When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed. -Joseph Campbell Highly sensitive children have highly sensitive senses that make them highly aware of their environments. But this gift can become a nightmare in today’s polluted world. Sensing intensely means getting affected more greatly by toxicity. … More Chapter 4 Making Sense of a Toxic World
Highly sensitive children have highly sensitive senses that make them highly aware of their environments. But this gift can become a nightmare in today’s polluted world. Sensing intensely means getting affected more greatly by toxicity. These days, toxicity levels have reached incredibly frightening proportions. But the issues are difficult to understand as multiple problems overlap … More Stress the Invisible Toxin
Chapter 1: To Live In an Insensitive Culture When you lose touch with inner stillness you lose touch with yourself, when you lose touch with yourself you lose yourself in the world – Eckhart Tolle To be a highly sensitive child in the western world is challenging. Heightened sensory processing capabilities create real distinctions between … More Book, Chapter 1: To Live in An Insensitive Culture, Introduction (draft 2)
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche Another area of our culture that we do not often associate with aesthetics is modern medicine. Nevertheless, it is a particularly powerful discursive and propagation tool of aesthetics. Its status as science makes … More Modern Medicine as Sensorial Anesthetics
We boast that we have conquered matter, and forget that it is matter that has enslaved us—okakura Children are taught to value specific approaches to sensory life that are highly regimented by our cultural rules. Indeed, psychologists have established that we have specific social norms and languages related to our use of time, space, touch, … More The Aesthetics of Space (draft)
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Chapter 1: A Disembodied Culture When you lose touch with inner stillness you lose touch with yourself, when you lose touch with yourself you lose yourself in the world – Eckhart Tolle How we, as parents and educators, understand heightened sensory sensitivity and the senses is influenced by our culture and greatly affects our ability … More Chapter 1: A Disembodied Culture (Draft)
Introduction What is Heightened Sensory Processing? Our own story What does it mean to be highly sensitive? Nurturing Sensitivities DIY HSP Well-Being Digital Native Learning Letting go of Cultural Fear Changing our Sensory Context The highly sensitive family: how to thrive in a toxic world
Sabbatical Report, Alexandra Bal It has been a while since I have written anything in this blog. This is in big part due to the fact that I have been on sabbatical, withdrawing from daily activities to focus on my research. Ahead of the sabbatical, I conducted the first round of interviews for the SHHRC … More Sabbatical Report
HSPs learn differently. They learn through their senses/bodies/spirit. In that sense they are like visual-spatial learners who, according to Linda K. Silverman and Jeffrey N. Freed:” learn holistically rather than in a step-by-step fashion.” While these authors see visual sensing as primordial, in the HSP context, all senses play an important role in learning. HSPs … More Reflection 6: HSP and Learning
I am having a Ha ha moment. Of course! for Michel Serres skin is central to the `philosophy of mingled bodies’ that Serres inaugurates here because of the principle of contingence: in the skin, through the skin, the world and the body touch, defining their common border. Contingency means mutual touching: world and body meet … More Michel Serres and Skin
It just occurred to me that sensorial intelligence could be the universal language Chomsky discussed. I have for years been opposed to the idea of a universal language, my opposition stemming from an understanding of language as existing within the mental structures of thoughts, informed by culture. From this lens, the idea of a universal … More A sensorial universal language?
Alx Bal 