Do you have a Highly Resonant Body?
The metaphor of a highly resonant body is one of a finely tuned instrument for sensing the use of power and control in human relationships. Yes, it does mean you are extra sensitive – but not in the way that means your feelings are less valid! It means that you are sensitive to tiny shifts in power dynamics, and that you experience it as physical sensations in your body before your mind can even put words to it.
Here’s an entirely unscientific, completely made-up — and surprisingly insightful — quiz to learn more about your Highly Resonant Body:
- In the same way that a tuning fork can sympathetically resonate, do you start to feel like your body is loudly vibrating and resonating when you are in the presence of power being misused?
- Does justice really matter to you, so much so that you feel sick to your core when you see injustice?
- Can you clearly hear when discord is present, like a tuning fork, even if everyone says they’re playing the same note?
- Are you highly sensitive to where you stand — to signals of success or failure, praise or criticism, belonging or not belonging, stagnation or change, low expectations or high ones, fitting in or feeling outside the norm?
- Have you ever found yourself consumed by the puzzle of why you are seeing certain things happen in your workplace, because they feel off but you can’t explain it yet?
- Do office politics physically and mentally exhaust you?
- Do you downplay what you notice so you don’t seem “difficult” or “dramatic”?
- Do you have great ideas about how to avoid issues that get ignored, and then get asked to urgently fix those same issues when they come up later?
- Does just seeing bad leadership trouble your mind and affect your mood for the day?
- Do you end up taking on extra work because it feels easier than watching something be done poorly?
- Do people tell you to chill out because they just can’t see the risk that is very real to you?
- Do you feel uneasy about how work and money seem to be valued, yet know you still have to participate in the system to survive?
- Do you feel drained by corporate environments, and like you are constantly carrying an awareness of tensions and quiet suffering that others don’t seem to notice, or even recognise, in themselves?
- Have you ever spent hours, days and weeks overthinking a workplace interaction, just trying to put your finger on what exactly shifted because things feel different now?
- Do even small issues in your work feel high-stakes, because you can see how they can impact so many other people or functions?
- Do you find dysfunction unbearable, and wish that you could seem to live with it like your colleagues can?
- Have workplace decisions ever hugely emotionally affected you, even though it’s not aimed at you personally, you can’t help but be upset by it?
- Do you feel responsibility to fix things in the workplace, if not for any other reason than to help quieten your body’s inner noise at something being broken?
- Do you crave finding a person in your workplace who also sees what you see and can discuss the deeper meaning of things with you?
- Does it take you a long time to transition between being in a work mode and any other space in your life, and sometimes work just sticks at the front of your mind?
- Like a tuning fork that is resonating loudly, when you are feeling manipulated, does your internal noise get so loud that you find yourself overwhelmed with big feelings and needing immediate relief from the discomfort?
- Have you stayed in roles far longer than you should have, trying to make sense of what felt wrong?
- Do you feel relief when you’re not at work, but dread returning because you know the “noise” will start in your body again?
- Do you feel like you’re constantly translating what’s really happening for yourself, because you can sense the power dynamics but no one is saying it out loud?
- Do you sometimes wish you could just not care as much as you do, and crave for your body to relax and let go of the tension it seems to be absorbing from your work environment?
If you answered “yes” to many of these questions, you are living and working in a Highly Resonant Body.
You do not have the luxury of ignoring these dissonances. Your Highly Resonant Body insists on processing them. It’s a powerful skill, but it’s also loud and can be very uncomfortable. It means you might find yourself wondering if you’re working in a coprorate cult, or that it’s really hard to talk about work with other people. You will definitely be coping with the fact that your Highly Resonant Body can feel the gap between what is said and what is meant. Between values on posters and behaviours in rooms. Between the story an organisation tells about itself and the lived experience of its people.
Pulang Studio
hello@pulangstudio.com
ABN: 44723562860
Pulang Studio is based in Naarm, Melbourne, and is based on the lands of the Wurundjeri people – we pay our respects to Elders past and present. We recognise their enduring connection to land, waters, culture and community, and honour the wisdom and care with which these have been held for tens of thousands of years. We commit to walking and working in ways that contribute to justice, truth-telling, and respectful relationship.