Awareness Through the Senses: Sensory Perception Elements
Engaging our senses can provide many health benefits, from relieving stress, increasing our energy levels, boosting joy, and promoting health. The body’s tactile memory of its environment plays an intricate role in imprinting our mind. In other words, our senses give us a unique way to experience the world and remember it. But what exactly are our sensation systems and what roles to they play?
Our Sensation Systems:
Areas of the nervous system involved in receiving data and sending it to the brain are:
Tactile (touch = data from the skin) - Olfaction: Chemicals in the Air Stimulate Signals the Brain Interprets as Smells
2. Proprioceptive (muscular) - Specialized Receptors in the Skin Send Touch Signals to the Brain
3. Taste- Home of the Taste Buds: The Tongue Is the Principal Organ of Gustation
4. Visual - The Eyes Translate Light into Image Signals for the Brain to Process
5. Auditory - The Ear Uses Bones and Fluid to Transform Sound Waves into Sound Signals, Vestibular - our inner ear is the center for our brain.
Take a look at why engaging your five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch to promote a healthy and happy life is attained by using biohacking techniques to drastically improve your wellbeing. We can also connect to our environment through Sensory Design which helps us to provide more ecological aspects to our living spaces. To understand these principles of Sensory Design, we must understand the connection that your home is your second skin. Therefore the health aspects of your home, affect the health quality of your life.
6 Ways To Engage Your Senses for Healing:
Nature Play - Being in nature engages all your senses at once so dancing outside already provides connection and healing. In design aspects, bringing nature into the home helps with engaging in all our senses offering physical and emotional wellbeing.
Art therapy - We can create awareness through the senses in all aspects from photography, dance, and design, it’s about connection to our senses. Engaging your senses with intention can bring a greater sense of purpose to your life. There is also a direct correlation to sensory photography, which also have an ability to translate sense impressions – touch and sound and smell – into a visual form.Dance and creative movement provide stimulation for three of those five senses at once: touch, sight, and hearing, but can also engage more of them with a more sensory focused practice. Ecologically-minded dance artists reminds us of the body's relationship to landscape and environment, therefore connecting each of our senses to our environment.
Therapeutic touch - Human touch is an important element of emotional health. We can experience positive experiences through touch. This helps us to drop high cortisol levels and an increase in serotonin, giving us a more relaxed sensation and helps us to feel happy.
Aromatherapy - Helps by stimulating smell receptors in the nose, which then send messages through the nervous system to the limbic system ( the part of the brain that controls emotions) and relieves stress.
Healing Foods - descriptions of different kinds of taste sensations are very often associated with strong emotions, as nourishing foods provide nourishment and comfort.
Music and Sound - (Jillian Levy 2017, shares the six major health benefits of music therapy)
Music therapy reduces anxiety and physical effects of stress
It improves healing
It can help manage Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease
Music therapy reduces depression and other symptoms in the elderly
It helps to reduce symptoms of psychological disorders including schizophrenia
Music therapy improves self-expression and communication
Tapping into our senses is a powerful technique used in all aspects of healing, by using all our resources in our living spaces, we can create a positive healing environment to thrive in. Holistic Sensory Design can be a powerful tool to making your home a safe and beautiful space.