Body-to-Body Transmissions Are Real

Who are you around?

What is going on with you and me?

I’m soooo very grateful for the hopeful, caring, generous physical transmissions we’re getting from Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. It’s not enough, but it is huge on the body-to-body level.

It’s true. You and I sense the movement of other bodies in our bodies.

When you watch an Olympic gymnast, you get sensations in your own body, the tension in your abdomen, and tingling in your feet. When a person trips and falls, I react, jerk, and put out my hands as though I' fell. A room of rambunctious children makes you tired even though you’re standing still. If you care for someone who is suffering, you sense their low vitality or agitation in your body.

THIS IS VERY VERY OLD WISDOM THAT KEEPS GETTING SNUFFED OUT! The Hebrew Paul said in the Letter to the Corinthians. “When one person suffers, everybody suffers. When one person rejoices, everybody rejoices.” It’s a law of human nature. I wish that Western Church leaders had followed that wisdom.

Our kinesthetic sense is primal. We sense the movement of animals, Earth, inanimate objects, and group bodies. In other words, we’re not just sensing as one body to one body. We send and pick up movements of whole unified systems.

We are body-to-body transmitters.

Dancers and athletes earn a living off of their audience’s desire to vicariously fly, leap, and collide. We participate without ever leaving our seats. Political rallies, concerts, dances, and conventions are transmission factories. Sometimes, like the recent Olympics we rise to unbelievable heights, transmitting around the globe in ways that help us transcend ourselves.

Again, OLD OLD WISDOM. Shamans connect up their movement to GREATER MOVING SYSTEMS, usually through dance and rhythm, and then connect their unique medicine ways to those in need. These transmissions work directly through shaking, rattling, and vocalization. Often, these transmissions work. I know as someone who lives and works in this model.

Science now recognizes mirror neurons as the mechanism that allows us to attach and sense each other. If you dance, something in me dances. If I am relaxed, open, and spirited, I transmit that muscular nerve wave to you through the orcestral movement of my stillness, activity, voice, eyes, breath, and way I speak. All of it is movement. (Thoughts move, too.)

Our Body-to-body transmissions occur on such a subtle level that we may not recognize them. Sadly, most of us learn to override them. This makes it incredibly painful when we feel and know something that others won’t or can’t heed, as in a racist interaction, a form of dominance, or even the missed opportunities awaiting us in the love of a child.

When a neurodivergent individual is constantly placed in environments that don't support their needs, when they are under constant pressure to conform and perform to get by in the world, when their identity is founded in shame-based core beliefs about being inherently broken and wrong, all of this results in an overwhelming, chronic stress load. 
From Trauma Rewired by Jennifer Wallace & Elisabeth Kristof

More and more of us are asking, “Where does our body politic ask us to fear one another? Who and why are we asked to override transmissions of the Earth, creatures, or humans, whether they convey directly to our bodies their suffering or delight?”

Very sensitive people internalize all manner of deep connectional transmissions. So much so that some of us need protection and heaps more support. It takes time for any of us to sort out all the transmissions we receive. Do we have the time? Do we have the support to attend to the deep processing we need to do? When does the community take the time on our behalf?

Sensitives do become adept listeners, navigators, and curators of body-to-body reality. To survive, we have to pay attention to what is moving among us and learn how best to dance with it. This doesn’t come naturally. It is an ART!

Are you in a wisdom school that teaches you how to artfully navigate, design, and curate a way to live in this intense and amazing world?

For instance, are you learning to prioritize direct in-person transmissions as the Gold of nourishment? A massage, a hug from a friend, moving toward smiling faces that light up when you enter, connecting with someone who really seems interested or a teacher who sees you. Gold.

The Silver of body-to-body nourishment is transmitted in real-time video or written word. It feels direct even though these media must bridge a distance. If our kinesthetic imagination is fired up and in tune, we still feel another’s laugh, gasp, or curiosity. A letter or text sent with an XXX000 can be felt, too. Our bodies feel the movement of love on the imaginal level as profound.

There is growing concern that under-socializing, implying a lack of direct, meaningful transmissions, impacts us. This is social poverty. I think we all need more loving transmissions, especially if we are sensitive.

Who are you around? Are they supportive of your sensitivity? Are they transmitting affection, wisdom, and love? Are You transmitting love to You?

It took generations to disorganize and demean the sensitivity of humans. Will it take generations to come home to body, soul, Earth, and each other?

No.

Bodies are Earth. Earth is massively resilient once she is allowed her due. She loves to get organized. Her fastest way comes when we artfully listen. We need to plug into not just the body but the soul scape for her wildest medicine to flourish.

Can it happen? Yes.

That’s why I am voting for healthy transmitters, loving bodies with artful forms and practices that help us slow down, receive one another’s direct transmissions, and learn what is needed in response. As a white woman deeply embedded in the patterns that have disorganized Earth and Her people, I pray that I will listen to the global majority, those most profoundly impacted, who have wise, instructive transmissions for me.

This Friday, August 23, 4-6 Pacific, Join in a gathering time to listen and heed the wisdom of sensitivity. Learn more, register to join, or get the recording.

Thanks so much for reading and commenting. I’d love to know how you navigate all the sending and receiving you do. When you like and comment on my writing, it also helps move it around—alas, a more indirect transmission, but still pretty cool.