Awakening through Our Senses

 

Awakening through Our Senses

The Great Affair:

The great affair, the love affair with life,

is to live as variously as possible,

to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred,

Climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day.

Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding,

And, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours,

Life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length.

It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery,

But what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.”-Diane Ackerman

I hear Diane calling us to a life of exploring, risk-taking and mystery. More aliveness comes from getting out of our heads and into our bodies. This topic will explore all five senses with exercises to try each day for creating more body awareness. Listening to our bodies can become a habit that brings more aliveness, energy, and awareness. Pick a sense a day and try to find exercises you may want to include in a daily routine.

The smell sense  Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start to awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening fields far away.”-Helen Keller

In her book, The Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman states that smell was the first of our senses to develop. I start with the sense of smell because of its importance in understanding its connection to memory. Smell links us to emotions and memory. The olfactory bulb is a part of the brain’s limbic system and can suddenly and spontaneously bring up memories and robust responses.

 Our sense of smell is especially significant when we have experienced trauma. Many years ago, I saw a Viet Nam veteran for trauma therapy.  He suddenly smells burning flesh. It was alarming to him to be sitting in a meeting and suddenly smell flesh burning. Often smell helps bring trauma memories into awareness where they can be healed. 

A part of grieving includes wanting to keep the smell of their beloved. I remember stories of how widows didn’t wash their departed husband’s clothing because they wanted to be able to remember his smell. 

Exercises focusing on smell follow:

·         Close your eyes during some daily routines or tasks to focus more on smells, taking a shower, cooking, and doing laundry. Smell the shampoo as you rinse it from your hair.

·         How does it smell when you first enter your home, what are the different smells making up the order? Try this with your basement or attic.

·         When you open a window, smell the fresh air flowing. I love the smell of fresh clover in summer.

·         Notice the smell of the interior of your car.

·         How does the bakery smell in your grocery store feel?

·         Smell something in nature, a tree, soil, or flower. I love the smell of the earth as I dig in my garden. 

Taste- “The other senses may be enjoyed in all their beauty when one is alone, but taste is largely social. Humans rarely choose to dine in solitude, and food has a powerful social component.”- Ackerman

When we live alone, we dine alone. It makes sharing a meal even more special. Researchers tell us our taste and our smell connect in the sensory system. We often smell something before we taste it, and that’s enough to make us salivate. The connection is so strong, if we can’t smell something, we can’t taste it.

For many people, the first thing we taste is milk from our mother’s breast. It is the taste of love and affection. It brings feelings of warmth and security. Scientists tell us taste is our first feeling of pleasure.

Exercises focusing on taste follow:

·         Hold your nose to see what effect not smelling has on taste.

·         See if you can also be aware of where on your tongue you are experiencing each taste. We know that we taste sweet things at the tip of the tongue, bitter stuff at the back, sour stuff at the s sides, and salty things spread over the surface, but mainly upfront.

·         Try to focus on where you experience pungent and astringent tastes.

·         Become aware of the strong association between food and pleasure.

Hearing- “I hadn't really noticed that I had a hearing problem. I just thought most people had given up on speaking clearly--Hal Linden

Scientists understand the basic concepts of how our hearing works. But the specific structures are incredibly complex. Scientists tell us it is astonishing how much is involved in the hearing process and all these processes occur in such a small area. 

We can appreciate how extraordinary are our ears when we realize they pick up sound around us and then translate this information into a form that the brain can understand. This process is entirely mechanical, whereas our sense of smell, taste, and vision all involve chemical reactions, and hearing is a physical movement. Sounds travel through the air as a vibration in air pressure. The ear does three things; direct the sound waves into the ear’s hearing of the brain, feel the fluctuations in air pressure, and then translate these fluctuations into an electrical signal so the brain can understand them.

Humans, like animals, use sound for many things. First, it gives us information about our environment for safety and security. Second, a loud sound can alert us to danger. Third, we use it to communicate. Hearing helps us to experience religious ceremonies. Chanting “om” creates a vibration that you can feel in your head and the cartilage of your bones as they vibrate. Ackerman calls it a “massage from the inside, very soothing.”

The medical field uses music with dementia patients, autistic children, and others who struggle with communication. Comatose patients will respond to music. They have used music in the psychotherapy and addiction fields.

Exercises focusing on hearing follow:

·         Try to pick out the details of what you are hearing in a construction area. Pick out the different sounds that make up the sound of building a home.

·         Listen to a multi-instrument piece of music. Try to identify and focus on the different instruments.

·         Sit outside and try to differentiate close sounds from far sounds. It may be easier to close your eyes.  

·         Sit outside or inside and try to differentiate sound by volume. You may hear subtle sounds you did not hear before.

