Too sensitive?
Here’s one way to look at sensitivity: a nervous system that is acutely sensitized to its natural surroundings and other living beings is deeply intuitive and wise; possessing an infinite capacity for clear knowing, pure connection, and calm resolve.
Too sensitive. This term has been bandied about for as long as i can remember, generally in response to the (less than convenient) needs of quiet, gentle souls.
Have you ever been called too sensitive, or have you ever labeled someone else??
What IS too sensitive anyway?
It’s certainly not, in most cases, a gracious compliment; rather, “too sensitive” is usually delivered in exasperation as blame - as if sensitivity were a rude and inconvenient character flaw…
Sure, empathy can be pathological when we can’t separate from the dense thought forms of other people’s pain, but that same quality of deep pathos - deep feeling - is also how the heart attunes to the wholeness and intentionality all around - how the heart reads truth or danger long before the brain…
“Too sensitive” is a demeaning term. Here’s the problem:
1) IT COMPLETELY UNDERMINES THE COMPLEXITY, MAJESTY, AND INTERDEPENDENCE OF THE BRAIN AND HEART; and
IT FAILS TO RECOGNIZE HOW SAFETY ENABLES US TO SURVIVE, CONNECT, AND EVOLVE.
So let’s start simple, and from there, explore…
There was a reason miners took canaries to work with them: the birds, being more delicate and sensitive than big guys, were also more sensitized to the presence of toxic fumes in the mines. Their little lungs were quickly overwhelmed, and they keeled over - so the miners knew to get out fast.
But why couldn’t the miners themselves discern this???
Well for one, their minds were understandably somewhere else.
Any one of us here and now could claim as much, but at what cost if our inner canaries are all dead?
The smell of safety enables us to survive, connect, and evolve…our five senses point the way home, breath by breath; but only our sense of smell goes straight to the brain without cognitive processing. The smell of danger, even subliminally, triggers immediate survival reactions - fight or flight - and if that fails, freeze. Beyond that, deep sensing lives in the pores of the heart.
We each have profound potential for subtle awareness, but many have forgotten that in the noise of the world.
And by settling for so much less than is possible, we’ve severed ancient parts of ourselves that bring forth life.
Inner knowing is the primal evolutionary seed.
Physiology speaks volumes.
The brain and nervous system are a radio tower with antennae that receive from and broadcast with all of life - our central and peripheral nervous system form an information superhighway innately sensitized for perceiving subtle energies and cues.
And here’s we can no longer separate the brain from the heart - because the heart has its own nervous system too, comprised of at least 40,000 sensory neurites all reaching out to meet, assess, and communicate with the world. That’s synaptogenesis in action, the explosive growth of new communication networks. Right in our own hearts!
Neurites through which the heart broadly perceives… neurites sprouting their expansive reach into the plasma field of all that is.
This dance of synaptogenesis and its living information fields - real not only in the cerebral brain but everywhere else in the body as well - enables the heart to see all and know best.
And as if all this weren’t enough…
The heart’s resonance field is far more expansive than that of the brain. According to Heartmath research: the heart’s electrical field is 60X greater than the brain, while the heart’s magnetic field is as much as 5000X stronger than the brain. The heart’s torroidal field extends out at least five miles.
Says Heartmath: “From an electrophysiological perspective, it appears that sensitivity to this form of energetic communication between individuals is related to the ability to be emotionally and physiologically coherent.”
The heart’s rhythmic patterns encode and transmit our emotional state, which is how and why we “attract what we are”. Our hearts prescreen every experience we ever have; and when we are disconnected from our hearts, our choices may not be aligned.
2) IT’S DAMN HARD TO KEEP THE SENSES TRULY ALIVE AND FLOWING IN A DIGITAL REALITY FILLED WITH RELENTLESS PROPAGANDA AND BIOCHEMICAL ASSAULTS.
Anyone who is labeled “too sensitive” at this point in history should be lauded and revered like Krishna playing his flute; for it was the delicate canaries who sounded the alarms that saved the miner’s lives.
Between chemical pollution, heavy metals and plastics in the water, air, and soil, radiation fields from the tech grid, and pharmaceutical interventions, our global culture is under massive biochemical assault. Ignoring it is not the answer.
To evolve, a people or species must survive. Environmental toxicants damage membranes and cross the blood brain barrier - which means they poison the brain - which is inseparable from the central nervous system - which means neurodegeneration has inevitably begun. Inflammation is just one sign. Our other symptoms are the rest of the writing on the wall.
But membranes are not just in the brain and around the nerves; membranes - epithelial tissue - is everywhere, including the tender lining of the digestive tract and lungs, and every single blood vessel and cell we have.
Membrane damage equals self-dissolution; cells lose their boundaries, and body systems malfunction and shut down.
Everyone alive is becoming increasingly sensitized, in terms of ability to tolerate - let alone process - the amount and intensity of stimulation bombarding us every day.
Consider the rise in allergies and other autoimmune conditions. We have all been rendered highly sensitive by environmental toxicity, mental stress, and sensory overload, and so we are all chronically amped up, nerves on high alert. When we are amped up, we are neurologically hyper-sensitized.
It’s easy to fly off the handle, lose focus, get sick, and/or just shut down.
Because surely you see where this could go from here, and may feel a ripple of dread rising inside you right about now, let’s come full circle, return to the heart, and attune. The heart always knows, and the heart orchestrates connection and relationship infinitely well. Come, have a breath or two with me right here, right now…
Let’s once again attune to this most basic rhythm of life; and by doing so, we build up eachother’s field, not merely our own.
In fact, the heart even secretes oxytocin - in equal concentration to the brain!
Who knew? How much more sensitive could we possibly be than to have the hormones of bonding cascading from our hearts and brains?
We come pre-assembled to connect!
According to research at the Global Coherence Initiative, “there is growing evidence suggesting that magnetic fields, in addition to serving as a protective shield, also help synchronize, energize, and non-locally interconnect living systems…(and are) carriers of biologically relevant and patterned information which is embedded in the same field and distributed to all other living systems.”
We lose our sense of self when we are disconnected from our hearts. Yet when our hearts connect with eachother through a field of conscious intention, the unified field of love grows - exponentially - and love bathes all in its wake.
There is safety in love, which then nestles itself deep within the survival brain, to unravel long held patterns of fear and inform the entire field that all is well.
We are safe, and we are not alone. And in that moment, we are reborn.
The body’s miraculous nature will not ever stand down. Can we - will we - rise up to meet it, through the living channels of heart and mind?
Thank you for reading! This original article branched off four times, til i thought we would never get to this page - but here we are at last.
You can always read for free - and you can also choose to support my work with a paid subscription. After all, we’ve barely begun…so stick around…
Berda, thank YOU! When things "hit home" it means we are in the same swirl of light. Right, sister?
yolanda! love this article, your insight and facility for expression never ceases to amaze me. i shared with my oracle girl group for it's relevance to 'precision focus' which we are concentrating on this week. thank you so much for what you bring...always hits the spot. much love.