Chapter 4

This approach, described below, leads to lasting neural change. Follow your desire, pleasures, and joy. Allow these desired sensations to lead you in the direction of your healing; they are your inner GPS system, guiding you through the process—the “how”—so you can feel normal again. When the body feels at ease and a sense of joy, its neurons fire with wide reach and improved capacity.

Write a list of your desires, pleasures, and joys each day. Notice them. Allow yourself to follow these desires and to experience more joy each day. Notice how it feels when you choose to do more things that bring you joy. Notice if you are not yet ready to feel pleasure or if you are still in combat with your body sounds. Take your body sounds with you as you do things that bring you joy. Don’t wait for your body sounds to disappear before you let your joy, pleasures, or desire back in! Welcome the feeling of pleasure back into your body and practice feeling into it.

1. Identify your desired sensation.
2. Cultivate it anyway you can.
3. Locate the sensation in your body and describe the feeling in detail. Be creative! There is no right or wrong way to describe how a particular sensation feels to you.
4. Be grateful for the process you just took yourself through. Take any opportunity you can to be grateful for your body, yourself, your choices, and your sensations!

Here is an example of how one might approach the above activity of locating a sensation:

1. I want to feel the sensations of being loved and being loving in my body.
2. I know that every time I think about my childhood pet dog, Kichi, I feel loved and deeply loving. (Equally, when that dog died in my arms, I experienced love’s companions, sorrow and loss. All feelings are safe and welcome in this exercise!)
3. When I allow myself to remember cuddling and playing with Kichi, I feel my heart open and my body softly relax. I feel this sensation mostly in my chest. It feels open and gentle. I would describe this feeling as a bright pink hot air balloon rising slowly and revealing a tremendous view through the clouds. To me, right now, that is how it feels in my body when I am feeling loved and loving sensations. (On any other day, this sensation may change, and that is okay.)
4. Thank you, Kichi, for still providing me so much joy even though you left my life twenty-five years ago. What a gift you continue to be to me. I am grateful for my capacity to connect to sensations of love any time I choose by remembering moments that have deeply touched me.

The more you practice this process, the quicker and easier it can become for you to fire your desired neural networks. Get creative, experiment, and enjoy feeling whatever it is that you cultivate in your body!

(Please note that despite this chapter being a discussion of tinnitus, the Home Practice Exercises are relevant for everyone.)