Chapter 7: Warriors Returning to our Senses
One of the most effective ways to move forward from tough experiences—and the post-traumatic stress that can come with them—is by learning how our body reacted in those moments. We can do this by reconnecting with our senses: what we heard, saw, touched, tasted, smelled, and felt inside.
In the writing we're about to do, we're going to piece together what our senses remember from our past experiences. This is away to more fully process those experiences and get a better understanding of what our body actually went through. It helps our brain to literally "make sense" of our time in Service.
Experiencing the world through our senses comes naturally to us. As kids, we lived each day almost entirely this way. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors did the same. Even though most of us will never have to live like hunter-gatherers, we all trained to be warriors. And what is a warrior but a hunter trained to take down humans?
This is why storytelling is a crucial skill for the modern warrior to develop. The best hunter-gatherers and early warriors were also the most skilled storytellers. And the best storytellers, had the highest survival rates.
Why? Because the best storytellers could cooperate, pass down knowledge, and share information that existed outside of the present moment, in ways that no other living thing was capable of. Their sons and daughters continued perfecting that ability to share information through story over tens-of-thousands of years.
Over time, the ability to tell stories became a fundamental part of how to survive and thrive as a hunter-gatherer, and a warrior.
We are the children of that long line of hunters—gatherers—warriors—storytellers.
Only today, many of us live our lives more like farmers, and farmers look at the world differently. When we shifted as a species from hunting and gathering to farming, we began to focus more on the future—next season's crops, not today’s kill.
Agricultural revolutions blessed us with food abundance, but also took us away from having to rely on our senses during the day to have a full belly at night. The need to constantly return to our senses in the present moment, as a warrior or hunter-gatherer, became less important as a farmer.
Our senses, which once kept us alive, became less needed in daily life. This re-wired how our brains related to the world. Over time, we left the sensory richness of the present moment behind, and lost some of the close connection we had to our bodies and the world around us.
As hunter-gatherers, life demanded that we stay present, tuned into our senses, and fully engaged with the environment around us:
• What tracks am I reading? Disturbed branches? Empty berry bushes? Piles of droppings?
• What sounds do I hear? Leaves rustling? Birds squawking and alerting me to the movements of larger animals?
• What do I smell? Ripe fruit? Animal hide? Is my own scent being carried downwind?
The life of a hunter-gatherer is alive, with sensory information as the primary tool for staying alive. All focus reduced to now.
For many of us who experienced intense moments during the military, we know what it’s like to be consumed by a moment—where nothing exists except the now. No time to think. Time freezes, and we don’t fully process what our body is going through.
Trauma does this. It floods our brain with information overload. Traumatic events, by definition, overwhelm our ability to process sensory information. It's too much, too fast, or both.
Our nervous system is designed to handle this overload later—biologically and socially. We process it physically by shaking it off, shifting our breathing, and completing other actions that signal the threat is over. Socially, we process it by connecting with others, sharing stories, and touch, that deepen community bonds.
But today, many of our stories are left untold. Our intense experiences usually don’t get shared because we lack community which eagerly asks for our stories, and knows how to receive them.
Even when we do share, it's often not the full story—we leave out the details of what our body experienced.
Why?
Because we’re out of practice at describing how things feel physically. Modern warriors are no longer trained to use sensory awareness as a primary tool for survival. Similarly, in the civilian world, paying attention to the natural ecosystem is no longer how most of us put food on the table.
In both military and civilian life, we’re taught to live “from the neck up,” relying on thoughts over feelings. The sensory-reliant hunter-gatherer in us has been dulled by the agricultural, industrial, and digital revolutions.
Even when we do get asked about our emotions, we're often encouraged to name them, instead of experience them, and to feel them fully. This keeps us in our heads because emotions are mental labels for clusters of physical sensations.
In other words, emotions exist in our thoughts, not our bodies. They’re one step removed from direct physical experience.
For example, we don't really feel "angry." When we think we’re angry, what we’re actually feeling, at the purely physical level, is a combination of sensations in our body. What we actually feel might be tightness in our chest, a burning sensation in our face, or tension in our muscles. Anger is the label we give to those combinations of sensations.
We're taught by our culture to label certain combinations of sensations as different emotions. The sensations are the body’s actual experience. The emotion is the mental label we assign to them.
Why does this distinction matter? Because it's often the case that, to fully process intense experiences, we have to recall not just what happened, but what our body felt at the time.
This requires us to reimagine ourselves back in those moments of overwhelm and recall the physical sensations alive in our bodies at the time. Then, once we're back in touch with all those big (and little) sensations, we put words to them.
