How Stimming Can Save the World

Autistic people are really onto something

We live on a planet with gravity.

Gravity by definition is the force that attracts a body toward the center of the Earth.

It is a downwards force that makes our bodies heavy, weighted.

Maybe sometimes you even experience this as stuck.

According to my favorite Kundalini yoga teacher, Sukmandir Singh Khalsa, living on a planet with gravity makes us all highly potential prey to entropy.

Entropy is a lack of order or predictability; a gradual decline into disorder.

What I take my teacher’s statement to mean is that if we do not work to circulate our energy upwards, or raise our vibration as is a popular phrase these days, then we will become a groggy confused sagging version of ourselves.

When we are groggy, we are disassociated from the natural order of the universe where the soul is leading the show and continuously communicating with us through emotional charge — to guide our evolution in understanding our own freedom.

This explains Sukmandir’s devotion to a physical, mental, spiritual practice that exercises the energy of his system in an upwards direction to counteract the entropy and embrace a lived sense of wellness.

It also explains why the extremely sensitive population of autistic folks are so into “stimming” — a practice of repetitive “self-stimulating” movements or vocalizations.

Both movement and vocalization bringing a vibration that stimulates the person’s system to circulate the emotional charges that the person is both absorbing from their environment and creating from within as a response to ongoing stimulation.

Mind-Body-Soul Connection

As Naoki Higashida, a thirteen-year-old boy with autism writes in his book, The Reason I Jump,

When I’m not moving, it feels as if my soul is detaching from my body, and this makes me so jumpy and scared that I can’t stay where I am.

The lived sense of wellness I see in Sukmandir Singh Khalsa is characterized by ongoing joy or a kind acceptance of the human condition and a lightness of heart that translates into a genuinely jovial nature compassionately accepting of all.

He is very regularly practicing breath and bodywork that engages his body to circulate energy and discharge trauma in the system — trauma being any energy that got stuck somewhere in the body.

He speaks of enlightenment as a razor’s edge of consciousness where we are aware of both the limitations of the material world and the limitless embrace of infinity — where the soul is free and always sure of itself.

It sounds to me that Naoki has a similar grasp on reality in being aware of his soul and his body at the same time.

To not “stim” would be to experience the entropy of ever-present gravity and would be to split from the lightness and infinite motion of the soul. To be aware of this is very uncomfortable, especially when those around you want you to stop flapping or jumping and you struggle to find the words to share how meaningful this movement is.

If only the masses would join in on stimming and experience the relief and satisfaction.

Kundalini yoga and everyday stimming are alike in their invitation to humans to be engaged with this enlightened state of awareness where one is in touch with both the body and the soul.

We have to counteract the entropy in order to be available for this.

We need to apply opposite pressure to the gravity always pulling us downwards in order to feel the freedom of existing centered in the tension of material and soulful reality.

Stimming by definition is self-stimulation behavior.

Stimulation by definition is encouragement of something to make it develop or become more active.

Activation by definition is the action or process of making something active or operative.

Operative, to me, is the opposite of “a gradual decline into disorder”. “Operative” is the opposite of entropy.

So stimming is an action taken to create order within an individual’s experience.

The order is that of the balance between body and soul.

Finite vs. Infinite

Our population has made mega progress in speaking to the mind-body-soul connection in recent decades. Autistics, in my opinion, take the conversation to an elevated level where any avoidance of active engagement with the mind-body-soul connection leads to a shattering of self… a meltdown.

My definition of self, as an autistic person, is the awareness of mind-body-soul connection.

I think, or actually, I dare to say that I know, this is what makes us different.

This is what makes us exemplary of everyday enlightenment and not at all a mental disorder needing to be cured.

A neurotypical, or allistic (non-autistic), person tends to believe that their self is defined by a story of finite details.

This is the idea strongly presented to us by society and the professional psychiatric world — if you cannot identify yourself as a human with a precise stable story. then you are something to fixed.

I disagree while acknowledging that any lack of compassion in the environment of a person experiencing themselves as without a stable story tends to push the individual towards psychosis rather than enlightenment.

I can understand why we as a society have taken to avoiding that. I only wish we were avoiding it in massive amounts of compassion rather than dismissal and efforts to find a “cure”.

Misery Persists

Stimming is a strange thing, or a bother, or even a horror, to the regular world probably because it quietly — nonverbally — communicates the more infinite side of self. This would be uncomfortable for folks clinging to finite stories.

Naoki, in The Reason I Jump, says,

When I’m jumping, it’s as if my feelings are going upward to the sky. Really my urge to be swallowed up by the sky is enough to make my heart quiver. When I’m jumping, I can feel my body parts really well, too — my bounding legs and my clapping hands — and that makes me feel so, so good.

Being in motion actively stimulating your own system allows you to experience — in full visceral awareness — the dynamic reality of emotional charge moving through the body as an equal opposite force to gravity.

You can feel that this activates a person’s energy presence upwards into the infinite realm of the soul (the sky, the cosmos).

Stimming is an all-day everyday activity for autistic people. Any emotional charge, personal or environmental, instigates a need for self-stimulation to activate the body to allow the movement of the charge so it doesn’t get stuck in the body and weigh the person down even more.

Most of us are really just stimming bare-minimum. We try to fit in.

So, from what I can see and sense is there’s still a lot of misery. Misery is akin to trauma — a detachment from the joy of a clear and open system.

When we don’t allow the movement of charge — when we deny or ignore the feeling experience — we suppress charge and store it in our bodies. This contributes to entropy and the average cultural disassociation from mind-body-soul connection.

Stimming is really simple and there is no prescribed way of doing it. It is any movement that opens the body system to allow charge to pass through.

Stimming is really healthy because it counteracts the cultural conditioning or compulsion to suppress emotional charge that creates di-ease and dis-order.

Natural Intelligence

So, you see, autism is not a disorder.

It is an extreme sensitivity to life on Earth that demands ongoing stimming in order to keep energy moving to counteract the disorder of disassociating from mind-body-soul connection.

Counteract disorder.

I wanted to say that one more time. Notice I am not saying cure.

Just two more definitions for you here.

To cure: relieve (a person or animal) of the symptoms of a disease or condition.

To counteract: act against (something) in order to reduce its force or neutralize it.

Sensitivity and innate displays of mind-body-soul connection are not symptoms to be relieved. They are impulses to be intensely respected and actually emulated or emphasized.

We need to stim more.

We want to counteract entropy.

We do not want to live in a gradual decline into disorder aka di association from mind-body-soul connection.

We want to neutralize the ill effects of living with gravity in constant communication with our body being systems.

Save the World

To act against something in order to neutralize it.

Neutral is the word of world peace.

It does not take away anyone’s individuality or expression but it defines a world where people are taking responsibility for their emotional experiences instead of taking it out on each other.

Wow, my system naturally just took a deep sighing breath.

What a relief that would be.

Let us cure our lack of compassion and the symptoms of social disorder that go along with it.

Let us look to the autistic population as leaders of mind-body-soul connection and stim together to neutralize charge in an ongoing way so we can live in harmony together.