sensitizing us. So we are basically being challenged to elevate. And by elevate I mean tone and cultivate our sensitivity, because otherwise we're at risk that the sensitivity just increases and it's completely disregulated.

00;22;58;13 - 00;23;21;15
Speaker 1
And if you take a moment here to think about your own life, think about different people within your life, you can you can really see these beginning to happen. Have a look at the people within your life that don't have any kind of self-care practices in place. And by self-care, I don't mean getting your nails in your hair done, although it can be self-care.

00;23;21;22 - 00;23;58;02
Speaker 1
Self-care. I mean the work, the toning work and compared those people to people who are doing some sort of work on themselves. And you probably will see a difference. And as the years tick on now, that difference is going to become really, really obvious. So in reality, we all need to tone, we all need to work on this no matter where you are currently sitting on the sensitivity scale, you are at high risk.

00;23;58;10 - 00;24;35;09
Speaker 1
If you don't bother working on your self in some form or shape. But before we even take that step, the first thing we need to do is to change our perception on what sensitivity is, because as a society we usually view sensitivity as a weakness. I mean, if you are sitting there and you're thinking, well, I don't want to risk cultivating my sensitivity, increasing in ladies regulated, you know, that's that's our society, that's that perception that is ingrained from us as a child.

00;24;36;10 - 00;25;00;12
Speaker 1
That's where, you know, if you have a child having a tantrum, what do we want to do is we want to quiet them down. We want to stop them from crying. If somebody tears up about something and it's in a public place, what do we want to do? Oh, you don't need to cry about it. It's okay. We tell people it's okay all the time when it's actually what's happened is really shit and it's not okay.

00;25;01;01 - 00;25;24;07
Speaker 1
We're taught to repress and if you start focusing on this because I remember first thinking, Oh, wait, I don't do that. Well, that doesn't happen with my family or you know, that doesn't happen with me and my friends. And when you become aware, when you start looking for it, you will see it everywhere. You'll notice yourself doing it and you'll notice other people doing it.

00;25;24;16 - 00;25;58;07
Speaker 1
And it's not coming from a bad place. It's not because we hate each other necessarily. Some people might feel at that that it's this discomfort with emotion. And it's also because we see sensitive people as being weak or dysfunctional or there's something wrong with those people. And we're taught that if we show a negative emotion, that it makes other people feel uncomfortable.

00;25;59;00 - 00;26;33;04
Speaker 1
And we're taught that we're not allowed to make other people feel uncomfortable. So we sacrifice ourselves. We sacrifice our own self expression just so other people don't feel uncomfortable around us. And it's not just negative emotions, though, is it? It's also a positive emotions. You know, I don't know if if you're excited about something, if you just have had the best week ever in your life, like amazing luck has come your way or you've succeeded in something.

00;26;33;04 - 00;27;02;25
Speaker 1
Or maybe both people will say, yes, express joy, but don't express too much because, you know, someone say, well, this person or that person, they've had a really shitty week and you know, like you just going to make them feel worse. We tall poppy syndrome, we're cutting people down left, right and center all the time and then labeling that egotistical and yes, the ego is a is a real thing and we want to tame it, not kill it.

00;27;03;01 - 00;27;37;09
Speaker 1
We want to time. It has a place and a purpose, but we also don't allow ourselves to feel too much excitement. We don't want to look cocky or we don't want to make other people feel worse. We're basically taught three social norms to repress all emotion outside of this narrow range, and then sensitivity is also seen as a weakness because it's seen as a physical weakness in my experience.

00;27;37;09 - 00;28;00;08
Speaker 1
And I know this is the experience of a lot of people that are highly sensitive. It means that when there's a lot of stimulation or a lot of emotion, it becomes overwhelming. And that translates it's into the physical reality very, very quickly into the physical body. And it means you can't push through when other people can push through quite a lot.

00;28;00;20 - 00;34;25;19
Speaker 1
And so, again, that is seen as a weakness. Why can't you wait till 11:00 every night?