Snake Shivers; Embodied Resonance
Snake Shivers
Describing the sensation
“Here comes the tingle…” I exclaim to the women in my webinar. “We must be on to something…”
‘The tingle’ is a spontaneous ‘shiver’ that lights up different areas in my body. I can’t make it happen any more than I could force a delicious orgasm. Sometimes it starts on my thighs, my lower back or my arms, slowly spreading or gently subsiding. Somewhat prickly but never unpleasant, the shiver can last for a few seconds or longer than a minute.
I’ve been studying this phenomenon for months, trying to understand it by noticing what was happening when it occurred. I tracked the sensation with respect and curiosity, aware that it seemed to happen during intimate moments of heightened resonance. With a pure and intense ‘rightness,’ every shiver seemed to highlight something significant. Was it alerting me to pay attention to what happening in that precise moment. “What are you doing?” I wondered, “What am I to notice and learn as you shimmy through my body?”
Somewhat erotic, the shiver usually enters with a soft rush, but it is not an overtly sexual current. Creeping up in my flesh, its wild unbidden nature is almost snake-like, creating a slight startle each time. What stimulates this remarkable sensation? When does it occur, and with whom? And when does not happen, why not?
Tracking Excitement
Exciere, the Latin origin for ‘excite’: to call out or draw forth.
I have lived most of my life drawn to people and ideas that excited me. Even as a young child, I was thrilled when something inside me was touched and called forth. Yearning for a clearer sense of my purpose and potential, I reached, over and over again, to connect with the shimmering possibilities just beyond my everyday reality. Now, at the ripe age of seventy-two, the shimmering is no longer ‘out there.’ It’s resonating excitement now rises within me, and I really want to understand what this means.
Resonance and Synchronous Agreement are Key
I began my research with the premise that my snake-shivers were a form of pure aliveness, a resonating response to something that both excited my body and focused my attention. Though I’ve noticed that they tend to happen when I’m talking with a close friend or a group of highly attuned people, they can also arise when I’m reading a fascinating article or listening to something that literally rings my chimes.
Snake shivers tend not to manifest when the conversation is casual or simply social. Even if the dialogue is lively and rich with ideas, a whole evening with a close friend may not induce even the slightest shiver. “Why not?” I wondered afterwards. “Was I somewhat guarded and only partially engaged, or was my friend subtly defended? Were we exchanging ideas but not deeply in sync with each other?” The absence of the shiver was as intriguing and perplexing as its unpredictable presence.
Pondering this now, with my coffee resting on the djembe beside me, I feel a slight tingle up my right thigh and along my arm — the faint hue of a shiver indicating I’m onto something. Did my question about being ‘guarded’ initiate this gentle shiver? However, I can never coax the tingle to ‘speak up’ on demand.
I’m sure that resonance is an integral part of this phenomenon. Resonance occurs when the frequency of an externally applied periodic force on a body is equal to its natural frequency; then the body begins to vibrate with an increased amplitude. Is my vibrating tingle a sign of increased amplitude? If so, what was the ‘force’ that equaled and excited this ‘natural’ frequency in my body? As a musician, sometimes when I was performing the piano, there were exquisite moments when the audience and I were utterly in sync and these fleeting moments of visceral agreement made all the hours of practicing worth the effort.
Convenire, the Latin origin for agreement: to come together, to be in accord. Agreement, like resonance, must also be fundamental to the shiver phenomenon.
“The radiance of compassionate ecstasy is what we are hungry for…” Rick Jarow
In Grade 12, I asked my English teacher if I could skip all the classes that year and read D.H. Lawrence’s writings instead. Promising to write a final essay in June, my teacher agreed. Looking back, I’m still amazed at my audacity!
Now I have a better understanding about why I was so drawn to Lawrence’s work. Some of my attraction to his erotic writings was simply due to overactive hormones, and Walt Whitman’s famous line, “I sing the body electric…” also rang as deep truth in my hungry, young psyche. But it wasn’t just about hormones…
When I was twelve years old, one particular experience affected me deeply. My father was an elder in the United Church, and he regularly participated in an intimate men’s study group. One day, he took me aside and shared what had happened at their last gathering. “We all felt it, right there in the room — the presence of the Holy Ghost!” Aflame with numinous energy, the intensity of his passion infected me and planted a seed.
After that, I became a very disembodied teenager, with a huge appetite for the liminal realms simmering just beyond my ordinary life. In my dreams, I was either soaring over landscapes on small flying carpets or lying, terrified and frozen, as dozens of snakes hung by their tails over my bed. Now I realize that I was passionately drawn, far too early, to the pure red fire of aliveness.
Unfortunately, that desire was not embodied in a healthy, creative way until much later, in my late forties. Instead, I projected this flame of desire onto men through sexuality. Yearning for purpose-filled connection, I poured my life-blood into a spiritual group for twenty years. With little critical thinking, I entertained many esoteric ideas, partly for mental stimulation but also for some reassuring affirmation about my fiery desires. Having wandered far off the beaten path, I was desperately seeking a sense of purpose and fulfillment. As a mirror to my own desperate search, when the movie “Desperately Seeking Susan” came out in 1985, I watched with a fatal mixture of fascination and horror.
