On sensitivity

What does it mean to be sensitive to the world? I believe that yoga can awaken a deep innate sensitivity in all of us. Through the quiet focus on simple internal movements to the repeated patterns that grow in shape, depth and feeling through a lifetime, to the depth of stillness found in meditation. With practice, we start to become more sensitive to the felt experience of ourselves, as well as opening our sensory experience to the rich life we exist within. It is within this detailed and almost microscopic sensitivity that we come to meet ourselves. And from this detail, the lens can widen, sensitising us to the wider experience of being part of the turning world.

One definition of sensitivity describes ‘the capacity of an organism to respond to stimulation’. This stimulation can be found within the dynamic body itself. Perhaps it’s a sensing of our own breath, heartbeat or blood flow. And it can also be found in the stimulation of everything we encounter in the world. The way sounds, sights and sounds imprint themselves upon us. The sometimes reassuring, and sometimes overwhelming, feeling of being in a crowd of people. That wider sense of being in a body that transcends categorisation and falls more as a non-verbal sense of ‘being’.

I don’t think there is a way to truly be in the practice, without allowing our sensitive nature to open. While we can make the shapes and go through the motions, if we’re not opening to sensitivity, then we’re practising movement and not yoga. From my experience sensitivity and yoga are deeply entwined. This also opens the door for our yoga to be so much more than the physicality of moving our body and to filter into the ways we meet the world, from our friends to strangers to the natural world that surrounds us. Sensitivity brings us into a wholeness that extends beyond the self.

Are we drawn to yoga because of a natural tendency to sensitivity? Or does sensitivity awaken through practice? I suspect it's a little bit of both.

We could be seeing a self fulfilling prophecy of sensitively inclined yogis here, where those with a heightened and learned sensitivity are drawn to these practices. I have often been described as sensitive and have always been drawn to quieter and more introspective pursuits, spending hours and hours practising piano in childhood to the point of being able to play in a way that moved me. There were also times growing up when sensitivity became unhelpful. I remember crying with overwhelm the first time I came to London, the hundreds of thousands of feet moving at child-height around me. This same sensitivity in my teens brought me to stand at the top of the Empire State Building and cry again, for the beautiful dense fabric of life happening below.

While much of this sensitivity is innate, I’m sure a great deal of it is learnt and I put much of my sensitive disposition down to growing up being encouraged to listen and watch things that made me feel it all, to read books that inspired my imagination and to spend my summers in the sea. A learned sensitivity to the experience of others through music, film and writing, as well as a learned sense of being in the world. I recognise how lucky I am to have grown up in a place of safety that allowed me to feel in this way. I’m sure it’s not the case for so many others.

As a yoga teacher and practitioner sensitivity feels like a positively valued trait. Feeling into my own experience of being in a body helps me communicate the more subtle and energetic potential experiences of the practice to others. I’m sure there are environments where it is less valued and I feel very privileged to be able to earn a living in a way that not only allows me to be sensitive to the world but always to share this experience with others.

I had the beautiful experience of spending a week on retreat with my teacher Paula Andreewitch earlier this year where we explored Phillip Shepherd's term ‘Sensational Genius’ from his book New Self New World.

“Sensational genius, then, is not something you possess - it is a property of the dance of opposites in which you stand; and the more sensitively you awaken to that dance and yield to it and participate in it, the more fully you enable that genius.”

And I felt it. Really felt it. A deep connection to the experiences shared by others and an honest sense of being in the world, to the point where the wind moving through the (beautiful!) trees brought a tear to my eye. It is in the safety of community, Paula’s kind and deep teachings and the supporting natural landscape that I allowed myself to sensitise in a way that I feel I hadn’t for years.

Living in London for the last 8 years I have met its hard edges and desensitised. There is a certain amount of quieting your senses that you do here to survive. A trip to the shop brings you in contact with the injustice and inequality this city runs on. We desensitise because it is too much. We desensitise to the point that we can no longer feel ourselves.

This is the challenge of sensitivity. Alongside the beauty there is the darkness, and being sensitised means to feel it all. There’s an amount of self regulation involved in just how much we ‘open to’ that supports our functioning in the head-heavy world we live in. Humans have built a life that moves faster than ever and rewards us for speed (the antithesis of sensitivity!) We have developed technologies that encourage over stimulation beyond anything our ancestors have experienced before. It’s no surprise there is a modern calling for ancient practices like yoga and meditation. Through these practices our innate sensitivity can be remembered. Personally, I am drawn to these practices because they allow me to feel deeply. On more than a bodily level, this feeling seems to me like a wider sense of coming home.

“When the present activates you, when it calls you and summons you into wholeness, it is activating you into your full sensitivity. That activation is your wholeness; it is what the soul hungers for ...” Philip Shepherd in New Self New World.

Time Magazine’s 2023 article ‘Why Being Sensitive is a Strength’ concludes with the following advice.

“The single most important step you can take for yourself is what society has told you not to do your whole life: Stop hiding from your sensitivity. Embrace it, and show it to the world.”