Have you come to your senses yet?

We experience the world around us through our senses.  If you have all your senses, perhaps you find yourself looking and watching.  Perhaps you’re more of a listener and you hear sounds that many of us might miss.  Perhaps you pick up a vibe and notice first the atmosphere of a place?  If one of our senses is absent we’ll rely more heavily on the others of course.  If it’s safe for you to: take a moment to notice your surroundings.  What are you noticing most?  What you can see, what you can hear or what you can feel?  Perhaps you’re eating and so you’re noticing more what you can taste and smell. 

We use our senses to help us remember things too.  Think of a memory of a happy time.  What are you noticing about that memory?  Do you have an image in that memory?  Is it like a photograph, still, or like a movie, moving?  Colour or black and white?  Is there sound? How loud or soft is the volume?  What can you feel?  Can you sense the atmosphere?  Is it more cool or more warm?  Some people only have some sensory information in a memory.  And there is no right or wrong answer to these questions.  It’s purely your experience of your memories.  It’s different for different people. 

When we talk we use words that relate to our senses too.  We might say that something looks good, sounds good or feels good.  All meaning the same thing.  And we don’t just use words around sight, sound and feelings.  We use words around our sense of smell and taste too: I smell a rat! Let me chew that over for a while and get back to you.

So today, notice yourself noticing the world and the senses you are using.

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” W B Yeats