The first time I was asked to sense into my organs I thought they were delusional. Do what? It didn’t make any sense to me and there was nothing for me to sense. Or so I thought.

I guess today, it’s still not a very specific feeling and perhaps it never will be. The best comparison I have for it is learning a new language. When you first hear it, you think it’s all just made up noise. There aren’t distinct words and the noise makes no sense at all. Yet, the more you listen, the more you attune yourself to the sound, with time you can make out words. With time you hear what’s being repeated, you get the sense for tone and little by little meaning appears. And it begins to make sense.

This is what the experience of perceiving the body is like. What once seemed just like an empty, black space, it gains texture and quality. A new world opens up just like a world we enter by learning a new language. Perhaps the inside world is not like the outside world that you can touch and describe, but it certainly has more depth than we tend to perceive.

In order to learn a new language, in order to widen our perception we need to let go of the idea that we know things. We think we know and it keeps us from seeing something new, widening our awareness, gaining clarity. The constant chatter of the mind needs to quiet down and we must be willing to listen with patience. Whether it’s on the yoga mat or in life, every now and then it helps to quiet the mind and open the senses.