How to think about your senses; expanding from five to 12 senses Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) made a career out of sharing his clairvoyant insights and uncoveries. He grew up and lived in parallel with the codifying of the rigidly mental stereotypes of Cartesian Science, the infant materialistic science of the Industrial Revolution, where mind and body never meet and never work as a team. Steiner especially enjoyed busting up cultural myths he saw becoming rigid and unhelpful dogma around him. He was correct in 1919; we have at least 12 senses. One hundred
years later, few have taken up this idea outside of Waldorf educators interested in RS's huge legacy. Yet 12 senses is a key Tool That Heals to remedy the tiny "box" of preconception that humans have only those senses that animals have and no more, one of the great limitations of Cartesian Science.
To escape your own five-sense-box it's possible to 'paint a picture' to convey more language so readers can find their way from five to 12 senses. Each person does this somewhat uniquely of course. You have five Senses Origin of the "five animal senses" box When the rational intellect was being developed, hand-in-hand with Cartesian Science, 1600-1800, the focus was on putting away superstitious dogma and mastering the physical-material world. This was a good thing. Early materialists trying to come to consensus on the invisible forces at work in physics, chemistry, astronomy and so on were reduced to the lowest common denominator. This is what Cartesian Science promoted so that some foundation of consensus could be established. The only consensus on human sensing, sustainable among early researchers, was humans have the same senses as the animals: hearing, sight, touch, taste and smell. Period. "Feeling" in the modern sense, only began being discussed in the 1970s. In the 1600s they did not yet know “feelings” would increasingly be recognized as the “big dog” in our psyche, taking at least a co-equal place with our logical-sequential thinking. Since 1970 research has moved steadily towards “emotional Intelligence” and a more 50-50 balance between our T and F functions.
How open are your five senses? No adult has all five animal senses fully open. By the time we are three years old, parents and local culture school us to which senses are polite to attend to and talk about and which senses are impolite to attend to and must be suppressed. Cultural blinders put on us as children, tell us what to feel, how much to feel, what to perceive and how much to perceive. Not discussed until therapy becomes an interest, is how shutting down our sensory channels shuts down self-connection. As newborns we begin with a blank slate, all five animal senses as fully open as prior habits and physiology permits. We begin unconditionally receptive. Gradually we accept local “cultural blinders” to reduce openness in our 12
senses. Local cultural “tunnel vision” is imposed on our animal senses; later, on all 12 senses. This is not bad or evil; simply, an experience of partial limitation. To get along in family and society, we all agree to work within these when we agree to be born in that sentient culture. Imagine a culture where this was topsy-turvy: everyone was schooled to have all sense channels, all the way open. If adequate and sufficient personal and interpersonal boundaries were also taught, everyone in this alternate culture would appear “clairvoyant.” As it is on Earth, each culture, each family, each school, tells us which percepts are “good” which are “bad,” what to listen to, how much to listen and what to ignore. Q: Can I see my own cultural blinders on my senses? A: One key is recognizing your senses have been “pruned back,” way back; therefore, you have much room to grow and expand. The 'sensory dogma' our culture puts on us lives in the SUB- and UNconscious of our habit body. The biggest sensory dogma we have is, "Adult human senses begin and end with touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing. There is nothing more." This limiting "cultural box" was useful in the 1600s-1800s. By the 1970s, we were ready for a bigger “box” for human sensing.
