Lately I have been obsessed with the notion of a gut feeling.  What exactly is it, what does it convey to us, is it even a valid feeling?  It turns out that I am not the only one obsessed with the notion of gut feelings, and that listening to your gut is literally equal to listening to your brain.  According to the Polyvagal theory, the gut is our second brain.  How many stories have we heard of people who said they had a gut feeling about a disaster just before it happened, or those who just missed the buss because they had a feeling that it was not safe to hurry, and there was an accident?  We tend to dismiss or not pay attention to our bodily feelings, even though for generations healers in ancient cultures depended on bodily signs.  In the words of Dr. Steven Porges: “Through decades of research, Polyvagal Theory has been cited in thousands of publications across disciplines. Polyvagal Theory explains how the brain and body have adapted over a long period of time. The vagus nerve itself has changed, in location and function, to serve these two roles alongside the sympathetic system, which is commonly known as the “fight or flight” response. Together, these poly (many) roles of the vagus nerve help us survive and, even better, to thrive in the modern world.”

I am not intending to delve into Polyvagal theory, but only to advocate for understanding how our body and feelings within it are integrated with our emotional states.  For any of you who is interested, and is willing to take some time, listen to Steven Porges talking about anxiety and safety.  But let’s go back to our gut feelings.  In order to actually be able to listen to what those feelings are intended to tell us, we need to develop interoception. That is the skill of being able to look into ourselves in order to truly see and hear.  As sometimes happens, the serendipity principle works – I just received the latest communication from my friend and colleague, Rebecca A Wilkinson titled “Trusting Your Gut – Tools for Developing Interoception.”  Rebecca is an art therapist like myself and naturally, the tools she is suggesting involve drawing.  If you are able to concentrate on your body and your feelings inside it (which is Interoception), you can use a pre-drawn simple body image and place into it your vision of your gut feelings. Looking at the results, you may gain understanding of what it is meant to tell you.

Rebecca also refers to an interesting book written by Saga Briggs, author of “How to Change Your Body.”  That book talks about challenges many of us face connecting to our “guts” and our bodies – either because we don’t recognize or acknowledge the importance of physical cues or because we’re inundated with so many sensations that we become overwhelmed and can’t interpret their significance.  It is interesting that “gut feeling” usually refers to negative occurrences; I have not found any connected to happy outcomes.  Happiness is mostly connected to feelings of “Jumping from Joy,” using the whole body.  But “butterflies in my stomach” signals feeling excited or nervous about something, especially an important event or a date.  How about a broken heart?  Knowing your internal organs is a must, not only to express your feelings but also to express discomfort or pain.

Other body parts are used as idioms in English, like “keep your chin up” – stay cheerful & optimistic even when there are problems, or something bad happens.  Relax, “let your hair down” is a useful metaphor, and is even used literally by shaking your head with a client or a group as an exercise for relaxation.  What about “sticking your neck out,” trying to be helpful in complex situations?  Is it the same as “giving someone a hand?”  Obviously it does not mean taking your hand off and presenting it to someone else as a gesture of help.  But when you say “it cost an arm and a leg” you express the expense of an item as cutting a part of your body off.  When I tell you to “bite your tongue” I usually mean you should shut up; I’m not encouraging you to hurt yourself.  And when you tell me you are “tearing your hair out” you may be telling me simply how frustrated you are.  So I tell you to “lend me your ear,” and you actually take off your earphones and let me hear the music you were listening to while I babbled away, and I tell you “break a leg.”

All this is simple if the people we encounter are English-speakers, from a culture that recognizes these idioms.  But what happens if we meet or treat people from other cultures, speakers of other languages – do they have the same idioms in their language?  Some of the idioms will make absolutely no sense when we try to translate them into another language.  I remember once I tried to say to a Hebrew speaker, “I have a gut feeling” and she thought I had to empty my bowels.  And you would never say in Hebrew that something cost an arm and a leg, but you would use the idiom “it cost a large capital.” Or I never could translate the Hungarian idiom “Nincs semmi baja, csak a nyaka veres;” please excuse the Hungarian grammar mistakes – I do not have a Hungarian keyboard, nor have I seen it written; I just heard it spoken by my parents.  It means to convey irony about someone’s dire condition.  It literally translates to “He/she has no problems, only her neck is bleeding.”  I am sure there are people from many other languages and cultures for whom the expressions we use would not make any sense, and would even be insulted if we used them either in English which they feel they understand but do not connect to the meaning of the idiom, let alone when we try to translate it into their own language and culture.

Lately I had a feeling that everything was “going over my head” at a meeting discussing language used in Hebrew inside the LGBTQ community when talking about various members and ways of communication.  It was a fascinating lesson in how we need to be aware not only about the general spoken language, but also about language used by sub-cultures. I tried to see if there is a similar language in English, and found that indeed there is a set of names and idioms which is somewhat similar but different even in English in the US, England and Australia, and even in different ethnic populations in the same country.  It opened a whole new area of sensitivity for me to learn about, and taught me to be cautious to check what people mean with their words.  It turns out visual representations are more universal but even so, it is best to check before trying to interpret.   We look at things through our own glasses.  Perhaps we should have different      ones to chose from.