Part 7 of the 20-part Between Mind and Body series

When I was around nine or ten, there was a kid at school who used to pick on me.

It happened often enough that I would sometimes just run home. It was not exactly because I was scared. More than anything, I did not know what to do with what I was feeling. That was the part that confused me most. Not only what he was doing, but what was happening inside me when he did it.

He would give me a certain look, and something in me would shift immediately. I did not have words for it then, but I can still remember the feeling. A tightening. A closing down. A kind of inner catch. It was as if my body reacted before my mind could make sense of anything. I felt the pressure of it, but I did not know how to meet it.

I remember one time my sister, who was only a year older than me, stepped in and yelled at him for picking on me. She seemed to know instinctively what to do. She stood up for me clearly and without hesitation, and I was grateful to her for that. But it also showed me something about myself. It made me realize that I did not have that same response in me. It was not that I did not want to stand up for myself. I did. I just did not know how to move through that moment.

Part of what made it so hard was the story I had in my mind. Looking back, I think part of the reason he picked on me was because I was quiet. I was not aggressive, not confrontational, and probably gave the impression that I would not push back. To me, standing up to him seemed like it would have to lead to a fight, and I had always been taught not to fight unless it was self-defense. Fighting was never in my nature anyway. So I was left in a difficult place. Something in me reacted every time, but I did not know how to respond without becoming someone I did not want to be.

Looking back, that is what stands out most to me now. Not only the bullying itself, but the inner experience of being hooked by something I did not yet understand.

There is often a moment before the full reaction takes over.

Something is said. A look is given. A silence lingers a little too long. Before we have even sorted out what we are feeling, something in us has already shifted.

The body tightens. The mind begins to move. We feel pulled toward defending ourselves, shutting down, withdrawing, or striking back.

That moment, the moment we get internally caught, is what Tibetan Buddhism calls shenpa.

It is often translated as attachment, but that word can feel a little too broad. What shenpa points to more directly is the feeling of being hooked. It is that sticky inner catch. That quick tightening when something gets under our skin. Not yet the whole story. Not yet the argument, the explanation, the blame, or the shame. Just that first moment when something grabs hold and starts pulling us.

Most of the time, we do not notice it. We go straight from what happened to how we reacted, as if there were nothing in between. But there is almost always something in between.

There is a shift.

Pema Chödrön describes shenpa as the urge to scratch an itch. Something feels uncomfortable, and we want immediate relief. So we defend ourselves, explain, replay the moment, reach for comfort, or distract ourselves. For a moment, that may feel like relief. But often it only deepens the pattern and pulls us further away from what is actually going on.

What makes shenpa so important is that it is not really about the outer event alone. It is about what happens in us when that event touches something tender, unsettled, or unresolved.

Underneath the hook, there is often something quieter: fear, insecurity, a feeling of being exposed, or simply the uneasiness of not wanting to sit with discomfort.

That is why this matters.

When I was a child, I did not know any of this. I only knew that each day this kid could look at me in a certain way and something in me would tighten before I even had words for it. I did not know how to stand in that discomfort. I did not know how to respond without either running from it or feeling swallowed by it.

What changed things was not learning to fight.

My dad decided not to show me how to fight. Instead, he asked if I wanted to take karate. I said yes right away.

What I found there was not what I might have expected. Karate was never taught as a way to hurt people or prove something. It was taught as an art, grounded in discipline, self-control, and respect. Self-defense was part of it, but it was not the deeper point. Our sensei made that clear. I still remember the pictures on the wall of him sparring with Bruce Lee. As a kid, I thought that was pretty amazing. But even more than that, I remember the feeling of the place. There was something about it that was steady. Composed. Grounded.

Little by little, something in me began to change.

People at school found out I was taking karate, even though I was not the one telling them. By the time I was around twelve, no one bothered me anymore. Maybe I carried myself differently. Maybe that kid had matured. Maybe both.

To this day, I have never been in a fight.

But that is not really the point.

What changed was that I began to feel better in my own body. More settled. More confident. Less thrown by that kind of pressure. The tightening still came, but it no longer pulled me under in the same way. I had found something steadier underneath it.

And the truth is, that pull did not belong only to childhood.

I have felt it many times throughout my life, and I have seen it in others just as often. It does not take much for any of us to get pulled in. We see it in stores when someone becomes impatient with a cashier. We see it while driving, when frustration turns into road rage. We see it standing in a long, slow line, reading the news, waiting for a text that does not come, hearing a certain tone in someone’s voice, or feeling dismissed in a conversation.

Sometimes it happens in very ordinary moments. A look. A delay. A comment. A feeling of being overlooked. And suddenly something in us tightens and starts to move.

That is part of what makes shenpa so universal. It is not rare. It is not reserved for dramatic moments. It is woven into everyday life.

But knowing what is happening can make a real difference.

Not because we will never get hooked again, but because we may begin to recognize the process while it is happening. We may notice the tightening sooner. We may see the story beginning to form. We may feel the urge to defend, attack, withdraw, or escape, and realize we do not have to be carried quite so far by it.

That, to me, is part of what this practice is about.

Not becoming someone who never gets hooked. Not becoming hard or aggressive. Not pretending we do not feel what we feel.

It is about beginning to notice the tightening before the reaction takes over. It is about recognizing the pull before we automatically obey it. It is about finding enough ground in ourselves that the hook does not have to drag us all the way down.

That is where awareness begins.

Not after the whole storm has passed, but in the moment the weather first starts to change.

Sometimes that moment is very small. A tightening in the chest. A drop in the stomach. A narrowing of attention. A sudden urge to say something, do something, fix something, or escape something.

That may be the beginning of shenpa.

And sometimes, simply noticing it, simply being able to say, I’m getting hooked right now, can begin to loosen its grip.

We may still feel it. We may still struggle with it. But we are no longer completely inside it without knowing.

And that changes something.

Sometimes what helps is not becoming more aggressive.

Sometimes what helps is becoming more grounded.