·         You can also gently pull on your ear occasionally and notice how it improved your hearing. I sometimes nod my head in the direction of a speaker I can't hear. 

·         Listen to an emotional piece of music and learn how the music’s ebb and flow and subtleties may match your mood. 

Seeing- "Until you see me, I do not exist. I see you." Avatar movie. I see you, meaning I see the love in your soul.

We know our eyes are light gathers. When light rays reflect off an object and enter the eyes through the cornea, the transparent outer covering of the eye, we can see that object. The cornea bends or refracts the rays that pass through the round hole of the pupil. The iris opens and closes, making the pupil bigger or smaller. This movement regulates the amount of light passing through it. The light rays pass through the lens to the retina, which converts the light into electrical impulses. The optic nerve sends impulses to the brain, which produces an image.

The eye’s lens stiffens with age, we cannot focus when we see something up close. Have you ever thought maybe this is a good thing for as we age, we grow in wisdom and know that the big picture matters most?”

Another interesting finding is men and women do see things differently. Research has shown that male and female brains process colors in slightly different ways. For example, if both sexes look at an orange, it will appear redder to the man than to the woman. Similarly, the grass seems yellower to a man than to a woman. However, women see variations in color better than men. Scientists speculate that enhanced color perception was important when women were the primary gathers and needed to distinguish among fruits, foliage, and insects. While men show significantly greater sensitivity for fine detail and rapidly moving images, thus enabling them to detect possible predators or prey from afar and distinguish between these objects more easily.

While the aging process changes how we see things up close, it does not change our ability to appreciate color, design, shapes, and textures. It doesn’t interfere with our ability to see in our inner vision. We don’t need our eyes at all to remember beautiful scenes from the day or the past. I can close my eyes and see the beauty of the beach with shorebirds scurrying to find food before the tide comes in. I can picture in complete detail in the memory of my granddaughter as she dances in the Nutcracker. Also when we dream we can see surprising details and colors. Sometimes colors are more intense than they are when we wake. 

Exercises focusing on seeing follow:

·         Go through the day observing your surroundings focusing on bright colors. I came back to Wisconsin in April. I forgot the color of the new green growth. It was amazing, I saw it everywhere. Florida plants did not have the same color green.

·         Look with more awareness to see things like the different color greens, you may not have noticed in the past.

·        Notice the richness of eye color in a new way. There are many differences in blue eyes.

·         When you lie down at night and close your eyes, see an intensely beautiful landscape or beautiful tree from your inner vision. 

·         Look at the clouds and find the variations and differences. Note all the different parts of the clouds, their shapes, sizes, and colors. I love waking in the morning to see clouds outside my window. They are always different.

·         Look at something beautiful and pick out the details of what makes it special.

·         Go through your day noticing tiny details you have noticed before.

Touch- “That’s what it feels like when you touch me. Like millions of tiny universes being born and then dying in the space between your finger and my skin. Sometimes I forget.”-Iain Thomas

Our skin is the largest organ of the body, weighing six to ten pounds, and gives us a sense of touch. Touch sensitivity varies as the fingertips, tongue, and genitals are much more sensitive than the back. Some parts of our body respond to touch differently; for example, it is different when we have an itch, shiver, or get goosebumps. Soon after being born, we instinctively start touching. Touch cells in the lips make nursing possible.

Touch is a sense with unique functions that affect our whole body; it has a much stronger influence than smell, taste, sound, or sight. Touch is the sense that has excellent potential for increasing our awareness and tuning into our environment. By bringing your attention to the sensations of skin contact with your environment and noticing the temperature, like the warmth or coolness on your face or hands, you can become more present in the now. 

Exercises focusing on touch follow:

·         Feel the textures of everyday objects in your environment to focus your attention in a way you haven’t before. Touch the water you are running to brush your teeth. Touch the skin on your face and arm. How is the touch different?

·         Feel an itch before you do something to relieve it.

·         If your get goosebumps, focus your attention on the sensations. Where do you feel the goosebumps? Do you feel chilled, or is it an awe moment?

·         Find a surface that is, for the most part, smooth but has some irregularities. One at a time slowly move each finger and thumb over the surface. See if you can feel irregularities differently when felt by different fingers or thumbs, right hand, or left hand.

·         Find something that feels very soft to the touch, like a stuffed animal or piece of soft cloth. Then touch your face, hands, feet, forearms, and legs, trying to discern the similarities and differences between the body part’s experiences of touch.

·         Walk barefoot over different surfaces, textures, and temperatures. Focus on feeling the surface with your feet.

·         In the morning, when you first wake up, rub your feet together over and over to simulate touch awareness. Then touch the floor and notice how it feels to your feet.

·         As often as you remember, as you go through the day, bring your attention to the sensations of skin contact with clothing, furniture, plates, tables, and keyboard.