Why We Need to Awaken Our Senses

There was a time when I saw an acupuncturist nearly every week. I remember one appointment in particular. My acupuncturist was carefully filling my belly with tiny needles.

“Can you feel this?” she asked.

I paused. “No,” I said slowly. “Should I?”

“Hmm…” She moved the needle ever-so-slightly. “How about now?”

“Still no.”

Another adjustment. “Now?”

“I mean, I guess?” A beat, then, “Should I?”

It was, after all, slightly disconcerting to have all these little pointy things stuck in my skin and be unable to feel them. Had my stomach gone numb? Was my gut just too big? What was wrong?

The acupuncturist finished her work and stepped back. “When I started receiving acupuncture,” she said, “I could barely feel any of the needles in my back. But now, all these years later, I feel every single one.” She saw my eyebrows jump in panic. “Not in a bad way,” she added quickly. “Just in a…” She paused thoughtfully.

“Part of what we’re doing here,” she said, choosing a new place to begin her thought, “is awakening the sense of touch. We want to feel. But for too long, too many of us live our lives numbing that sense.”

That nugget of wisdom has remained with me, rattling around in my head. The image is so potent. There I sat with needles piercing my skin, unable to feel their prick. That’s not even a metaphor; it was a literal experience!

The question then becomes, Where are the less obvious places in our lives in which we fail to awaken fully to the richness of creation? So rarely do we observe a needle stabbing our flesh. But I imagine there are moments in each day in which we miss out on the fullness of life.

Of course, God desires that we live a full and flourishing life. The Ignatian tradition invites us to sink into our senses, both as we seek to find and experience God in all things and as we use our imagination to place ourselves alongside Jesus in Scripture. Our senses are key. Where do we hear, touch, taste, see, and smell the fullness of God’s creation? How do those experiences help us to compose our own moments of prayer?

What’s more, the Ignatian tradition invites us to care for our whole selves (cura personalis). I can’t help but assume that if we are not fully alive to the world, if we are not fully feeling all the world has to offer—good, bad, and otherwise—we are somehow missing out on caring for our full selves. We are not merely spirits; we are embodied beings. If we are not mindful of our bodies and of all the ways in which our bodies can reveal something of God, then we are missing part of what God desires for us.

I asked my acupuncturist friend how it came to be that so many of us develop the inability to feel or a numbed sense of touch. She said, simply, that we move too quickly. We get too caught up in our heads and in our thoughts. We lead with our minds, rapidly stumbling through the world, rather than sinking into the present and allowing the tactile beauty of the world to seep into our souls.

If we want to reawaken fully our senses, then we need to pay ever more attention to God in the tiny, ordinary details of our days. We need to allow ourselves to pause in wonder and awe at the stuff that makes up our world. We need to:

• turn in curiosity toward the birdsong and the light breeze.
• bask in the sun on our skin.
• wrinkle our noses at the smell of the trash truck as it passes.

We are embodied creatures, gifted with incredible senses. Let’s allow God to awaken them so we may better praise, love, and serve the Creator through the good things that have been created.

Photo by Antonika Chanel on Unsplash.