As an artist with deep sensory processing abilities, I am always fascinated by the abstract shapes and forms found in nature and I try to imagine how I can explore them through art and movement and what insights I would be receiving through mirroring them.

Aren’t they gorgeous?

So I just couldn’t resist. I HAD TO explore them on a sensory level. I didn’t have much time though to do this, but I was missing my daily experiments by connecting with natural elements I photographed each morning, so I promised myself that I would do it no matter what.

I wanted to start with the painting part, but the first thing that came to mind when I looked at them was a Hayku poem:

All right, now that I let this coming out of me, I was ready to sense the mysterious frozen aliveness through my art.

I began by collecting my pigments and natural paints and then SLOWLY, added drops of water over them. I decided to use only 2 main colors, dark blue and a bit of brown, with added black and white to neutralize them when needed.

The sound of the drops coming down and spreading the powder all over the place was mesmerizing:

Then mixing it all together, again ever so slowly, everything felt so sensuously delicious, as if I was blending some cream butter for a cake, only this time it was colorful and the lines made by the brush moves were becoming a form of art themselves.

I started to paint by mirroring some of the colors in the frozen water and their movements, but the goal of the painting was not to realistically reproduce it to perfection. Instead, my main aim was to SENSE the frozen flow of the water that was once alive and now appeared cold and numb and to understand it through the movement of my hand.

The resulting visual had no resemblance to the photo image, but a lot in common with the frozen choreography of it. The feeling I got when I moved my hand mirroring it, was again numbness, and it reminded me of numb fascia, mainly because the lines in the painting were looking like muscles striations.

The second photo led me to move my hand in a circle, which started to feel more like an opening portal. At times, it felt as if the ice itself was looking at me from behind the portal door, just as much as I was looking at her.

The brown shadows added felt extremely grounding and soothing to me. as if the Earth was embracing the numbness:

Which is why they are the part I love the most in this abstract painting:

They feel like awakened fascia somehow, a muscle that still feels alive underneath it all.

The other thing that I loved about this second painting was how beautifully it was spiraling through the light, when I moved it. It was like a subtle dance of soothing shimmering greys and blues:

The third photo inspired me to move my hand in small circles and when I looked at them from a distance I noticed they looked like alveoli (which are microscopic, balloon-shaped air sacs located in the lungs). It didn’t surprise me that they appeared on my page, since my illness developed after I experienced long Covid issues. These alveoli also looked like little zen stones that were gathered meditatively.

Because of this, the whole image felt quite serene and restful and there was no fearful energy in them at all:

Anyway, this is how far I got for now in my sensory painting explorations.

I still need to work on them and add more details through pastel pigments and see what else wants to emerge as a message but I felt happy with my discoveries so far and I realized once again - the similarities I always find between my artistic explorations and my own issues (in this case fascia and lungs).

My paintings felt aggressive though in comparison with the photos.

There was so much rage in that fascia or so it felt to me. This is because each color and shape carries a vibration and this was the main information I sensed in it.

The images told me (energetically) that this is because the natural process of freezing water happened at a different pace than my hands movement ability. And, the important thing was that I was curious enough to explore their world. It felt almost as if they enjoyed my process of connection to them, just as much as I did.

I also received the message that I can ask the paintings several questions about the rage found in them, which is to be my art journaling process in the next few days.

Next, there was the sensory movement exploration part. My favorite medium.

I started to move my hands slowly, by following the undulating snake like lines frozen in ice. Then the circles and the ovals. The breaks in between them.

I tried to mirror the feeling of each color: How grey would feel like if it moved through me? How white and blue and brown would transmit me their ancestral Knowledge, in human movement form?

Through all this process that only took few minutes, I was intensely focusing on my inner sensations, breathing deeply through each movement or posture without thinking, just feeling my way through.

I felt at one point how I went down through the portal door in the second image and painting, and I had a conversation with the earthy colors, then I came back again at the surface, feeling refreshed and enlightened somehow.

There was less fear, more trust.

I moved like the fascia, when it is numb and frozen, and I realized, there is still aliveness in it, even when it appears to be cold as ice. It still had a voice, and it still had messages and insights to offer.

I felt my way through the alveoli and the zen stones, arranged perfectly as if a Chinese monk would do, and sensed their calmness and strength, teaching me how to find stillness in my fascia and alveoli without needing to numb myself.

In the end, each of these creative explorations offered me powerful positive insights. This always happens when I try to mirror something and feel it in my body. It is as if by accessing others’ way of moving and feeling, I get to receive a new perspective over my own life and issues.

