Here are five more senses for you to consider that most animals have, including humans, and it’s worth exploring what they are and considering the impact they have on our world.
1. Proprioception: allows us to perceive the position and movement of our body.
Oliver Sacks, a Neuroscientist and writer tells a story about a woman who lost her sense of proprioception due to a medical complication. It profoundly affected her happiness and experience of life. She liked to drive in an open car because she could feel the wind on her body which gave her the feeling of her body in space that was missing.
Developing our body awareness helps us maintain balance, coordination, and awareness of our body.
Proprioception can be developed and have a positive effect on our health through posture and emotional regulation. How we hold our body is affected by emotions. Consider how the body curls into itself when we grieve, or the tension created by anger.
Hold Your Head High! Through awareness it’s possible to hold the body in a manner that promotes positive emotions like contentment and confidence.
2. Equilibrioception: Also known as the sense of balance
Equilibrioception helps us maintain stability and orientation. It involves the inner ear’s vestibular system, which detects changes in motion and gravitational forces. Like the other senses we can develop it.
Practicing balance and stability in yoga contributes to a healthier life by preventing falls.
3. Thermoception: This is the ability to sense temperature variations
It helps us detect hot and cold stimuli, allowing us to regulate our body temperature and avoid potential dangers, such as burns or hypothermia.
Does modern life which seeks to maintain a regular 21 degrees impair the endocrine system?
Feeling the variation in temperature has an affect on our physiology. It’s becoming well known that cold showers or plunges affects the hormonal system, ramping up dopamine to improve alertness, feelings of motivation, and well-being. Heat can be either stimulating or relaxing depending on its intensity.
4. Nociception: This is the perception of pain
Nociceptors are specialized receptors that respond to harmful stimuli, signaling potential tissue damage. Pain serves as a warning mechanism, alerting us to injuries or threats to our well-being.
Working with your nociception sense it’s possible to limit and even eliminate chronic pain.
It’s a matter of training the nervous system. Trying to suppress pain seems to simply put it off until it’s overwhelming. Counterintuitively, relaxing and allowing the perception of pain to flow though the body can turn off the receptors- and it works for both physical and emotional pain.
5. Chronoception: This refers to our perception of time
It allows us to perceive the duration of events, intervals between stimuli, and the passage of time. While the exact mechanisms behind chronoception are still not fully understood.
Feeling the passage of time plays a crucial role in our daily lives, influencing our sense of rhythm, memory, and planning.
These days I’m inclined to wish for a method to slow down the passage of time! April is now half over, and as spring progresses it would be wonderful savour it!