Skin in the Game
Discover greater depth of awareness by attending to the sensations on the surface.
Phenomenal Awareness is a non-dogmatic approach to mindfulness that emphasizes developing sensory awareness of ordinary phenomena rather than seeking calm on demand or profound psychological epiphanies.
With consistent practice, multisensory attention exercises and habits help transform ordinary moments into phenomenal ones by equipping you to savor pleasant experiences more fully while reducing the impact of unpleasant ones.
Developing mindful awareness seems like a mental exercise, but it’s actually about tuning into your senses. Many smart people miss this.
Two recent podcast conversations got me thinking about a related, common problem. Stephen Batchelor was a guest on the Ezra Klein Show, and Michael Uebel appeared on the New Books Network. I highly recommend both of them because they stress the importance of clarifying mystical concepts to extract their practical applications for modern daily life.
Both are worth listening to because they illustrate the importance of clarifying mystical concepts to extract practical applications you can actually use.
These are smart people who’ve spent years researching and meditating. They’ve gathered wisdom from different traditions and built elaborate vocabularies to describe experiences that are really hard to put into words.
But they kept dancing around something crucial that rarely gets talked about in mindfulness circles. I learned it from Shinzen Young, and clearing up this confusion has become my main focus as a teacher.
Philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers all tell us to accept what we can’t control. But then we get stuck debating what acceptance actually means. Is it indifference? Resignation? Giving up? Here’s the thing: Trying to accept situations is a mental shift. And it’s nearly impossible when you’re constantly seeing news and opinions that demand the opposite of acceptance.
I believe contemplatives throughout history found a different way through—one that has nothing to do with thinking or inaction. Instead of trying to accept situations, they learned to relate to sensations with less resistance. The shift is more bodily than mental, more poetic than intellectual, and more phenomenal than narrative.
So when you’re facing something difficult—personal or societal—try this: instead of trying to accept the situation, see what happens when you accept the sensations that come with it.
To do this, you need clear definitions of what sensation, situation, and acceptance actually mean. And remember: there will always be another situation demanding your attention. They never stop coming.
By sensations, I mean what you experience through your senses—how you talk to yourself internally, the mental images that pop up, and the emotional tone that colors everything.
Sights, sounds, smells, flavors, textures
Verbal and visual thinking
Perceptions that convey emotional feelings
By situations, I mean the story implied by the scene we’re living through or imagining.
Stuck in traffic
Breaking news
Work meetings, family meals, running errands
By accepting sensations, I mean dropping the emphasis on the storyline and briefly taking in one or more sensory components for a few seconds without trying to change or get rid of them.
situation: stuck in traffic; sensations: sights, sounds, physical and emotional body sensations
situation: breaking news story; sensations: mental images, verbal thoughts, physical and emotional body sensations
situations: work meetings, family meals, running errands; sensations: sights, sounds, mental images, verbal thoughts, physical and emotional body sensations
I’m talking about learning to relate to sensations and perceptions, not figuring out what they mean. This is tricky because we’re terrible at noticing sensory details without immediately diving into their situational significance. That’s why it takes so much practice.
Think about what it means to have skin in the game when it comes to physical exercise. You stop reading about workout routines and just pick one. You put down the fitness magazine, do your bicep curls, work through the other exercises on your list, and come back to the gym two or three more times before the week is over. Eventually, you realize that no amount of reading or talking will ever replace actually challenging your muscles.
You don’t need a degree in exercise physiology to work out. If reading and talking help you understand techniques and get motivated, great. If they become a way to avoid actually doing the work? Not so great.
It’s exactly the same with developing phenomenal awareness. Read and discuss enough to get curious, then go explore the sensations and perceptions unfolding in your own body and life.
Practice both: navigating situations and relating to sensations. There’s incredible freedom in moving between these two modes. Not because it makes difficult situations disappear, but because you start living them differently. Not only with your mind, but with your eyes, ears, and your whole body.
Exercise
This exercise sharpens sensory clarity and strengthens equanimity by exploring diverse skin sensations without labeling them as good or bad.
Circumstances for learning this attention exercise
Stretching after a workout
Warming up inside after a brisk walk in the chilly outdoors
Going to bed or navigating alertness in the middle of the night
