There was a time when I could stop everything around me...with my sneeze. It wasn’t because people were startled or alarmed, it’s because they didn’t know what was happening.
Once in college when I sneezed in an English class, my professor stopped his lecture in mid-sentence and said, “What the hell was that?”
My mom called it my “little mouse sneeze” and it sounded squeaky and tight like maybe someone was trying to pull that poor mouse through a key hole.
“Atcheeeeeeooooooo.”
People told me all the time not to hold back my sneezes: that it was bad for my brain or my eyeballs or my throat or something. But didn’t think I was holding them back. As long as I could remember, I’d always sneezed my little mouse sneeze. It was the only way I knew.
Until lockdown.
I don’t know what happened exactly but at some point when everybody’s undies were on fire about germs and hand washing and touching your face and sneezing into your elbow, my sneeze changed. Maybe it was because I didn’t see anyone for weeks at a time. Maybe it was because it didn’t matter how loud I was since I could always hit mute on Zoom. Or maybe it was because there was a global pandemic and I was 56 years old and I had run out of shits to give.
Whatever it was, all of a sudden, my sneezes were loose, loud and liberal. These sneezes felt new: not squeaky or tight but a satisfying, adventurous release. From the perspective of this new sneeze, I realized that the little mouse sneeze did hurt my throat and squeezed up my eyes in an uncomfortable way. It felt all bunched up. Not this new sneeze: it felt like freedom.
The sneeze transformation got me wondering: what else am I tight and squeezed up about that I don’t even notice? Where else in my life am I gripping and holding on, not wanting to take up too much space? Where am I making myself small or inauthentic but I’ve been doing it so long, I don’t realize it? How would I even know?
Awareness might be one way in, yet that feels intangible, like nailing Jello to the wall. How can I be aware of something that I’m unaware of?
The answer, I think, is sensation-centered curiosity: go to the body and see what feels good. Not necessarily familiar or comfortable, but good and right.
Author, life coach, and speaker, Martha Beck said it well in a recent episode of the We Can Do Hard Things podcast. When Glennon Doyle asked how to follow our inner knowing rather than the crowd, she said, “Come to your senses instead of living by consensus.” She said to go to your body for guidance and choose what feels warm rather than checking with others and following them.
Coming to our senses takes awareness. It takes a willingness to break habit. It takes courage. Not easy but simple. There is wisdom in our very cells. The body never lies. Listen to sensation and go to what feels warm, flowing and right in your body.
Mary Oliver wrote in her poem Wild Geese, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves.” That’s the kind of warm, sensation-centered curiosity that will always tell us the truth.
Come to your senses. Let go of consensus. Find your inner knowing by listening to what your body loves. Let yourself sneeze your full-on sneeze...into your elbow, of course.