Ecstatic States of Consciousness
In his book You are the Placebo, Joe Dispenza describes how ecstatic states can create ‘brain orgasms.’ Observing the brain waves of a woman as she meditated, Dispenza noticed a dramatic increase of amplitude throughout all the areas of her brain, indicating a very heightened state. Without making anything happen, the coherently synchronized patterns of energy in her brain portrayed the ecstasy she felt, manifesting as orgasmic-like waves. Later she described how full and open her heart felt, and with this, her profound love for all things.
A long, flowing shiver
Recently, I shivered for almost half an hour. My tech assistant, Laura, and I were discussing an application issue related to the webinars we were hosting. The company had changed its policies and were now hiding our group entries after ninety days. We would be charged for what had previously been freely available. However, instead of reacting with outrage, we paused to listen for guidance.
This was when I felt the first tingle. I asked Laura if she felt anything. “Yes,” she said, “in my ankles and up my shins…” exactly where I felt it too! Sensing our mutual shivers were full of wise and timely information, we agreed to track the sensations while discerning a solution for the situation.
“We don’t need to hang on to the information,” I gradually realized, and the tingle felt even stronger. “We can let go and trust that we have what we need now. Actually, ‘hiding’ our previous work makes space for something new to arise. After all, our collective focus is all about letting go while opening to what is seeking to emerge!”
The resonance of this shared phenomenon left both of us feeling very grounded and guided. In the past, I might have used muscle-testing (a dowsing technique) for yes/no responses. While this might have given us a similar answer, ‘riding the shiver’s flow’ gave us far richer and more nuanced insights.
The Flow State, Cultivating Synchrony
Shortly after our conversation, I heard a CBC radio call-in show discussing flow states. The host asked, “What does it feel like to be in the flow?’” a question that felt weirdly resonant with my discussion with Laura!
The callers’ experiences were fascinating. Each person spoke about how it felt to be completely in the present moment and aware of their bodies’ sensations. One woman, suffering with Parkinson’s disease, had been a mime. By employing a consciously fluid connection with her body over many months, she shocked her doctor when she casually strolled into his office one day without her cane. Another woman shared her experience of being in a blissful state whenever she swam in open water by letting her strokes come into sync with the rhythms and ‘mood’ of the water. An artist spoke about how she dances with the paint on the canvas, and a movement teacher reported that dance, like most forms of movement, can initiate a flow-state.
How do flow-states relate to snake shivers? When I feel the shiver, I slow down and pay attention. Even a slight rhythmic adjustment, such as pausing to listen, can alter everything. In a conscious pause, a different pathway may open to a more mysterious and serpentine possibility, instead of the predictable, paved road. And it is on the flowing serpentine path that the shiver becomes a silent guide, a candle in the dark.
Cultivating our Light Bodies
According to energy-workers, our human energy field is made up of several layers: the etheric body, mental body, astral body and emotional body, all of which compromise the fullness of our light-body. The MerKaBa, a star-shaped tetrahedron, derives its name from the Egyptian Mer (light) Ka (soul) Ba (body). Kirlian photography can capture images of these layered energies while gifted healers and shamans routinely work within our bio-electric fields.
On the cusp of 2000, I intuitively listened for what was important to be aware of and embody in this new millennium. Hearing three words, I made flower essence combinations for each one. Articulation helps us fully live, not just speak, our truth. Relationship supports our conscious connection with all creation, not just our fellow human beings, while the Light Body essence stimulates a ‘quickening’ within our flesh, an antidote to giving away our power. “The essence supports the rhythmic pulsations of light-energy through our body, opening us to our full potential and helping us experience deep-rooted presence with freedom and spaciousness.”
While journaling for this article, I let my thoughts flow free at one point and this came: What you searched for in the past now comes not only to you, but also through you, as pure aliveness. It carries living wisdom, freely offered in the moment, truth that is alive, not old and dusty, speaking directly through your flesh, beneath the metal helmet of your mind. This wisdom is both ancient and of the future, converging in the moment — this moment.
An Ending, and perhaps an Opening…
I’m aware that this article raises more questions than answers, and I’m fine with that because good questions can open doors, challenge assumptions, and invite even better questions. I’ve been asking myself whether the shiver holds some essential keys to the shift in consciousness we are needing make at this pivotal time.
For example, is the synchronicity of a momentary shiver directly me to the underlying harmony operating deep in the unconscious? Perhaps the shiver is a form of ‘agreement’ with this reality, one that we have lost conscious awareness of as a way to synergistically coordinate with Life. Does the shiver point to how we might be viscerally entangled with this realm, in ways we scarcely recognize?
Speculating even further, is the snake-shiver implicated in a totally new energy, an energy some might call the ‘new earth’? Clearly, it is a phenomenon that cannot be captured or controlled by our minds; it can only be welcomed with respect, to be slowly integrated within our wise earth-bodies. Perhaps this is one of the ways Gaia’s voice is ringing, like a vibrating bell, right within our flesh and bones.