"To Theel"
What if there was a word that integrated "feel" and "think"?
It is a unique event in existence; It is as if we were suddenly freed from heavy chains that are always felt but are invisible. During my career as an artist and designer I felt a need to express the moment when my mind and my heart were coherently synchronized and it was possible to witness it.
Science calls it "the Zone", the poets "conscience". There is "Percibere", from Latin which means "to perceive", and refers to the action of perceiving both with the senses and with the mind. Even so, it does not seem to me that this word includes the idea of the "action" that is achieved by thinking and feeling simultaneously.
Since I use the English language as much as the Spanish, I once again noticed the lack of this word in the language. If I told you how I came to this, you would laugh with me. Perhaps the short version of the story is enough to inspire a curious and attentive soul.
In a moment of difficulty and despair in my life, I watched videos on the internet of a person who inspired me with confidence and a lot of hope to be able to "get ahead". His name is Ricardo Perret, and part of his teaching is about the practice of listening to the sound of the heart with a stethoscope (the same one used by doctors).
I listened to him. I bought a stethoscope, came home and looked for my heart…
(♫)
. . ) ) . . . . ) ) . . . . ) ) . . . . ) ) . . . . ) ) . . . . ) ) . . . .
(♫)
Perhaps the most pleasant and disconcerting sound he had experienced so far. Immediately upon being perceived, there was a quickening in his rhythm, as if he had realized that he was being heard. I took a deep breath and felt the rhythm change again and calm down. I was feeling and thinking at the same time.
From that moment I began an exploration and studies on the influence of the sound of the heart in the human psyche, having references from Ricardo Perret himself (whom I would later meet in person and become my friend), HeartMath Institute and Ayurveda (ancestral science of Hindu medicine).
Being a musician, it seemed to me that my heart created music. Listening to it was rhythmic, changing and pleasurable. Sometimes in 3/4 time like a waltz, other times in a 5/8 kind of way. And my breathing was always the one that allowed the rhythm to be constant... without much fluctuation.
A fascinating experience that led me to understand that the sound of the heart potentially stimulates early neural pathways developed in our prenatal brain. In simple words, listening to the sound of the heart allows us to feel the sensation of being inside the maternal womb, and that in itself can be a healing experience in many ways.
By then I was perfectly familiar with the concept of Sound Healing, which is an experience that seeks to induce the sensation of healing through sound (normally produced by ancestral instruments such as bowls, gongs or tuning forks, among others). Listening to my own heart led me to the idea of mixing these practices, and thus I created the term Beat Healing: listening to the sound of your own heart + live (literally) high-frequency atmospheric music.
And every time I started a Beat Healing session the same thing happened; the people who lived through the experience found themselves without the right word to express what they had experienced.
So one day I picked up the stethoscope and listened to my heart with a very specific thought in mind: what word can I use to express this experience? And I heard the answer.
“Sensar” and “to Theel” are two words that can be conjugated regularly and intuitively. A word that mixes "Feel, Think, Perceive and Intuit".
And if it were used more often, would it help us communicate better? Nothing is lost by trying.