Sensuality gets us into our bodies. And being in our bodies gets us out of our heads.
I remember a time I was hanging on the edge of a proverbial cliff. Everything I thought was stable suddenly was not. Terribly lost, I hiked a nearby mountain. Numb and deflated, I called my teacher from the top.
“Come back to your senses,” she told me.
She wasn’t dismissing me, she was offering actual guidance.
I hung up and tuned in. All around me were things I had not seen (ocean, trees, sky, birds, grass), smelled (salt water, dirt, sweat), heard (birds, the wind), tasted (saliva), nor touched (the breeze, the dirt). As I hiked down, I realized that the only place I had gotten lost was in the labyrinth of my mind. The problems were still there, but I was far more equipped to walk through them.
From that day I began practicing a short, open-eyed meditation (call it a sensual awareness practice) whenever I feel myself being drawn away from my senses. Pull on it whenever you are feeling overwhelmed, foggy, depressed, lost, anxious, unclear, or stuck in a dead end rut.
