I wake up. The sun slowly appears over the hills across the Umfelozi river. It's still a little rough. Slowly I get up, but keep the sleeping bag close to me. It's still pretty cold. The night passed quietly. During the 'night-watch' I only heard a hyena whining nearby and the calling roar of a lion far away. I look to the side and see a Baboon about 25 meters away from me, sitting on a rocky point warming up in the sun. Our eyes cross. Good morning, too. We can both be there.
Next to me I hear a deep sigh. It's Zondi, one of our guides. Zondi is Zulu. This is the second time I have been on a trail with him in the Umfelozi wilderness in South Africa. He exudes a wonderful mixture of wisdom, alertness and tranquility. We became good friends. I think back to the first time we went into the wilderness, two days ago. On that border of the wilderness, Zondi asks us to sit in a circle. Leaning on his gun, he takes the floor in his soft, charismatic voice: "the most important thing in the wilderness is RESPECT!”. He continues with a briefing on the rules of the wilderness. Then he leads us in a silent prayer to his ancestors to ask them to take care of our safety.
“Good morning, my friend, how are you?” “I feel pretty good, but I have a bit of a cold” is zijn antwoord en hij trekt z’n wollen muts wat verder over zijn hoofd. I look at him and see in his eyes that complete unity with the now and nature. “Zondi, as we walk silently together in a line through the bush, I was wondering which senses are most important to you. In what order would you rank your senses?"As I ask the question, a sequence goes through my head that I think he will probably answer: see, hear, smell, feel. After all, we always walk in silence to catch as much as possible so that we can go our way with respect for the comfort zones of our fellow animals.
Zondi was even stil. “You know Boy, first comes intuition, I am constantly aware what my body wants to tell me, second comes smelling, then comes hearing and last seeing. We walk often in thick bush, then seeing does not work that much”.
In our Western world, we are only now aware that body signals (interoception) give us information of vital importance. Interoception is the brain's representation of all the sensations of our internal organs and tissues, the hormones in our blood and our immune system. Interoception is the origin of feeling.
We are only now discovering the unexpected and frankly amazing influence that interoception has on our thoughts, decisions and actions every day. Our Zulu friends have been through that for centuries and live by it. But we tend to dismiss it as something non-rational, so, we say, it doesn't exist.
Let's listen more to Zondi and to our internal nature.
Boy Van Droffelaar, PhD