Our bodies have been holding onto these stories a long time—waiting to tell them. Each detail we write down, lightens the invisible load we’ve been carrying that much more. This is why learning to write in sensory detail is such a critical step for us Veterans. This process bridges the gap between what our body remembers and what our brain understands about what happened.
That’s what we’re about to do next. Fill in some detail details and bridge the gaps. We’re gonna take the story we’ve already written and add any sensory details we may have missed.
Embodied Redemptive Storytelling
Step Nine: Use the Seven Sensory Recall Questions.
We’re going to revisit the past event, or experience, you wrote about in Chapters 5 & 6, and ask the Seven Sensory Recall Questions.
The Seven Sensory Recall Questions:
1. What was I smelling?
2. What was I hearing?
3. What was I tasting?
4. What was I touching, or feeling on the surface of my body?
5. What was I seeing?
6. What sensations were happening inside my body? (e.g., tingling, tense, numb, shaky, heavy)*
7. What thoughts was I having?
Now, go back to what you wrote earlier. Re-read each line and imagine yourself back in that moment, like it’s a daydream. Ask the Seven Sensory Recall Questions as you go.
Write down any new details that come out and add them to your story.
Here's an example:
Draft from Chapter 6: (The first-person draft)
A car is pulling up to me at the checkpoint. Looks like another Iraqi local. Middle-aged, male. I lean my head head down to the passenger-side window, point to my M4 and ask, “Ayu 'aslihatin?” <any weapons?> He shakes his head no. I point to the glove compartment and say, “Aiftah hadha” <open this>. He seems confused. My eyes scan around, waiting for him to respond—wait, what is that? Is that a rifle barrel sticking out from under the passenger seat? Ahh shit. I think. C’mon dude, why not just say something? A voice in my head says "He’s not a threat. He looks like he's a father. Let him go to his work or his family" Another voice says "What if I’m wrong? What if he shoots someone on my team with that rifle?" I notice he looks worried. I raise my rifle, point it at him, and shout down the road to my squad leader “Need some help here!”
Revised draft after applying the Seven Sensory Recall Questions:
A car pulls up to the checkpoint. The afternoon air is so hot it smells hot. Looks like another Iraqi local. Middle-aged, male. The weight of my flak vest presses against my uniform. My brown undershirt bunched up underneath it, and damp with sweat. I lean my head down to the passenger side window. “Ayu 'aslihatin?” <any weapons?> I ask . He shakes his head no. He keeps staring straight ahead. I point to the glove compartment. “Aiftah hadha”, <open this>. He seems confused— my eyes scan around waiting for him to respond—wait, what is that? Is that the tip of a rifle sticking out from under the passenger seat? Ahh shit. It is. My heart starts pounding. C'mon dude, why not just say something? I notice a faint trembling in his rigid body. Tingles crop up on my arms. He's afraid of me. The power I have over this old man is suddenly clear. A voice in my head says "He’s not a threat. He's probably a father. Let him go on to his work or his family". Another voice says “What if I’m wrong? What if he shoots someone on my team?” He's starting to look more worried. I raise my M4 and point it at him—Dammit this feels wrong. But what choice do I have?— turning my head down the road I shout “Need some help here!”
Why This Process Matters
When I put myself back into the memory, and asked the Seven Sensory Recall Questions, new details naturally came out!
The goal here isn't to embellish, or “tell a good story”. The goal here is to capture, as accurately as possible, what was happening in our body and mind during those intense moments.
Instead of trying to influence what shows up, we’re letting the sounds, smells, thoughts, and sensations resurface and come back sharply into focus.
This helps our survival brain make sense of what happened. It’s no longer too much, too fast. Now, we can digest those old messages, one bite at a time.
The more sensory details we reintroduce to our survival brain, the more vividly the past comes to life—and the more our nervous system can reframe its relationship to that past from a safe place in the present.
I'm reminded of something Dr. Bessel van der Kolk wrote, in "The Body Keeps The Score",
The trauma that started “out there” is now played out on the battlefield of their own bodies, usually without a conscious connection between what happened back then and what is going on right now inside. The challenge is not so much learning to accept the terrible things that have happened but learning how to gain mastery over one’s internal sensations and emotions. Sensing, naming, and identifying what is going on inside is the first step to recovery.
Everything changed when I could look at my old pain without needing to protect myself from seeing it.
Let's keep working on that together.
Go back to your Chapter 6 draft. Imagine yourself in that old situation. Let it play like a movie. Pause along the way, ask the Seven Sensory Recall Questions, and fill in any sensory details that come back into your awareness.
Then, move on to Chapter 8: Two Antidotes to Pain