Seeing With Your Skin & Body

Certain animals have sensory seeing mechanisms in their skin. For example,
even a blinded chameleon will take on the coloration of its environment. Human eyes
are simply highly differentiated skin cells. They are the organs through which vision
normally functions, but a different kind of vision is also possible with non-
specialized skin cells. Blind people, for example, can usually detect the existence of
light even when infrared and ultraviolet energy are largely excluded. This radiation
sensing process can even be extended to discern individual wavelengths of different
colors.
The Soviet Rosa Kuleshova taught herself to distinguish colors, read print and
discern movements with her skin alone. Examined by hard-nosed scientists, Rosa,
while blindfolded read newsprint and sheet music under glass with her fingertips!
She could identify the color and shape of patches of light projected onto her palms,
and could even read the small print of a newspaper with her elbow.
Professor K.B. Duke took the stage name Kuda Bux and astounded many people
in the U.S. with his blindfold vision performances. He explained that his talent was
self-taught and that it took him 11 years to master it. After placing lumps of dough
over his eyes and covering them with wool bandage, Bux could read books, move
through an obstacle course and even ride a bicycle. This phenomenon is not new,
for there have been many recorded instances of 'skin seeing' among the sighted as
well as the blind. In fact, children from ages 4 to 12 are especially sensitive to
training in this ability. The Instituda Mas Vida in Mexico City was featured several
years ago on the TV show You Asked For It, and they illustrated several children
reading and replicating various kinesthetic movements while blindfolded!
Colors have different electromagnetic frequencies and interact with the body in
different ways. The colors of your clothes and objects in your immediate
environment have led to a whole new field of color psychology. Blindfolded
students that have learned to discern colors have indicated that there are distinct
textures that are more or less different to the touch. Yellow feels very slippery; red is
sticky; green is stickier than red, but not as coarse; dark blue is the stickiest. Light
blue feels the smoothest; orange has a rough, coarse and braking feel; violet has even
a greater braking effect on the fingers. Black is the most sticky, viscid and braking of
all. White is smooth though coarser than yellow to the touch.
Even when colored papers are in trays, students can learn to feel the effects in the
air above the colors. While some students read colors with their fingertips, others use the tip of their
nose, their earlobe, their elbow or even the backs of their necks!
Blind students can learn the color of lights on their skin in 1 to 3 weeks, while
sighted students may take up to twice as long. Some students can distinguish colored
shapes under a glass plate, with triangles more easily identifiable than circles or
squares. (The glass usually has to be under one-sixteenth of an inch thick.)
As an exercise to begin distinguishing colors with your skin, purchase various
colors of construction paper that all have the same texture grain. Test yourself with
your eyes closed as to whether you can distinguish any differences. Now just as you
shifted your conscious awareness into your peripheral vision in the "Exercise --
Improving Peripheral Vision Awareness," shift your conscious awareness to your
fingertips for optimal discernment. About 10% of people tested have been found to
have an already existing color-distinguishing ability. (Kinesthetic people learn this
ability faster than visual and auditory people.)
Now assume a comfortable position. Gradually relax all your muscles, from your
toes to your head and slowly do some deep, abdominal breathing (review "Exercise --
Relaxation" and all the breathing exercises). Working with color pairs at first, have a
partner alternately give you black and then white sheets of paper for starters; then red
and green sheets and so on. While blindfolded, lightly touch and feel each paper;
then feel the air just above it.
After daily practice at attempting to perceive the colors with your 'sensing' ability,
greater accuracy will finally take place. Make a game of it. Distinguish the difference
between magazine pictures of men and women. Use pictures of single objects and
shapes. Use flash cards of letters of the alphabet. After continual practice, an
intuitive knowingness develops that is hard to describe, and your mind will begin
receiving the correct images.
Now look at and impress certain items in the room with your mind. Close your
eyes and retain the vision for as long was you can -- not as an after-image, but
imaginatively. Practice with furniture, maps, pictures, flowers and other objects.
Continual diligence and practice will bring about a 'seeing' on another level, but it
might take weeks, months or years to develop the ability fully. Scatter small objects
(spoons, forks, pencils, erasers, matches, etc.) on a table in front of you. Look at
them and then close your eyes. Now from memory alone, touch and identify each
object as you visualize its appearance.
This imaging and memory practice eventually brings about an actual 'seeing' of
the objects in a sensing way. Imagine yourself having a special surgical operation
where the sensing nerves of both your hands have been linked to the nervous tissue
of both your eyes -- thus enabling you to see with your fingers. Now go back to
your colored construction paper, and practice, practice, practice.