Sensitivity Needs A Practice
It is not that sensitivity makes us weak, rather that without understanding and cultivating our sensitivity we are weakened.
"In imagination we feel sure that it would be lovely to live with a full and rich awareness of the world. But in practice sensitiveness hurts……
…..That is the dilemma in which life has placed us. We must choose between a life that is thin and narrow, uncreative and mechanical, with the assurance that even if it is not very exciting it will not be intolerably painful; and a life in which the increase in its fullness and creativeness brings a vast increase in delight, but also in pain and hurt."
John MacMurray Reason and Emotion
About a year ago, a couple of friends encouraged me to develop a cacao practice. From a simple health perspective, cacao is a superfood, considered to have the highest concentration of antioxidants in any food (40 times that of blueberries) and packed with magnesium, iron, and a long list of vitamins. While additional nutrition is always welcome, my main reason for incorporating cacao into my day was from a spiritual perspective. Ceremonial grade cacao is considered sacred; used for millennia by ancient cultures such as the Mayans and recognised as a powerful natural medicine for opening the heart. Cacao contains so-called ‘bliss’ chemicals; serotonin, tryptophan, tyrosine and phenylethylamine, allowing those who drink it to come into a more serene, open-hearted state enabling greater self-exploration.
My morning routine is pretty predictable. I rise early and grab a cup of coffee before journalling and meditating. Over the last year, cacao has replaced my morning coffee. Drinking cacao rather than coffee brings me into a more relaxed place rather than the stimulated state that caffeine can cause. True to its promise, I have found myself deeper in my meditations and more connected to myself.
Developing this practice has made me much more aware of my inner landscape and of how sensitive my nervous system actually is. This awareness has helped me to become more attuned to my sensitivity and the role it plays in my life. I have been told in various ways all my life that I am ‘too’ sensitive. On reflection, I see I am sensitive but there is no requirement for the ‘too’. Being sensitive is not a bad thing. This common idea of ‘too’ sensitive is positioning sensitivity as a weakness, something to be corrected. But if we deny our sensitivity, we can never be whole. It is our source of creativity, empathy, intuition, desire, connection and relationships; many things which make us human. It is not that sensitivity makes us weak, rather that without understanding and cultivating our sensitivity we are weakened.
Having a daily practice has helped me appreciate my heightened sensitivity as a source of wisdom and something to be nurtured. Being in better relationship with this aspect of myself has allowed me to become more open while also having the tools to cope with the ups and downs being more open and vulnerable can bring. I mentioned to the same friends recently how grateful I was they introduced me to cacao and they suggested I write about my experience for their community website.
As I wrote in that piece:
Sensitivity is a pillar of how you connect to yourself and others. The world needs more of this not less. We need to honour our sensitivity as something to be embraced and revered rather than something to overcome….. working with Cacao has helped me recognise the need to embrace and nurture my sensitivity as essential to who I am and what I can contribute to the world*
You Are Not Too Sensitive, But You May Be Too Reactive
The lack of appreciation of the importance of sensitivity leads people to try and tone down their sensitivity which can inadvertently ramp up their reactionary behaviour. Overreacting and sensitivity are not the same thing, nor should we refer to them that way. You are not overreacting because you are too sensitive but you may overreact because your suppressed sensitivity is seeking an outlet.
Reactivity is a signal that you are not in right relationship with your sensitivity. You may have distanced yourself from your sensitivity because previously it hurt too much to feel, or you were in situations or relationships which didn’t allow or support you in feeling what needed to be felt. If this is you, and to be fair it is most of us, the task is to find ways to move gently back towards your sensitivity. To nourish and heal what is blocking your access to your sensitive gifts. In this way, we each learn to access our sensitivity with greater finesse and elegance.
Sensitivity & Instinct
I googled ‘sensitive’ while I was writing this essay to see what images I could add to the piece for social media. None of the images that came up were positive. It was a combination of people crying, posts about sensitive skin or sensitive teeth and pictures of sad emojis. If that is the advertisement for sensitivity, it is easy to understand why we might not be buyers of it. Instead, I thought about other words which describe sensitivity to me. The word I arrived on was instinct. When I googled instinct, pictures of nature and animals were more frequent. That felt more like it. Sensitivity is a natural instinct. Innate. A sense of heightened awareness.
Cultivating this relationship with my sensitivity has helped me relearn to trust my instincts. I find as I have reconnected more deeply to this part of myself, answers I am seeking come to me more naturally. I have become more attuned to inner signals when they happen. My intuition feels more accessible than before. I get a felt sense in my body or a moment of insight that tells me what I need to know. I often get a full-body yes or no to a decision. I look back over my life and remember so many times when I just ‘knew’ something to be true. I am sure you can to. Except I didn’t always trust it. Today, when I have these moments of insight or intuition, clarity, or a sense of knowing, I trust them implicitly.
Your Sensitivity Deserves A Practice
I like a life that is varied; I love adventure, change, and texture in my life. This way of living is sometimes in conflict with my sensitivity and need for a calm nervous system to be at my best personally and professionally. Over the past few years, I have learned to honour this part of who I am by incorporating tools and contemplative practices into my life – long walks in nature, time alone, restorative yoga when I can, and what inspired this piece, a daily cacao ritual. Anything that helps me find inner stillness against the steady flow of demands in my life and work. It has been a simple but personally transformative shift from trying to overcome my sensitivity towards preserving and soothing it as it bumps up against the reality of being alive.
The world will always fight your sensitivity; tell you to tone it down or give you reasons to want to feel less and think more. But there can be no living a life of purpose, no true self-actualisation without embracing your sensitivity. It is part of what makes you whole. Equally we can’t, nor should we want to, spend our life running from what triggers our sensitivity. Life is not well-lived if we don’t experience it widely. A better plan is simply to care for ourselves more. Like everything we want to master in life, embracing your sensitivity just takes practice.
*You can read the full piece about Cacao and Me on the Saoro website: https://saoro.org/2023/08/28/fiona-english/