feeling your skin

[keryx]

I've been reading this book, Waking the Tiger, for about a month. It's partially a layperson's book on the psychophysiology of trauma [surprisingly, yes, a topic on which one can write for layfolk] and partially a personal guide to overcoming effects of trauma. The latter I think would be useful to people working on anxiety "disorders" - it is, in fact, written with anxiety in mind - but it has broader application (I'm working on recovering from some way old physical injuries, for instance).

Many of the exercises early in the book focus on what he calls the "felt sense". It's a combination of conscious and unconscious awareness of sensation/feeling and a sense of yourself as a body occupying a space. [Other people call it "kinaesthetic sense" or "kinaesthetic awareness", which I like more cause I don't get to type a and e next to each other very often; it's a nice, but underused, dipthong (I might even go so far as to say I'm a dipthong aesthete, ha!).] In fact, one of the first things is just concentrating on getting that sense back.

Quite awhile ago, I was on the DC metro thinking about this. I can't feel all my skin. In fact, most of us can't feel all our skin. It's normal (having a base in anatomy as well as psychology, if I recall correctly) - partly just that we couldn't continue to function in a complicated world if we were consciously aware of every inch of skin, and partly that we're almost all a little broken. Despite the usefulness of numbness, it made me suddenly and utterly sad. Like there was this relationship with my skin that I could imagine but never have. I stopped reading the book, because it started to make me really sad about my skin.

But.

There are some limited contexts where you can get pretty intimate with your skin. When it's hurt or injured (from a sunburn to scars and real pain). On a really fabulously sunny, half-or-all-naked day. If you touch someone new.

It was a nice insight for me, that we were just apart, not totally estranged.

Comments

[belladonnalin.livejournal.com]

This is really, really lovely. I'm actually memories-ing it, if that's cool, 'cause I'd like to come back to it when I have more than half of a brain (the other half being occupied with finding 3500 more words for my dissertation) to interact with it better.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Of course, you're welcome to come back to it.

Congrats on finding those last words, by the way.

[rackletang.livejournal.com]

My skin and I are trying to get back in touch, so to speak. Particularly on my right calf, where an injury has left me with a numb surface and a bruised interior. For the past year or so, I can only feel inside my right calf, not the surface. And it's weird.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Eeenteresting. You might get something useful out of this book. I'm going back to it now that the skin thing doesn't make me want to cry so much (probably a trauma tickler itself).

[rackletang.livejournal.com]

Hmm... Indeed. Might be worth a browse...

Hi my name is Kemaro

[(Anonymous)]

Hi my name is Kemaro and i really like this article and what it says. I am using this article in my senior project. first I need to know is this book about occupying a space with dance, which can overcome or cure a traumad patient. and if so second i need to know what is the authors name of this article so i can cite my source. and last if this is not what is listed above than why is it at the top of the article it is entitled "Those who were seen dancing"... reply please and thank you.