Shivers Down Your Spine

Transcript

Let’s talk about shivers down your spine.

So I was thinking the other day I was sitting somewhere perhaps and I had that feeling of shivers down my spine.

Escalofríos as they call it in Spanish and I thought about it because I know as a boy when I was 10-15 years old when this would happen to me I would feel a lot of resistance and my body would shake all around and people could see. I would experience it as something uncomfortable.

Now and for many years that’s not how I experience it. I look at it as something normal, spontaneous, interesting and even pleasureable.

Its funny how our interpretations can have so much effect on this.

And if you look at your own experience you probably will see it depends on the context when this experience is negative or painful. It has a negative valence, a negative effect.

If you’re watching a movie, I think there’s this moment in Braveheart where they’re like torturing this scotsman, they want him to renounce Scotland and they torture him to the brink of death and all he has to say is mercy that they will let him go. He begins to open his lips and out comes the word freedom.

That is what he cared about most, more than his own life. He cared about freedom.

And you watch those kinds of films and see this awe, it might manifest in a shiver down your spine. You might think, whoa, that’s powerful.

That’s something special, something worthy of respect, admiration. Awe is what it inspires, but in another situation if you’re not used to cold showers but you jump into a cold shower you shake and have a shiver down your spine.

That’s not pleasurable. Very much the same sensation, so similar but such a different interpretation.

How much of our experience is like this?

Where we think something is good or bad just like Shakespear said, nothing is good or bad except that thinking makes it so.

How much of your experience would be truly good if you were willing to embrace it?

If you relax into it, to enjoy those unexpected spontaneous things. Those unusual experiences and things you hadn’t expected. Welcoming into your life, your heart and letting go of all resistance. You might find they are delightful.

Thank you for listening, for observing your own experiences and interpretations of experiences so one day they might be welcome.