Transmuting with the T.I.M.E.S. Channels

How grateful I am to have recently discovered the work of Kimberly Ann Johnson (KAJ)! If you haven’t heard of this brilliant soul, she’s the author of Call of the Wild, The Fourth Trimester, and talented creatrix of a potent and transformative experience called Activate Your Inner Jaguar. 

While KAJ’s body of work is too vast to cover in a single blog entry, I have been exploring one aspect of it that I felt compelled to share: The TIMES Channels. As KAJ explains in Call of the Wild, “Thought, Image, Movement, Emotion, and Sensation, or TIMES, are the five channels through which we take in and process information,” (p. 57).

Most of us tend to have one TIMES channel that is our ‘go-to’ pathway--and for me, that channel is definitely thought. I am a very cerebral person and spend a lot of time analyzing, planning, reflecting, and…well, THINKING! What about you? What is your preferred “home channel”? Do you have any reflections on how that came to be--or how it might serve you to work with that channel? Perhaps you might also consider how it could impede you to be gravitating toward that channel so often. I know for me, being stuck in my head all the time is not a good thing. But I can see the gift, too--my facility with the thought channel made it easy for me to pursue an advanced degree, to write and publish books and articles, and to create and run a business.

Many of us also tend to have one channel that is less travelled, less familiar. Before I worked with Kimberly, that channel for me was, without a doubt, movement. I spent a lot of time in my head, but not an awful lot of time being embodied. However, through exploring the books and teachings of KAJ (and many others), I am learning to activate both my movement channel and sensation channel with greater ease and frequency. This helps me to be more in tune with what’s best for me holistically on a moment by moment basis--rather than just doing what I “think” is right. 

The thing I really love about the TIMES Channels is that they give us a way to shift the energy when we feel stuck. If you’re spinning an idea around in your head over and over (Thought), consider how you might change the channel. Would it be helpful to go into Movement? (Lately, I’ve been enjoying mini dance parties and qigong ‘shaking’). Or perhaps you want to work with Imagery, whether through visualization, creating art, or simply savoring the visual details in the space around you. The empowering thing we realize is that we have choices--and we don’t have to stay stuck. We can always ‘change the channel!’

As a special educator, I can’t help but see the connection between the TIMES Channels and my field: 

We are taught, as educators, to use multi-sensory approaches that 

appeal to diverse learning needs and engage students in a variety 

of ways--whether through visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile, or other 

modalities. 

We also teach to multiple intelligences, recognizing that there are 

many ways to learn: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, 

bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic.

So doesn’t it make sense that as adults, we should allow ourselves to move fluidly and freely across the various input channels that we have at our fingertips? 

For me, it was liberating to recognize my TIMES patterns, to see where they served me, and where I might want to carve some new pathways. It is my hope that this new awareness might bring some insight and inspiration to you as well. Here’s to freer and more fluid TIMES ahead!

Namaste,

~Dr. Abby Ampuja