Between the Lines | Before Meaning Arrives

Ep 2. How language reaches the body first

Feb 01, 2026

There’s a time when you start realising something,
but you can’t quite put your finger on what’s causing it.

Nothing really announces itself.
Nothing asks to be named.
Not out loud anyway.

It’s like the words don’t arrive the same way.
Not sharply.
And, not all at once.

When you start almost feeling the words
before you know what you’ve read.

They still land.
You still feel them running down your spine,
or a cold draft wrapping around your neck.

But not everywhere.
Not everywhere you thought you would feel it.

Not anymore.

You notice yourself moving past sentences that would have stopped you before.
Not because they’re thinner.
Because you already know their outline.

Familiarity does something subtle to attention.
It doesn’t erase feeling —
it narrows the field.

This is usually where people panic.
They assume something’s gone missing.

But it doesn’t always feel like failure, either.

The body doesn’t respond to every signal with the same intensity.
If it did, you wouldn’t last the day.

So it learns.
It calibrates.
It adjusts.

And it decides, without you noticing, what gets through.

Some lines meet no resistance.
They pass straight on, like breath you didn’t notice taking.

Others hesitate.
Not because they’re important —
because there’s space.

And that difference matters.

🫧 When familiarity steps in

After a while, you stop arguing with it.
Or try to at least.

You stop checking whether something should have landed harder.
Stop rereading to see if you missed the moment you were meant to feel something.

You let sentences pass.

Not because they’re empty.
Because they don’t ask anything.

This is the part that’s easy to misunderstand.
It can look like disengagement from the outside.
Like attention slipping.

But it isn’t slipping.
It’s pacing itself.

Attention learns, over time, how much it can hold at once without tightening.
How much pressure it can allow before it starts bracing in advance.

So it becomes selective.

Not in the way taste is selective.
Not preference.

More like breath on a long walk.
You don’t inhale deeply at every step.
You wait for the incline.

Some writing arrives flat and stays flat.
You don’t take that personally anymore.

Other lines carry a faint resistance —
a slight drag —
as if they’re asking for a little more room than you expected to give.

You notice those.

Not because they demand attention.
Because your body leans in, almost without asking, to make space for them.

That’s usually where you pause.

Not to analyse.
Nor to decide what it means.

Just to stay long enough for the pressure to settle into something you can feel clearly.

⏸ When the sentence lets go

Sometimes the body reacts after a sentence ends.

Not to what it said.
To the fact that it’s finished.

There’s a small release —
or a pause —
or a feeling of being let down too
early.

You notice it if you stay still long enough.

Read this:

He said he’d be back later,
which should have been reassuring.

The sentence closes early.
Not grammatically — physically.

Your breath settles before the idea does.
There’s a small drop, a quiet disappointment, even if you can’t say why.

Now this:

She reached for the handle and paused,
noticing the sound of the room behind her,
the way it kept going.

Here, the opposite happens.

The sentence keeps your breath open longer than expected.
It carries you forward, then delays release.
Nothing dramatic — just suspension.

And then this:

The message arrived while he was making tea,
and he read it,
and nothing else happened.

Everything is complete.
Nothing is emphasised.

The breath drops anyway.
Softly.
Decisively.

In all three cases, the words are ordinary.
The grammar is ordinary.
The punctuation behaves itself.
Just as you’d hope it would

What changes is when closure arrives.

That timing — early, delayed, or understated — is felt before it’s understood.
Your body knows the sentence is finished before your mind decides what it means.

That’s one of the simplest ways somatics works on the page.

You can notice it immediately.

Take a paragraph you’re reading tonight.
Read it once, without stopping.

Then read it again, paying attention only to this:
where your breath settles.

Not where the sentence ends.
Where you do.

That’s closure.

And when you realise you’ve been feeling that all along,
but didn’t know the language for it,
you start to realise how often writing moves you
without ever raising its voice.

🎚 When punctuation carries the load

When you remove enough words, something else takes over.

Punctuation stops being a rule
and starts behaving like a control surface.

Read these slowly.

Door shut.
Keys left.

Now this:

Door shut,
keys left

And then this:

Door shut.
Keys
left.

The words barely change.

But the pressure does.

The first closes cleanly.
Final.
Decisive.

The second softens.
The comma holds the breath open,
leaves the moment hanging.

The third descends.
A stop.
Another pause.
Then the drop.

Nothing new was added.
Most of the language was taken away.

With fewer words carrying meaning,
punctuation starts doing physical work.

A full stop tightens and ends.
A comma loosens and suspends.
A line break delays release and lets the body fall.

That’s why stripping language back often makes writing feel stronger, not weaker.
You’re not intensifying meaning.
You’re increasing consequence.

The less language you use,
the more power punctuation has over the body.

That’s not interpretation.
That’s mechanics.

.
.

🔁 When rhythm starts to gather

Some effects don’t come from a single line at all.

They arrive through repetition.

Read this once, straight through.

She rinsed the mug.
Set it on the rack.
Wiped the counter.

Nothing dramatic happens.
Each line is ordinary.

Now read this:

She rinsed the mug.
Set it on the rack.
Wiped the counter.
Stood there a moment.

The meaning hasn’t changed.
But the pressure has.

And now this:

She rinsed the mug.
Set it on the rack.
Wiped the counter.
Stood there a moment.
Didn’t turn around.

At some point, the body tips.

Not because of what the words say —
because of how long they keep arriving.

Rhythm works by accumulation.

Each return adds weight.
Each delay narrows patience.
Each familiar action lands closer than the last.

This is why lists feel different from paragraphs.
Why refrains carry force.
Why saying something once feels neutral,
and saying it three times changes the room.

You can feel this immediately.

Take a simple sentence.
Repeat it on separate lines.

Stop when it becomes uncomfortable.

That moment —
where nothing new is added,
but the body reacts anyway —
is rhythm doing its work.

This is also where intensity starts to manage itself.

Too much repetition, and the body shuts down.
Too little, and nothing gathers.

I got asked once if this was just language trickery.
I said it’s only a trick if the body reacts second.

The effect lives in the spacing.
In when you stop.
In what you allow to build,
and what you let fall away.

That’s why this isn’t about emphasis.
It’s about exposure over time.

And once you start noticing that,
you begin to understand why some writing feels overwhelming,
and some barely lands at all —
even when the words are good.

🌊 After something moves

Once you start noticing how language works on the body, it becomes harder to ignore when it doesn’t.

When something lands before you’ve decided what it means.
When repetition builds pressure without adding anything new.
When structure moves you faster than explanation ever could.

Sometimes that carries you somewhere obvious.
Sometimes it just changes the pace.

And sometimes it leaves the sense that something has already shifted
before you’ve worked out what to call it.

That isn’t a problem to solve.
It’s a cue to stay close.

There’s more here —
in how familiarity narrows attention,
in how intensity regulates itself,
in how meaning arrives earlier, or later, than we expect.

For now, this is just a place to stop.
Not to conclude —
to notice where things began to move.

If you catch similar moments —
in reading, in writing, or elsewhere —
that’s usually where the next pieces start forming.ㅤ

☕ Staying With the Work

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— Mark

The first in this series on somatics:

A few more pieces from me…