For the purposes of this exercise in intimacy and connection, a “frame” is a highlight moment in an experience, in which one feels heightened sensation. So that’s what you’ll be doing with this practice. You’ll be sharing a moment when you felt heightened sensation. So let’s clarify what that means.

We all have a homeostasis for sensation. Your homeostasis is your norm... your familiar, consistent, uneventful state, which you are accustomed to. In fact in this state you may not feel sensations at all because they are so normalized that your brain economics doesn’t waste energy even thinking about it.

A sensation is a feeling. A feeling can be physical (something you experience with your nerve endings... something you feel in your body), or mental/emotional (something you experience with your mind). But all feeling happens in the nervous system (the mind/brain is a part of your nervous system). You may not think of an emotion as a sensation. But it is. Anything that you sense or feel is a sensation. AND most mental sensation is paired with a physical sensation. AND physical and mental sensations can swap positions in the principle of cause and effect. Some mental sensations are caused by physical sensation. Some physical sensations are caused by mental sensations.

What we’ll be exploring with this practice is your relationship with sensation. You will be observing how you respond to your environment, to different circumstances, to your own thoughts, to the actions of others, to music, to all sorts of stimuli. A stimuli is a person, place, or thing that triggers a heightened sensation. And you’ll be practicing sharing that sensation with others, using language that they are pretty much guaranteed to understand. It will be important to follow the instructions explicitly, without adding your own embellishments.

A heightened sensation is one that stands out because it is outside of your homeostasis. A great example would be something like watching tv and all of a sudden something loud happens and it startles you. The raised volume causes you to be taken out of homeostasis. You notice a feeling or sensation. You are conscious of it. Another example would be that you’re minding your own business, having dinner alone in a restaurant and you’re relaxed and enjoying your meal, and you put a fork full of food in your mouth and it’s too hot, and you feel burning pain in your mouth. You weren’t feeling any sensation in your mouth before that, even though if you had focused attention on your mouth, you could have felt your tongue against the roof of your mouth, your teeth, your inner cheeks, etc…. A heightened sensation stands out because it disrupts, it catches your attention. You notice it.

But a heightened sensation isn’t always about something unpleasant, and it is personal and subjective. For example. You could read this and you notice that some part of it triggers a sensation in you... perhaps excitement, or fear. And you may have actual physical reactions, such as muscle tension, or tingling. These are common for either of these emotions. Or you could feel sadness when you watch a sad movie, and have physical sensations of tightness in your chest, or heaviness in your body. It just depends on the person. Everyone is different in the way their systems express.

Ok. For the sake of being clear, here is a quick summary.

• a sensation is a feeling and can be physical or emotional/mental (chills, goosebumps, headache, pressure in chest, prickles on back of the neck, lightheadedness, warmth/heat in face/skin/other body parts, eyes tearing up, anger, happiness, surprise, shock, fear, confidence, and so on)

• a heightened sensation is a feeling that you notice, that catches your attention, and is typically outside of your homeostasis

• a stimuli is the thing that happens that triggers the sensation (you said I was a genius, we kissed, I read that the war was over, we talked about global warming, I got my phone bill, I smelled the food cooking, etc… )

Got it? Good. So here’s the practice. There’s no schedule for this practice. Use it when communicating in exchanges with people. Use it to describe an experience. It is an all day, everyday personal observance. And you can practice it in all forms of communication with all sorts of people at your own discretion.

Here is the basic method of observation:

1. Note the stimuli, don’t add meaning or analysis to it. Just simply observe that something just happened and what it was.
   (The dog barked. He touched me. She laughed. I learned that I’d been lied to. I was invited to take on a challenge. I got a text from her.)

2. Note the emotional/mental response. Again, don’t add reasons or meaning or analysis to it. Just simply observe that you just had an emotion about the stimuli.
   (I felt fear. I felt excited. I felt happy. I felt angry. I felt nervous. I felt relieved.)

3. Note the physical response. Again, don’t add reasons or meaning or analysis to it. Just simply observe the physical sensation you just had.
   (I felt my muscles become tense. I felt warmth and tingling in my face. I felt lightness in my body. I felt heat in my belly. I felt sweat in my palms. I felt my muscles relax.)

Here is how you will share a sensation frame:

• There was a moment when__(the stimuli)__.

• I felt ____(the emotion/mental response)___.

• And I felt ___(the physical response)___.

EXAMPLES:

• There was a moment when we were talking and you said that you love me.
  I felt grateful.
  And I felt a wave of warmth pass over my entire body.

• There was a moment in the movie when the wife died.
  I felt sad.
  And I felt a heaviness in my chest.

• There was a moment when I realized I’d lost my keys.
  I felt frustration.
  And I felt muscle tension in my back.

Make sure that you don’t embellish. Also don’t use poetic simile or metaphor. Be clear, specific, and concise. No skies parting, or crawling out of your body. No world coming to an end. No I’m going to die. There shouldn’t be use of the phrase, “I felt LIKE...” Just say exactly what you felt without comparison or embellishment. This is not creative writing. It’s not convincing someone to believe something. Your job is to communicate exactly what happened and how you responded to it in a way that anyone can understand. Period.

This is a truly beautiful practice. If you want to really get the most out of it, slow down, pay attention. And notice how the more you do this practice, the more sensations you begin to notice feeling. You begin to notice the sensations that were happening unconsciously, which were triggering generative or destructive behaviors. You begin to notice how others respond to your sharing something as intimate as a body sensation or an emotion so directly and so generously. You begin to realize how sensations are universal. And that it’s the unnecessary embellishments that confuse, fog, and set us up for misunderstanding, presumption, and disconnection.