I’ve been thinking a lot about what it would be like to live life through my senses rather than my mind—to experience the world as it is, rather than as my thoughts interpret it to be.
Martha Beck calls this wordlessness in Finding Your Way in a Wild New World—the practice of dropping into a state beyond language, where we engage with life directly rather than through the filter of constant mental narration. It’s the state animals live in. It’s how we were born knowing the world before we learned to name, categorize, and overanalyze. It’s how horses communicate with us when we get quiet enough to listen.
I’ve had glimpses of it—those moments when thought dissolves, and I am simply here. The feeling of warm sun on my skin after stepping outside, the scent of pine after a fresh rain, the sound of horses munching their hay. The way a horse exhales deeply, and I find myself releasing a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
When we live from our minds, life is a puzzle to solve, a problem to fix, a task to complete. When we live from our senses, life just is—and we become part of it.
I wonder what would shift if I spent more time in this state. If instead of trying to think my way through things, I let my body feel its way. If I trusted the pull of instinct, the quiet knowing that arrives without words.
Would decisions become simpler? Would clarity come more easily? Would joy feel more natural?
I don’t have the answers (and that’s exactly the point). But I do know that the moments when I lose my mind in the best way—when I stop naming and just sense—are the moments I feel most alive.
Maybe today is a good day to practice. Maybe yours is too.
Try this: Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Drop into your senses. What do you feel? What do you hear? What do you know without words?
That’s where life is waiting.
Photo by Peter Conlan on Unsplash
