Week Sixty-Six: Embracing Our Senses with Gratitude

One weekend morning, I was doing a fast walk through Central Park.  It was a beautiful, sunny day, with delicious fragrances of nature, patterns of light and shadow on the trees, the sounds of crickets, and the feel of the ground under my feet.  Once out of the park and back on the street, I began to muse about the incredible gift our senses offer us.  In every moment of every day, we are privileged to experience our world in myriad ways because of our senses.  Then, I started to think about the senses we may take for granted – those we don’t consider because they are so much part of our everyday life.  Most of us pay attention to the senses that are compromised in some way, as when we have vision problems and cherish the fact that we can see at all, or with the loss of the senses of smell and taste with a cold, or the loss of a sense of touch where we may have developed numbness.

For this week’s experiment, I’d like to invite you to begin with an awareness of the senses you prefer – those you bring consciously to mind and enjoy in special ways.  For example, you may be a person who particularly responds to a beautiful view, whose vision is the first place you go when you experience something.  Or, you might be someone who is particularly attuned to sound, and pay attention first to what you hear. For other people, the sense of touch may be primary – experiencing the “feel” of something as your first impression. For others, taste is the greatest gift, and enjoying flavor brings the greatest pleasure.

Next, take some time to identify those senses you take for granted and never give much attention.  Notice what happens if you spend a week noticing and sending gratitude to all your senses, and paying attention to when you engage each of them.  If you find yourself looking at something beautiful and appreciating how it looks, take a moment to thank your body for the ability to see.  If you hear a sound that moves you or brings delight or comfort, thank your ears for their gift of hearing.  Also notice touch and taste, paying attention to when these senses are in the foreground of your experience.

There’s no particular way to do this experiment, other than to hold the intention to notice the gifts of your body’s senses and to take time to appreciate them.  Then, notice how you feel about your body after you’ve taken the time to pay particular attention to its gifts.  This is one more way to live consciously, to be present to your experience as you move through daily living.

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