VAKOG ~ our most-open sensory channels from the neck-up What many very effective health practitioners, coaches and lay persons learned from NLP is how perception is patterned in our suband unconscious. The terms 'habit body' did not appear in holistic literature until 2011; yet, exploring the phenomena and patterns of our 'habit body' is a very concise summary of NLP. NLP taught those who wished to know,how perception and memory are patterned. Understanding how perception is patterned begins with VAK, the sensory channels of visual, auditory, kinesthetic. This idea was first published in The Structure of Magic Volume 2 (1975) by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. V ~ visual
A ~ auditory K ~ kinesthetic [the problematic one!] Our visual and auditory sensory channels need no explanation. EXERCISE ~ You can easily measure how open each of these three senses are, on a scale of ten. You can even guess, if you cannot selftest. EXERCISE ~ Want to explore your preferences? Here's a free VAK preference test: http://www.businessballs.com/vaklearningstylestest.htm
VAK as triangulating reality To understand the impact of VAK on holistic thinkers, I believe it's necessary to go back one step to an idea sketched in NLP but probably more fully explicated in General Semantics. Here's the Healing Toolbox version: We use multiple points of view to triangulate reality. This is why two eyes are better than one. Stereo vision enables triangulating distance much better than one eye alone. The art history topic of perspective bears on this, a sixth grade topic in Waldorf curricula. Understanding perspective and how to employ it in drawings, increases our ability to judge and interpret things at a distance. More significantly, we use multiple SENSES to triangulate reality here on Earth where all people and many phenomena have multidimensional aspects of interest. An easy way to picture this is to recall how to set up up a Christmas tree in the living room, so it's truly vertical, not leaning in any direction. How do we do this? To see if the tree is straight, perpendicular to the floor, we must view it from at least two different places in the room. If the tree is straight from at least TWO angles of viewing, we know it's straight and perpendicular. General Semantics and more importantly NLP, make the point we use as many senses as available to us, as perspectives on present experience.
Therefore—we make meaning thru our multiple senses. NLP started the conversation about how different individuals prefer different sensory channels as their lead sensory channel. This is how we represent meaning to ourself and, each person does this somewhat uniquely.
Meaning trumps VAK Meaning is the whole, VAKOG are the parts of our experience. Meaning trumps VAK. VAK leads to meaning. Once meaning is established and resolved, you tend to give up the VAK representations. Say your name to yourself silently or out loud. I bet you do NOT get any sensory image or representation to go along with it. It's just your name. If you have a LOT of sensory representations arise when you say your own name, you might have a stage name, name change, or some other partly unresolved issue. For most of us using our original birth name, it's easier for it to be empty of impressionistic baggage. In contrast, tow think of someone you are or were madly in love with. You say their name and you smell flowers, you hear church bells and you see two horses riding into a colorful sunset. Their name has meaning for you as your Beloved. It's pleasant to load up their name with real or imagined sensory images, hence a lot of love poetry. Let's go back to your own address and telephone number. I bet your do not have strong VAK associations with these either. VAK representations of your address and phone number are superseded by their practical meaning and utility. They become ingrained habits and
there is nothing unresolved about them or what to do with your name, address or telephone number. This examples how we evolve to KNOWING, when a habit is recorded deeply enough in our unconscious. as be be more or less permanent. Some not all, of the things closest and familiar to us, we no longer use any sensory representations for. Now tell me how many years old you are. Many of us have lots of associations with numbers representing the age of our body in years. We might not like the number if the years are too few or too many. We might associate feeling a certain with a number of years under or over a certain amount. Now say your age in years out loud. Can you speak it? Depending on your age, you may have positive negative or mixed sensory representations attached to your age. Since we are at it, why not image the age, in years, when you felt the best of your entire life. Go ahead, make up a two-digit number and associate all those good feeling with it. Now how can you associate all these good feelings with your present age, if your present age has fewer good sense representations? The above suggests how free we are in our creative imagination, how malleable and changeable our sensory representations are in our habit body. This is one way to slip into the magic world of self-healing.