• From the Hayku poem, I learned that numbness is a normal part of life just as winter is a normal part of nature seasons. It also taught me that even though everything feels unalived at the moment, the healing will eventually come, just as spring always comes.

• The paintings showed me one by one the connection between them and my fascia and that the pain holds patterns of healing in it, simply because I am willing to sit with it. The portal in the second painting told me that when the numbness started (related to my autoimmune disease), I was forced to dive deeper into my flesh (somatically) to search for answers and this was almost like a predestined path, so I can become a healer.

• And then, my movement showed me the power of being in the fascia and seeing things from her perspective. It was illuminating to have a sensory conversation with her and feel the lack of fear she has about the possibility of healing. It was as if she knows I will be well. “I don’t know how, I don’t know when, I just know that I will be well” - this was the message that I got.

I hope you enjoyed this sensory exploration and the Hayku.

And if you want to learn more about sensory art and movement, how I process things and my own method, you can read these posts:

• When words are not enough

• I move to think

• 5 unconventional ways I use to release emotions

• There is also a note I posted yesterday about kinetic drawing and sensorimotor activities.

Ice photos by

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As a neurodivergent person with a more developed right brain (related to the unconscious, metaphors, art, sensory and psychic abilities), I see the world differently and I connect to it at a deeper level.

Most people have a logical approach to life, a mental one. Their inner world is lacking emotion and sensations and they are less sensitive to the unseen.

But for people like me, the unseen is everything.

The energy felt underneath someone’s words, the tiniest movements of their body or face which give tremendous clues, the gut sensation that something feels off or just right, the inner knowing that gives you unshakeable trust in something you cannot see yet, the faith in a power greater than anything else, or the premonition that leave you speechless. They are all connected to the unseen world that only few of us can actually witness.

This deeper sensitivity comes with amazing gifts and, with inhuman pain too, that can be felt when we sense the wrongs done in this world, to humans, animals or land.

This striking sensitivity is also related to the ability to see everything through the eyes of an artist, to see beauty in the mundane, to find meaning and blessings behind the struggles. It is a powerful trait.

For me, whenever I cannot find words to express my inner world, I use several ways to help me bring clarity from my right to the left brain through:

• movement

• art

• singing

• speaking gibberish

• creating magical fairytales

• poetry

• nature connection

• divine presence

There are many variations in between all these, like for example moving as if I was a certain color that represents a feeling, creating a sacred song using gibberish language to honor my bones, and so on. The possibilities are endless.

Somehow, whenever I let my creativity to flow by expressing what I feel through a certain medium, the words start to come to the surface and everything makes sense. The immense knowledge of the right brain is able to send the information to the left (logical) side and I can now understand the nonsensical.

This happens when I move, as I explained in my first post I MOVE TO THINK, but also, when I paint.

Sometimes the painting doesn’t have any meaning, especially when I begin, but what really happens is that during the process of moving my brush on the paper, my brain is processing my thoughts.

I don’t know how it does it, I just know that all of the sudden, the shapes on the page start to make sense, and my mind feels clearer.

This is maybe why I cannot paint realistically, copying something from real life. I find it hard to do anything so linear and strategical, where my inner flow is not allowed to follow the energetic thread of feelings and sensations.

I have to move with the colors that feel good in my body, to create shapes that explain my thoughts and immerse myself in an energy field on the paper that gives space for my inner world to be held.

It is an inside out kind of process, not an outside in one (realistic copy).

Upon finishing each painting, an insight comes through, a clarity of thought, or a release. It always amazes me how amazing our brains are, when they have the ability to process things so deeply and beautifully.

Tell me, do you use art or any form of creativity to process your thoughts?

Also, check my RESOURCES page for the book and courses recommendations list I created with lots of artistic ways to help you navigate difficult times, while healing and growing.

And if you didn’t subscribe to my newsletter yet, when you do that you will receive two beautiful free guides in pdf format. “How to manifest your desired feeling at a sensory level” and “How to access your intuition”.

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In the last years, I have been challenged once again by forces outside of my control to find alternative (natural and holistic) ways to heal from a neuromuscular autoimmune disease and a brain injury that happened soon after my birth.

For my entire life, I didn’t know that my brain was built differently. I only knew that I loved to dance and I enjoyed physical activities, while being a competitive athlete as a teenager.

When the autoimmune disease developed after my sensitive nervous system reacted negatively to the anesthesia gas used for a minor surgery, I knew I had to find a natural way to help my brain and muscles recover, because doctors couldn’t.

