Discovering Our Yeses and Nose

..more thoughts on presence and navigation

Watercolor and photo Cliff Scholz

So, for the last month or so, I’ve been focusing intently on the tip of my nose at intervals throughout my days. Now if you’re imagining that I must be standing in front of a mirror, that’s not what I do. I’m putting awareness and attention on the tip of my nose by feeling from the inside, especially when I breathe in. The effect is wonderful. And the practice keeps yielding surprising new results the more I keep at it.

Now before we go on, the distinction between looking at an image of your nose in the mirror versus feeling for the tip of your nose from the inside probably needs a bit more explanation. There’s a habit among humans — or at least humans in this culture — of making a symbol of things, even of representing broad swaths of our world symbolically, labeling everything and living in a world of abstract concepts and preconceived notions. This habit is partly what feeling for the tip of your nose from the inside instead of looking in the mirror is intended to bypass.

In her bestselling book from 1979, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, author Betty Edwards suggests art students draw a picture of a chair from an inverted photograph of a chair for precisely this reason. She found her students produced more lifelike renderings of a chair when the tendency of the mind to symbolize rather than to see is short-circuited. Presented with an inverted photograph of a chair, there is less of a tendency for the brain to symbolize it.

So the point here is actually a pretty big one: Do we want to experience our living bodies from the inside or must we symbolize the body and keep living in an abstraction? For that matter, do we want to relate to our lovers or to our representations of our lovers? Are we seeing a chickadee, a tree, a sewer grate, a telephone pole or a neighborhood, or instead mere ideas of these things, with the things themselves barely visible under their labels? Some people seem to assume that all we can really relate with are representations of the things and people of our world. There’s an idea out there that we never know the thing itself. My experience is that it’s not nearly so black and white, and that it is certainly possible to move toward a less abstracted, more immediate way of living and relating, and that doing so opens the door to reconnect with the revitalizing powers of mystery and discovery.

Babies wonder at their fingers and toes. New moms marvel at their babies’ fingers and toes. There’s no reason, really, that ever needs to stop. We still have toes. And the people we love are as amazing and mysterious as ever.

So, all that said, one might well ask, “Why the tip of the nose?” Well, I have a response to that, which I will briefly outline in a minute. But the best thing is probably to try it for yourself. Take a moment right now if you like and feel for the tip of your nose and notice what happens. Maybe close your eyes for second or two if that helps.

What I observe is that the more I do this practice, the more it seems the tip of my nose becomes sensitized, vibrating. This in turn seems to affect my breathing, as though the tip of the nose sends a message to the other parts carrying air into my body.

This awareness came with time. But, have you ever seen newborn kittens? Puppies? It’s all about the nose. This isn’t some fringe idea, this is a fundamental biological thing. In fact even as adults these animals never stop being about their noses. Especially when they’re little it’s all about nuzzling.

I’ve heard it called the “rooting reflex” when you touch a baby’s cheek and the baby turns toward that sensation. But what’s turning is the face, and if you watch, the baby’s nose helps guide the baby’s mouth. Among grownup lovers, of course, there’s a recapitulation of these early behaviors with kissing and nuzzling. Again, it’s a kind of navigation, basically. And of course it’s enjoyable when someone you’re navigating toward is navigating toward you at the same time. That’s probably why a couple’s first kiss is so important. It implies coordination.

But there’s something pretty amazing about the nose, even just on its own. I feel I’m navigating toward something with each passing breath, as long as my focus is on the tip of my nose. It takes me somewhere. Maybe I’m still rooting. Maybe what I’m rooting for now is so big I’m always in the midst of it and I can find it most anywhere. Maybe it’s something else, deeper than that. I don’t know. I’m still exploring.

One thing that put a lot of this in perspective for me was seeing a reflexology chart of the human face and noticing that the tip of the nose is associated with the heart. Personally I’ve observed that when people’s noses enlarge, when the tip swells and turns red, if veins get prominent, even purplish — yeah, that can be a sign of heart disease. Western medicine wants to hook a person up to a machine for a better diagnosis and that’s fine, but the initial diagnosis can be as plain as the nose on someone’s face. Interestingly, after bypass surgery I have seen a purple nose look healthy again.

When I was a child I was taught how to give “eskimo kisses” — rubbing noses. Today as I feel into how the tip of the nose is connected with the heart, this puts that fun childhood memory in a different light. It’s actually kind of a big deal to share that with someone.

Last holiday season I also started thinking there may be larger significances to the story of Rudolph, the mythic reindeer whose nose we hear so much about every Christmas, how it shines and could even be said to glow. No, I don’t think that means there was anything wrong with Rudolph’s heart. On the contrary, as the story unfolds it turns out that Rudolph is really connected with his nose as an organ of navigation. That’s what he discovers. His nose turns out to be capable of lighting the way, and that’s especially helpful under adverse conditions, like, for example a foggy evening.

When we place awareness or attention on the tips of our noses, we may just start to feel that same glow, that spreading radiance.

So I offer this in the spirit of, hey, just a thought, we might want to keep all this in mind if ever we find ourselves wondering how to navigate, particularly under adverse conditions. Follow your nose, follow your heart. Might amount to the same thing. And so in this head-centered culture, it might be easier to connect with the nose than with the heart itself directly — who knows?