Meaning trumps VAK. VAK leads to meaning. Once meaning is established and resolved, you tend to give up the VAK representations; they are no longer useful; you KNOW. When you grasp which sensory channels a person prefers using, you have tapped in to one way they construct meaning for themselves, in their habit body. Using words, descriptors and metaphors appealing to their primary, preferred sensory channel tends to build rapport. “Linguistics” just means “language.” Language just means “meaning.” We all navigate 3D reality using sense percepts received thru multiple
sensory channels. Because a high-definition version of each and every moment would require too much memory space in our habit body, our Habit Librarian does us the service of recording low-resolution versions of what happens. To do this it employs deletion, distortion and generalization, another NLP precept. We all compose memories the same way, thru multiple, partial sensory impressions or representations. Our goal is not “home movies.” Our goal is not a full record of 3D life. Rather our goal is making meaning and recording memories that require further processing—when we can get to them. Second opinions assist us to triangulate A second opinion has just the same benefit multiple viewpoints offer us. Often, if we wish to know if the choice we are making looks good, makes sense, we will ask for a second opinion. That’s why second opinions, advisors, counselors, consultants and coaches are values. We want confirmation or refutation our chosen course of action makes sense from points of view outside our own limited perspective. Infrequently people in the West also organize and represent meaning to themself in sensory images of smell and taste, olfactory and gustatory. This is why you see “VAKOG.” Generally in the West we are dealing with VAK and not so much with OG. From VAK to KVA Visual and auditory percepts will be familiar to all readers. More language for kinesthetic percepts may be useful. One RS insight is our kinesthetic sense of feeling is at the minimum TWO sensory channels: - Sense of texture PLUS - Sense of weight
After working with RS's idea for 20 years, I think it's possible and useful to go much further. Our seven kinesthetic senses, regrouped for communicating with yourself from the neck-down To build the next healthy cultures, we need to ennoble “feeling” to make it co-equal with linear-sequential thinking. Just as the Eskimos ennobled “snow” with 57 words for it, we must discern and create language for what we wish to ennoble and expand awareness of. Here below is an expanded language for “feeling,” courtesy of Rudolf Steiner. 1) Our Sense of well-being is the strongest of all our kinesthetic senses. This is our capacity to sense if we feel well or poorly, our sense of feeling well or not-well. “I feel good today,” “I don’t feel well today;” and, I feel better today compared with yesterday,” “I have a bad feeling about this,” and, “I have a good feeling about going this direction.” RS called this kinesthetic sense, the “sense of life.” "Sense of well-being" may be more clear here. 2) Kinesthetic sense of Warmth ~ Am I warm enuf; am I too hot? Am I too cool? 3) Kinesthetic sense of Touch 4) Kinesthetic sense of Texture 5) Kinesthetic sense of Weight ~ capacity to sense if something has any weight at all, capacity to sense if it has much or little physical mass, independent of size. 6) Kinesthetic sense of Balance ~ perceptions of things in or out of balance, physically, emotionally, and also morally: fairness and unfairness. Related to our vestibular sense. Highly related to intuitive hunches as in, “Something feels off here,” “That sounds “funny” to me;” and, “That feels really right on target!” 7) Kinesthetic sense of Movement ~ capacity to perceive direction of movement: above to below, left to right, front to back, etc. Also our sense of relative motion, one thing in motion relative to another thing.
Q: Can I rearrange these in an order more meaningful to my own preference? A: I hope you will.
"Mood of death" and "mood of birth" as kinesthetic senses At its simplest RS was pointing to our capacity to sense whether this or that phenomena is living or dead. Few of us have much experience exercising this sense. One formerly common experience would be casket viewings, where the deceased is made to look lifelike; we may temporarily imagine they merely sleep. After more explicit consideration, our internal senses tell us the loved on in the casket is no longer expressing life. This evidences our capacity for a sense of life. On a more positive note, many of us respond to a weeks-old baby kitten with, "Hello kitty!" again evidencing capacity to sense life. In his discussion of the contrasting moods of birth and death, Steiner was not concerned with whether we could tell if corpses were dead or kittens alive. Rather he was concerned with education: is this lesson, for these children, at this time in their stage-development, leading them into more life or leading them towards the death of life-forces in the graveyard of the intellect? (my phrase, not his). Steiner wished teachers to deliver lessons to strengthen the life forces in children. He was very aware school lessons can strengthen either the life forces (blood-muscles) or the death forces (nerves-intellectbones). He was very aware factory-style intellectual education only strengthens the death forces in humans and leads to graduates who can conceive of and think useful bigger guns, bombs and atomic bombs. Exercising our sense of “mood of death” and “mood of birth” is perhaps one of the major exercises we need in the post-2012 world.
As the old greed paradigm dissolves before our eyes and new, healthy, diverse, replacement cultures have mostly yet to begin, our sense of what can be birthed, culturally speaking, that is sustainable is a crucial question. Q: Where can I experience a mood of birth easily? A: Besides live babies and infants, at Findhorn and at Global Ecovillage Network. To my knowledge, Steiner does not propose a “mood of birth” and “mood of death” as additions to his 12 senses. Yet readers may agree with me, why not? I believed I learned of Steiner's polarity of the MOODS, between death and birth, either from his Fifth Gospel http://www.amazon.com/Fifth-GospelStory-Rudolf-Steiner/dp/1449953271/ref=la_B007SNVG46_1_11? ie=UTF8&qid=1345007892&sr=1-11 or in my Waldorf Teacher Training thru Noah Williams Sr.
