Commusings: You Are Made of Listening by Jeff Krasno

Dear Commune Community,

For those of you on an extended wellness journey, have you ever found yourself “measuring the path instead of walking it”? I am certainly guilty of falling into this trap at times. Particularly for the more intellectually inclined among us (my hand raised here), we act as if knowledge alone will bring healing. 

But wellness is not a spreadsheet; it’s a lived experience. The body doesn't heal from theories; it heals from the right conditions, yes, but also because we let the healing happen. We soften into it and embrace it. To paraphrase Zen philosopher Alan Watts, “You can't force anything. You just have to let it happen... and when you let it happen, it happens by itself.”

Today’s essay is inspired by many hours spent in a Sunlighten infrared sauna. In the dark, my sweat plink-plink-plinking through the wood slats, I close my eyes and let my human experience drift away. I become my cells, drinking in the invisible light. My proteins, refolding in the heat. I prepare the conditions for healing, and then I let my cells do the rest. 

If you’d like to do the same, Sunlighten is offering up to $1,700 off plus free shipping on your sauna purchase with code COMMUNE—now through June 30th. Click here to claim the offer.

In love (and heat), include me,
Jeff

 • • •

You Are Made of Listening

You have left your human body behind and are now a bat. 

You live inside a world built from sound shadows. Imagine closing your eyes and snapping your fingers—and the entire room reshapes itself based on the bounce of that sound. Vision, as you know it, is irrelevant. You’re not “seeing” with your eyes but sculpting space with echoes.

Walls aren’t visible; they push back gently when your call hits them. A moth’s flutter is a brief flicker in your soundscape. The night is not dark to you—it is acoustically illuminated. Silence is blindness.

This is an example of “umwelt,” a concept from biology and philosophy that refers to the unique perceptual world experienced by an organism. Coined by biologist Jakob von Uexküll, it emphasizes that each species senses and interprets reality differently based on its sensory apparatus and needs. A bat navigates through echolocation, a bee sees ultraviolet patterns in flowers, and a human perceives only a narrow slice of reality through sight, sound, and touch. 

Umwelt reminds us that our experience of the world is not objective or universal, but filtered and shaped by biology. It is a humbling lens on consciousness, and to make leaps of interspecies understanding, we must lean into metaphor and poetry. 

By definition, an organism’s true umwelt is inaccessible to outsiders. We cannot directly know what it’s like to “be” a bee, a bat, or a bacterium, but metaphor allows us to imagine it and gain insight into what might be the optimal conditions for that organism.

Now let’s take umwelt even further. In a quest to be more embodied, it is useful to ask: What is the umwelt of my cells and the mitochondria inside those cells? They are also conscious beings, of a sort. Beings whose collective experience combines trillions of times over to be my lived experience. 

Human cells have no eyes or ears (though many of them compose my eyes and ears), but they are undoubtedly aware. Their umwelt is defined not by sight or sound, but by gradients, signals, and molecular interactions. A cell perceives its environment through chemical cues: shifts in pH, osmotic pressure, temperature, nutrient availability, and signaling molecules such as hormones or cytokines. 

Its world is built of vibrations (like infrared heat), electrical charges, and molecular contact. Mitochondria sense oxidative stress; membrane receptors detect growth factors or pathogens; ion channels respond to changes in voltage or calcium levels. To a cell, communication is biochemical, navigation is gradient-based, and survival hinges on a ceaseless dialogue with its environment.

So here I am in the infrared sauna. It’s dark, but I sense warmth radiating from the wall panels and penetrating deep beneath my skin. “Warmth” is a mental construct of mine, though. To my cells, infrared light can’t “feel” warm the way I consciously perceive it. Instead, I imagine it registering as a subtle surge of energy, a biochemical invitation to repair, rejuvenate, and thrive.

Infrared light, especially in the near-infrared spectrum (700–1200 nm), penetrates tissues and is absorbed by mitochondrial chromophores, particularly cytochrome c oxidase. To the cell and its mitochondria, this influx of light energy triggers increased ATP production—the cellular fuel needed for repair and function. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are modulated, gene expression shifts, inflammation calms, and signaling pathways awaken.

In my hot, humid reverie, I allow my cells a subjective experience. To them, the infrared light might feel like a deep breath, a pulse of vitality, the molecular equivalent of watching the dawn after a long, cold night—a signal that conditions are safe enough to heal.

I’ll never truly know, but in a way, I will. 

I go from the sauna to my outdoor shower and gasp as the cold water hits my face. Norepinephrine, adrenaline, and dopamine course through my veins and diffuse across capillaries. As I towel off, I experience a wave of relaxed alertness, the collective tingle of a trillion titillated cells. 

In my mind, I twist a colloquial piece of marital wisdom and think: “Happy cells, happy life.”