Your Inner Ocean

Our body chemistry changes, moment by moment. We feel this indirectly as energy levels rise and fall, fullness gives way to hunger, and arousal alternates with sleepiness. Many of these internal shifts are due to hormones.

The pituitary gland, connected directly to the hypothalamus in the brain, drives many of the body’s other glands, so it plays a big part in this hormonal drama. It is a primary means by which the nervous system influences somatic states. At the same time, hormones flow back into the brain, allowing the body’s responses to affect our minds.

Thus, as hormonal profiles change, so does inner experience. As a striking example, consider how thoughts and feelings around sexuality and relationships become acute during adolescence. While young children are curious about sex, teenagers feel driven by it. While in grade school heterosexual kids ignore or mock the opposite gender, in high school they have trouble thinking of anything else. Hormones wield power!

Hormones operate as a bidirectional communication system. Since they are carried by blood, which has some similarity to sea water, we can imagine an ocean that flows between brain tissue on one shore and the rest of the body on the other. The hormones enable the two continents to converse in a fluid, organic way. It’s as if each coast drinks wine from the opposite shore.

Hormonal fluctuations are especially striking during sexual maturation, but they influence our experience throughout life. The sleepiness we feel at end of day, the edginess that floods us while rushing to work, and the warmth that arises as we spend time with loved ones all emerge, to an extent, from the body’s chemical ocean.

Take a moment, here and now, to sense your own inner state. Detect the qualities swimming in your sea of life. Are you anticipating your next meal? Your stomach may be secreting grehlin, a hormone that leads to sensations of hunger. Are you feeling alert and energetic? Your thyroid gland may be at work. Do you feel as if tension has been mounting for hours? There’s a good chance your pituitary has been stimulating your adrenal glands to secrete stress hormones.

You might try closing your eyes while resting in a comfortable position. Imagine your body suspended in warm tropical waters, where currents are washing you with all the chemicals that influence your inner state. As if you are a delicate sea creature, imagine how slight changes in the ocean affect you in subtle ways. Feel the surges of energy, agitation, sleepiness, hunger, or lust, as they flow around you. Appreciate how your body reacts to hormonal eddies that are sometimes ripples and other times storms. Offer compassion to your hardworking organism, responsive to each shift in life and chemistry, whether major sea change or daily ebb and flow. Before returning to your day, take a moment to honor your body’s inner ocean.