When c/s and b/s have different most-open sensory channels When an individual is DISconnected neck-up and neck-down, the more likely it is they will prefer one sensory channel neck-up and a different sensory channel neck down. NLP practitioners report and close observation by anyone confirms, the basic self and conscious self do not share the same representational system. The b/s prefers one modality and the c/s prefers a different modality. This is very common but not optimal. This may be why very experienced healers, over time, tend to gravitate to feeling—our strongest sensory channel—as preferred both above and below. KVA is one of THE most useful Tools That Heal to sort this out and support people connecting themselves top and bottom. Differing most-open sensory channels as “being of two minds” Differing preferred sensory channels goes a long way towards explaining why people are so often "of two minds."
It also suggests a most common obstacle people encounter in attempting to communicate with their inner child; one prefers using one sensory channel to perceive 3D reality, the other self prefers another sensory channel. Q: Does any pattern exist here? A: Yes, commonly in the West, the visual channel is most open in the c/s and the auditory or kinesthetic channel is most open in the b/s. Let's say that again in terms of preferences. The c/s prefers visual input and the b/s prefers auditory or kinesthetic input. Two ways exist to look at this mismatch. Either this complicates cooperation between c/s and b/s. If each self has a different map of the same experience, they "see" it differently; hence, “of two minds.” Conversely the difference in points of view permit better triangulating what is real and true in 3D reality. It’s no secret that more creative thinkers enjoy multiple points of view and use multiple mapping systems. We call this flexibility. NLP encourages this. The conscious self has many additional ways to represent meaning; art and algebra come to mind. We call these abstractions. Our basic self and habit body do not. It's meaning making strategies are limited to sensory percepts. Sensory awakening 100 years ago Rudolf Steiner said we have more senses than schoolbooks and the media tell us. Steiner is no longer alone. A scientist, Jeff Green cites a 2005 New Scientist article upping the number of "accepted senses" to ten with another 11 waiting "in the wings." Jeff's article is here: www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/sensejeffgreen.pdf This expanded paradigm of human sense channels has not penetrated the mainstream. Since 1970, the early adopters of an expanded paradigm of human sensory channels is Holistic healers; starting with Touch for Health, continuing into NLP and then beyond.
Q: Can I remove my cultural blinders by taking drugs? A: Psychedelic drugs and mushrooms violently force open your etheric centers. I'd love to know the percentage of experimenters who have a positive experience versus the number of experimenters reporting a problematic or confusing experience. My guess is both fractions are high. Because psychoactive drugs very often permanently distort your etheric centers, this tends to create more problems than it solves. Repairing damage to your etheric aura requires very skilled practitioners; because, the damage is all invisible. MSIA.org aura balances are by far the easiest, safest most effective way to repair such damage I know of. The work of aura balance thru MSIA is overseen by angels dedicated to this task, as I experience it. another great bargain of MSIA. Q: Other than drugs, what options do I have? A: Healthy intimacy is the main arena for relaxing-expanding your sensory channels because healthy intimacy is safe by definition. Healthy sex is a good way to expand your sensory channels. Healthy sex, safe, loving sexual congress, creates space for the inner child to let down its cultural blinders, at deeper and deeper levels. Once you measure how open each sense is, VAKOG, consider strengthening your weakest sense. Sensory awakening as a topic blossomed in the early 1970s. See Bernard Gunther’s page at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/BernardGunther/e/B001HCZ4ZG/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1 These are the main exercise books on waking up the five senses. To wake up the rest of your 12 senses requires self-testing of some kind to navigate in unfamiliar invisible territory. Q: Any other ways? A: Yes, observe the Law of Rumi. If you wish more self-sensitivity, identify, acknowledge, have compassion for, address, negotiate and resolve your blocks and obstacles to sensitivity, any you become aware of. The Law of Rumi suggests you can't go after more open senses directly. You CAN go after removing sensory chaos, incoherence and noise in your sense
channels. The senses you had when you took your first physical breath here in 3D are just fine. You reclaim them by chipping away at any and all disturbances in your sensory channels, recognizing more and more the internal "governors" keeping life out, keeping you isolated. Our child within is the gatekeeper of our 12 senses. As we reduce blocks and obstacles to our sense channels, our inner child gets freed up and more free to express. Such development is built upon feeling safe and trust between conscious self and basic self.