What I didn’t know then was that like all illnesses, this one appeared in my life to help me restore my cognitive ability to its maximum capacity, from the inside out, with the help of my body, the wisest healer.

Hence, my adventures in playing with the physicality, while being aware to the sensations within, began. It took me several years to connect deeper with this inner realm. I was keen to learn from my body though and I was motivated by the tiniest successes whenever I could sense a shift.

What started as a need for recovery became a deep devotional practice.

Soon, I was noticing how sometimes my thoughts are transforming in seconds, into something positive, mostly insights that were both powerful and supportive.

Then emotions started to move through me as if they were getting out of my body through my skin into the thin air, as if they were never inside me.

In time, something more important happened. I started to feel a deeper inner connection that was unshakeable, strong and linked to my intuition. Whenever I was feeling off or disconnected, coming back to slowly moving my body was reconnecting my mind with my heart, soul and physicality.

Messages would come up to the surface, from within. Visions. An inner knowing felt in my bones or my pelvic area. Premonitions.

It was a difficult up and down journey. I had to learn this process by myself, without mentors or therapists, because I have lost lots of money on doctors and tools that could not help me and I had no more money to spare. I was desperate enough to try anything.

And yet, I recently discovered that others (as you have read in the first paragraph) have the same design as me and they too have to move to understand and process information. It seems that I am not alone in this and I didn’t know this was a normal thing for some of us.

I actually thought I was slutty, for a long time, whenever I wanted to explore movements through my body, because that’s what I was told when I started my quest.

I remember that whenever I was dancing, men would react like they were obsessed and I became afraid to show myself moving in public. Somehow, my body felt sensuous before my mind knew that. For years, my own mother and husband would tell me that I move like a slut and I embarrass them in front of others.

I can totally understand now that seen from the outside by the people who do not have this thought processing design or do not allow others to be who they are, slowly moving your body with awareness especially as a woman, may indeed seem too enticing or vulgar.

But it is not.

When you come inside and you become ONE with the body, you feel alive, satiated, free, supported, spiritually connected to god and planet Earth.

You feel protected and understood, seen and heard, because this is the place (the altar) where you can bring your pain and melt it into a magical wisdom or bliss.

Now, because this awareness so massively placed on inner sensations, thoughts and emotions was so powerful and transformative, I started to name the whole process Sensory Movement and I discovered that I can find it in other activities too, like when I paint, when I am in nature, when I eat, when I walk slowly, and so on.

Everything became a deep explorative path through sensory awareness that was leading me back to my body.

This helped me ground more inside and soothe my sensitive nervous system.

Soon I realized that even though I needed to move to think, not every movement will help me think and reconnect inside, on the contrary.

For example:

• running means that you move fast and you cannot slow down enough to sense the tiniest sensations in the body to process them

• pedaling - the same

• practicing yoga - the postures are meant to be practiced by being still which doesn’t allow the inner sensations to come to the surface as it happens when we move torso, legs and limbs

• practicing qiqong or tai chi - it requires specific movements done in a certain sequence and rhythm which are not surfacing naturally from the inside out

• dancing - when we dance, the music and its rhythm is taking over and the body starts to move according to something that is coming from the outside; the movement does not come from within by following the unique rhythm of your own physicality

This sensory movement that helps us process information is also NOT similar to ecstatic dance, chackra dance or any other form of movement that is usually seen in alternative healing. The only field that I could relate this to is the somatic arts, because they both require deep internal awareness, although somatic therapy is rarely connected to movement.

With all these being said, sensory movement is something that feels natural to your body, comes from within, moves with the inner rhythm and flow, through deep presence and self love, while being wide open to let go and receive. It is a visceral felt connection to the world inside of you, your flesh, fascia and organs. While moving your body, you are stirring up and bringing to the surface the energy of emotions and thought patterns held inside and this is how you release them and gain clarity.

For this reason, whenever I practice it, I do not listen to music, because I have to put my full focus inside to hear my body’s messages. I do it very slowly, as if I am under the water, moving my body by following the currents.

These days, movement is my main tool for releasing, reassurance, support and wisdom. It is the first place I turn to in order to find clarity and solutions.

Tell me, do you think you might be a mover too?

If so, why not giving it a try?

Also, check out my RESOURCES page where you can find several books on somatic healing, movement and sensory processing that I highly recommend.

I’ve also shared this on Medium to help reach more sensitive souls. If you have a profile there, following me helps the algorithm show my work to others.

If you have any questions, please let me know, I would be happy to answer them.

On another note …

This is where I am sharing my latest notes on Substack. Follow me for more tips, tools and movement experiments.