The Tuning Fork of Flesh

A grin splits my face before my eyes open.

The trees are still, but I can hear them clapping.

The clouds aren’t here to shroud, but hug and hold.

A gleeful laugh slips free as the sun splits the horizon.

———

Do you know just how powerful a vessel our bodies are?

Mere lumps of flesh, they are not.

We live inside an instrument. 

Which for some, myself included, is literal.

But for everyone, our bodies are tuning forks for reality.

Everything we experience—joy, grief, love, fear, beauty, rage, awe—passes through the body as sensation. Our capacity to hold that sensation determines how much of life we can actually live. Our nervous systems are a harp strung from sinew and skin.

Harps don’t come tuned straight outta the box.

———

Espresso calls to me as the world wakes up.

Not the shrill call of need, but the steady thrum of ancient ritual.

My hands gather the scale, beans, portafilter, tamp, chalice, tiny golden spoon.

All the while, I feel the ever-intensifying charge coursing through me—an intoxicating, fizzy, honey-like blend of voltage, flame, and deep ocean current.

I’ve never felt anything like this before.

And this is home now.

———

Every experience you have—good or bad, blissful or brutal—passes through the body.

Your nervous system translates everything into sensation.

That’s biology, not spiritual mumbo-jumbo. Your brain and body are in constant conversation via the vagus nerve, hormones, neurotransmitters, and subtle electrical currents. When you feel joy, grief, fear, excitement, or awe, you’re experiencing real shifts in body chemistry, breath, heart rate, muscle tone, and voltage.

So when I say “the body is a tuning fork for reality,” I mean:

Your body is the instrument that receives, amplifies, and interprets the frequencies of your lived experience.

———

I hum along to the grinder’s tune, not a pretty sound. I smile at the ugliness.

I lean on the tamp, forming loose grounds into a compressed puck.

Water in, espresso out. I pause, I breathe, I feel…

This current is so alive, so charged.

Yet I’m not overwhelmed.

I’m dancing. I’m singing.

I’m steady.

———

The more regulated and attuned your nervous system, the more clearly you can “hear” the world, see truth, sense nuance, feel connection, recognize opportunity.

The more dysregulated or numb your system is, the more distorted the signal becomes. Which is when life feels chaotic, confusing, or dull, even if nothing outside you has actually changed.

This is why embodiment practices like breathwork, yoga, walking, cold exposure, or dance are so helpful. They’re not random acts of self-care. They tune your instrument. 

(Embodiment practices aren’t limited to the above. You have many options.)

All refine your ability to hold different sensations without collapsing or numbing.

When your body is attuned, trained, you can handle more voltage. Whether that’s pleasure, love, creative fire, challenge, or pain, without short-circuiting, without frying.

Speaking practically, this means you can think more clearly, recover faster from stress, feel and move through emotions instead of being ruled by them, stay open in love instead of shutting down, and become more sensitive without becoming fragile.

The better you tend your instrument, the better your life can play through you.

———

Tiny cup filled with liquid gold, I step outside.

The crisp mid-fall air is sharp on my skin.

The ground is firm beneath my feet.

Inhale... exhale. Inhale… exhale.

“Qué canción bellísima,” I whisper to the world.

(What a beautiful song.)

I smirk at the heavens before heading inside.

With love from the forest,

~ Alexander