The Four Sensory Types

          As part of the Eden Energy Medicine practitioner’s training program we learned to test sensory type. Some of us have a single sensory type, while others have more than one. Ideally, we are able to combine the four sensory modalities: tonal (or auditory), visual, kinesthetic and digital, in roughly equal proportion. The identified sensory type refers to that sense that predominates if we are stressed. In a way, it could be said to be the one upon which we rely perhaps too heavily. It’s one of the ways that stress knocks us out of balance.  

          Each sensory mode has characteristics beyond the obvious physical senses. For example, tonal people have a tendency to hear things that haven’t been said. This is one of my two predominant modalities. On the one hand this manifests as a need to be very precise in my own word choice. It is an advantage when I write, because I have an ‘ear’ for the rhythm of my words. I know when they sound right. It can also be a liability, because when words come at me that are not precisely expressing what the person wishes to communicate, I can find these words hurtful. For example, as a child I was told that I was “too sensitive.” Had I been told that I was “very sensitive” that would have validated my experience. Being told I was “too sensitive” entered my psyche not as a neutral observation but as a critique. It made me feel that being sensitive was a defect, and I wondered how I could change.

As an adult, I learned a number of ways to decrease my level of sensitivity. Speaking energetically, it’s helpful to work with the aura. When the aura is strong it protects like a semi-permeable membrane, preventing the energy of words that were not carefully selected from penetrating to the depth of one’s being. Further, the aura and the core complement each other, so that as the aura gains strength, the core becomes stronger as well. There is more sense of self.

Tonal people often “hear” things that were never uttered. When calm and balanced, they can be taking in valid information from the environment and it becomes a useful psychic or intuitive sense. In stress, which throws us energetically out of balance, what is heard is more likely to be an echo of one’s inner thoughts, doubts, and uncertainty rather than accurate information from the external environment.

          Digital people can be lost in thought. They are more likely to be disconnected from somatic sensations, and rarely know what they feel. If asked, “What do you feel, they might not even notice that they have changed the verb and initiate an answer with the words “I think…” Or they may have an extensive vocabulary of emotional states, but they aren’t experiencing those emotions so much as deciding what it must be that they are feeling. Once again, the analysis is taking place in the head, rather than having a conclusion based on sensory input.

        A common issue for people who are digital is that their energy easily becomes scrambled (meaning it is tangled and not flowing) and/or homolateral (meaning it stops crossing the midline). Digital sensory types easily lose energetic grounding. A common myth of the prevailing paradigm is that thinking takes place in the brain. So they allow their vital energy to move into their heads. The mind, however, is non-local. According to Taoist lore all the organs participate through connections with different parts of the brain. With practice it is possible to sense these connections.

           A handy way to combat this energetic tangling is for them to retain an awareness of the spiritual support that they receive. The way I put this to one of my clients was that she could imagine that at the top of her head (crown chakra) there was a lens like on a camera, and that she could practice imagining herself spiraling this lens open, and energy flowing in that would then travel through her body and feet, anchoring her to the earth.

          Visual people tend to rely on what they see. The down side, when they are stressed, is that they expect others to see things their way. They usually have a very strong sense of how they envision things ought to be, i.e., a vision of their image of an ideal world. It can be difficult for them to understand that we might each have such a vision, and yet those visions may not have much in common. Viva La Difference! When visual people are calm and balanced, they are more able to take in the variety of perspectives that others they interact with may hold for a specific outcome.

          The fourth sensory type is called “kinesthetic”. This is my second predominant modality. It is perhaps the one that caused me the most distress, and in return has taught me a great deal. When one has a strong kinesthetic sense and a weak aura, no information from the field is adequately filtered. As mentioned, a strong sense of self requires a strong aura. Thus when one is highly kinesthetic and the aura doesn’t filter information adequately other people’s emotions can be confusing. The emotional energy gets absorbed without discrimination; the individual no longer knows what belongs to her and what emotional energy she experiences is really extraneous information.

          I have many stories that illustrate this phenomenon. I relate a few of them in my book More Than Meets the Eye: Energy. I remember sitting in group meetings more than once and having an emotional release. With time I began to understand that it wasn’t actually my emotions I was feeling, but being the most open person in the group, I ended up channeling all of the unexpressed emotion of the group. That made them uncomfortable for the same reason that they were not conversant with their emotions in the first place. This has taken me decades to unravel. I see it as a shift from being empathic, which to me can mean having no boundary and lacking a sense of a separate self – to being kinesthetic, which to me means I have that same sensitivity, but because I have developed my aura I take in less of other people’s energy, and what I do experience I’m closer to being able to observe and distinguish from my innate nature.