A genuine path to knowledge
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Audre Lorde said that “Our feelings are our most genuine path to knowledge.”
This is especially true when it comes to self-knowledge. As we grow older, and if we are intentional, we gather a lot of information about ourselves - our patterns, defense mechanisms, triggers… But did we learn this from feeling or mostly from thinking? And what difference does it make?
“Information is not knowledge. The only source of knowledge is experience. You need to experience to gain wisdom.”
—Albert Einstein
When the subject of study is our self, we have to rely on our experience. And how do we experience anything? Through our bodies, through feeling.
It’s the way we feel in different situations that reveal what we are challenged by, attracted to, when a boundary has been crossed, what we value, how we feel loved, what is harmful for us, and also when we are being harmful to others. Our bodies contract or expand, we feel energized or depleted, lifted or minimized. If we pay attention, our feelings guide us towards what truly nourishes us and alert us when things are off.
“Before there are words, there is the wordless communication of the body.”
—Michael Changaris, Psy.D., SE Institute Chair of the Board
Our feelings are indeed our greatest teachers - if only we allow ourselves to feel them.
Notice how we use the words ‘feeling’ and ‘emotion’ interchangeably, even though they aren’t the same thing. It’s because emotions manifest in our bodies as sensations, and sensations we feel.
The problem is that we’ve learned to see our emotions as disembodied. We ignore the felt sense, react, and intellectualize.
This premature intellectualization leads to meaning based on outdated scripts, often rooted in wounds, that we are tired of repeating.
Most of the time, we suffer not because of the emotion itself but because we are resisting feeling it. What we experience as a negative emotion isn’t really the emotion, but our resistance to it. Remember feeling jealous and trying to push it away? The moment you begin to suppress it, you experience resistance compounded with jealousy. And resisting doesn’t feel good either (think about holding in pee when you really need to go). We tense up, don’t breathe well, can’t think clearly—it takes a lot of effort.
Most of us know how to suffer but might have no idea how to feel pain. Or joy, for that matter, because the shield that protects us from discomfort also prevents the things we do like to feel from touching us deeply.
So, how do we suffer less?
Learning to feel more.
Instead of resisting our emotions, we turn towards their felt sense.
This is a practice. It involves intentionally pausing and switching from automatically labeling emotions as 'good' or 'bad' and intellectualizing them prematurely, to noticing them as sensations and making space for them: the heaviness in the chest, the pit in the stomach, the tightening in the throat. Rather than trying to get rid of these sensations, we sense their texture, shape, and movement in our bodies. This is feeling.
And if we are able to hold the feeling separate from the mental associations, we can create a new pattern.
For example, let’s say Mary has had a busy week and is tired. On Friday, her mom asks her to join a random family event, but all Mary wants to do is rest. She’s used to saying yes to please her mom, having internalized the belief that if she says no, people will be angry, and she risks losing their love. This time, she takes a moment to pause and feel before answering. She notices the pressure building up inside her body—the tightness in her throat, the heaviness on her shoulders, the knot in her stomach. Despite the urge to agree, she chooses to politely decline, listening to her own feelings. It’s tough because her mom reacts with disappointment, but Mary stays firm. With practice, this becomes easier, and Mary develops a new, healthier habit, leading to a more honest and balanced relationship with her mom and others, where she doesn’t need to sacrifice her well-being to feel loved.
It might seem counterintuitive, but the more we can feel the icky stuff the less we’ll suffer. In part because sensations are impermanent—they pass and give way to other sensations; and in part because what we can feel we can learn to express, and expressing allows our emotions to move through us and be released.
Recovering our capacity to feel makes us more skilled at handling life. It makes us more responsive rather than reactive and allows us to draw meaning from our experiences based on their reality rather than on old stories.
As we expand our capacity to feel discomfort, we also expand our capacity to feel joy, pleasure, contentment, and awe. We learn to experience our emotions without becoming them, which truly allows us to know ourselves and cultivate freedom.
Circling back to Audre Lorde, our feelings bring us back to our bodies, which are always here, in the present moment—the only place and time where we can have experiences, reflect, and learn.
“Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge. They are chaotic, sometimes painful, sometime contradictory, but they come from deep within us. And we must key into those feelings and begin to extrapolate from them, examine them for new ways of understanding our experiences. This is how new visions begin, how we begin to posit a new future nourished by the past.”
—Audre Lorde
JOIN ME ON THE 28TH TO ENTER THE PORTAL TO YOUR GREATEST TEACHER:
Body Expression Workshop
June 28th, Friday, 6:15 pm, in Santa Monica, CA.
*Women of color receive a special discount. Email analiz@embodiedcreatures.com to get a link.
“Every time I attend Ana Liz’s workshops, a weight is lifted off my shoulders, and there is so much to celebrate through dance, music, expression, art, and community. It feels like I dive into my soul, finding liberation. When I become aware of blockages, I am present and able to nourish those areas in my body and heart.” —Christine Saiyan