Comfortably numb

I loved Elie Jesner's article about Yom Kippur. I always enjoy reading his interpretations of texts, not least because they give me access to sources way beyond my level of Jewish education! In this article I think Elie intelligently highlights the separation between internal and external, between spirit and matter whilst remaining aware of the problems inherent in dualism. I especially enjoyed his comment that "we may ascribe [our objects… our possessions] – or our lack of them – magical and redemptive powers, to believe that our next material acquisition will be the one which really makes the difference, which really changes the quality of our lives." (and I think we have a tendency to ascribe these powers to people also!).

However  when Elie suggests that, "Man’s spiritual condition is a deeply interior affair... [which]... leaves the impression that our feelings can be located somewhere, that they have a physical location, and hence, perhaps, a physical constitution, a physical cause. This is of course not the case.", I would like to offer a different viewpoint. Whilst agreeing that there are more than physical causes to our feelings, I also think that feelings do very much have a physical location and a constitution. I would assert that, asked the right questions, most people will be able to locate their feelings, along with a sensation or perhaps a sense of movement attributed to that feeling. When we feel anything, the tool which we use to do so is our body, specifically our nervous system. A feeling is called a feeling specifically because of its tactile nature. Feelings exist and are experienced within us, 'internally' if you will.

Eli asks "Where do we feel fear, angst, joy or liberation? " and asserts "We do not feel them in a place, we simply feel them". Personally, I am very aware of where I feel my emotions. For example, when I am liberated I feel lighter and I feel that lightness from my chest extending outwards from my shoulders and the crown of my head. Joy I feel more in my chest as a irrepressible bubbling. This specific location and sensations are most likely unique to me. Feelings are congruent with our physical state. Breathing, muscle tension, cardiovascular rate, eye dilation, oxygenation and many other physical processes are all affected by and effect our emotions.

Emotions and feelings1 occupy neurological and chemical (endocrinal) and physiological space. Being, a body worker I am familiar with watching states of mind/heart play out in the body. The sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic (rest and repose) nervous systems are easily observed during treatment. For example, a client who is scared of needles coming for their first acupuncture treatment will be demonstrating fear as some or all of: a pale face, sweaty palms, shallow breathing and strain in the voice. After they have received treatment they tend to have some of or all of: reduced muscle tension, rosy cheeks, a deeper voice and more dilated pupils.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the holistic relationship between mind and body is taken very seriously. Organs, as well as their physical capabilities and roles,  have attributed to them emotions: fear, anger, loss/grief, joy, etc. TCM  understands that emotions have energetic movements . Anger for example moves our energy upwards and outwards, while grief's movement is inwards and downwards. When emotions are blocked from moving through and out of our body; stopped from being realised, acknowledged, expressed and released then the qi (energy) of that emotion stagnates in our body, which is the physical framework for our emotional experiences. Over the long term emotions and feelings create change in the body. The body type (and health) of a chronically angry person is very different from that of a humble, happy, anxious, arrogant or gentle person. I believe that emotions have a location and a constitution because I can get a sense of person's emotional state just by watching them move and observing the colour of their face.

Of course, being human we don't even need to be experiencing the event in the present moment to observe a neurological, physiological and endocrinal responses to it. Simply remembering or imaging the event is enough. In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) our central and peripheral nervous system is understood to be an intelligence that uses all 5 senses to create a map of our world. In this map we use symbols to represent our friends, families, co-workers, lovers, grocery shops, big screen TVs and everything else of importance or irrelevance to us. Our Neurological Levels, a 'hierarchy of needs', further organises this map according to our:

 NLP is used extensively in all sorts of change work, from corporate psychology to working with young offenders. Eli explains that "we are given assurance that [Yom Kippur] Day itself will help us, will change us. [Although] I doubt that a day alone could ever change us, without any input or effort from our side." Interestingly, change in the neurological levels has been found to always make change in levels further 'downstream' (hence the inverted pyramid) but changes will not always move upwards. For example changing school, house, or spouse will not always make us behave differently or even believe something different about our self, whereas realising a new sense of self-esteem (the level of belief/values and possibly even identity) may, for example, make us realise what we are actually capable of, or where or how we want to be.

So, when Eli says "they become the definition of what it means to be us. They become our being" in NLP terms he is speaking to the neurological level of identity. Feelings can be all-consuming and when we identify with them to a strong degree we can almost disappear inside them. In NLP terms though this is called conflating the levels of behaviour or environment (internal though it may be) with identity. We are not our emotions - to my understanding many basic rituals of Judaism are designed specifically to teach us this e.g. wearing tallit, saying shema. Furthermore, we must be able to separate between our feelings and our behaviours for the principle of shalom bayit and other ethical principles of Judaism. Awareness of the physical 'symptoms' of emotion is one of the most powerful tools I have been introduced to in my mispent youth (and now my mispent old age!) to use whilst "pursuing peace". Knowing what the warning symptoms are of, for example, my anger or frustration does not always stop me acting like an arsehole but at least I am a marginally more conscious arsehole. Once conscious, I am more able to then accept responsibility for my actions and to ask for forgiveness from them. Of course because I behave badly (level of behaviour) it does not make me a bad person (level of identity) , which is why I appreciate Eli's point that we can always revisit our inner core of purity.

I pray that Yom Kippur has been a chance for all of us to reattach to our purpose here on Earth, our relationship with one another and with G-d. That we had a chance to spend time appreciating those parts of our identity that enhance our skills, capabilities, medicine and relationships, and that the changes Yom Kippur has bought about inside us lead to ever more skilled behaviours and fun-packed internal and external environments .

Gmar Chatima Tova.

Paul Silk

www.acupuncture-silk.co.uk

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1. There may be a distinction between an emotion and a feeling. A feeling then can be an intuition , where as an emotion is  perhaps something more concrete - as my wife said "I wouldn't have an emotion that someone was about to call!". For the purposes of this post however, I am treating emotion and feeling as semantically interchangeable.