Most of the diseases that kill and disable people prematurely in our culture are diseases of lifestyle that can be avoided if people would make better choices.~Andrew Weil
53 and more inborn senses
Children instinctively pursue the wonder of wandering garden paths. Many adults won't even get out of the car.
THINK ABOUT THIS!
All things from atoms to weather systems to the stars in the heavens are innately, wordlessly seeking harmonious balance through an “intelligent pulling together.” We share this desire for harmonious balance with all other things, best achieved by heeding our 53 and more inborn senses, such as radiation senses of color and season, chemical senses of smell and taste, feeling senses of pressure and touch, mental senses of emotional space, and senses of spirituality. We can reconnect to the wise loving intelligence of our intuitive senses through the wisdom of natural attractions that flow all around and through the universe.
SENSES Activity:
Connect to the infinite wisdom of your 53 and more innate senses.
Activity: Go to a natural area or even a living indoor object, such as a houseplant or a cooperative pet, and ask its permission to be there and help you with this activity. If, after a few minutes, the area or object still feels welcoming to you, accept that consent has been given.
-
Now, quiet your mind and begin to explore each of your inborn senses, taking time to consider what each sense might be saying about your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs
-
Consider what each sense—Nature’s intelligent love for you—can contribute to enhancing wellness and joy in your life.
-
As you connect to each sense, let its non-verbal message—your sensory wisdom—flow through you. Remember, it evolved as part of your own Nature.
-
Trust your inborn senses...they have sentiently supported your survival since life first began. Think about times you were most connected to each sense; and ways to deeply connect to it again.
-
Keep in mind, as you explore and experience each one, that it is exploring the sense, not completing the list, that is important. Better to know a few senses well.
-
At the end of the activity, write down what you learned about Nature and yourself.
-
As you connect to each sense, let its non-verbal message—your sensory wisdom—flow through you. Remember, it evolved as part of your own Nature.
-
Trust your inborn senses...they have sentiently supported your survival since life first began. Think about times you were most connected to each sense; and ways to deeply connect to it again.
-
Keep in mind, as you explore and experience each one, that it is exploring the sense, not completing the list, that is important. Better to know a few senses well.
-
At the end of the activity, write down what you learned about Nature and yourself.
53 and more inborn senses
Radiation Senses
-
Sense of height and sight, including polarized light.
-
Sense of seeing without eyes such as heliotropism or the sun sense of plants.
-
Sense of color.
-
Sense of moods and identities attached to colors.
-
Sense of awareness of one’s visibility or invisibility and consequent camouflaging.
-
Sensitivity to radiation other than visible light including radio waves, X rays, etc.
-
Sense of Temperature and temperature change.
-
Sense of season including the ability to insulate, hibernate and winter sleep.
-
Electromagnetic sense and polarity which includes the ability to generate current (as in the nervous system and brain waves) or other energies.
Feeling Senses
-
Hearing including resonance, vibrations, sonar and ultrasonic frequencies.
-
Awareness of pressure, particularly underground, underwater, and to wind and air.
-
Sensitivity to gravity.
-
The sense of excretion for waste elimination and protection from enemies.
-
Feel, particularly touch on the skin.
-
Sense of weight, gravity, and balance.
-
Space or proximity sense.
-
Coriolus sense or awareness of effects of the rotation of the Earth.
-
Sense of motion. Body movement sensations and sense of mobility.
Chemical Senses
-
Smell with and beyond the nose.
-
Taste with and beyond the tongue.
-
Appetite or hunger for food, water, and air.
-
Hunting, killing or food obtaining urges.
-
Humidity sense including thirst, evaporation control, and the acumen to find water or evade a flood.
-
Hormonal sense, as to pheromones and other chemical stimuli.
Mental Senses
(1, 2, and 3 are attractions saying, "Seek additional attractions to support well-being.")
-
Pain, external and internal.
-
Mental or spiritual distress.
-
Sense of fear, dread of injury, death or attack
-
Procreative urges: sex awareness, courting, love, mating, paternity and raising young.
-
Sense of play, sport, humor, pleasure, and laughter.
-
Sense of physical place, navigation senses including detailed awareness of land and seascapes of positions of the sun, moon, and stars.
-
Sense of time and rhythm.
-
Sense of electromagnetic fields.
-
Sense of weather changes.
-
Sense of emotional place, of community, belonging, support, trust, and thankfulness.
-
Sense of self including friendship, companionship, and power.
-
Domineering and territorial sense.
-
Colonizing sense including compassion and receptive awareness of one's fellow creatures, sometimes to the degree of being absorbed into a superorganism.
-
Horticultural sense and the ability to cultivate crops,as is done by ants that grow fungus, by fungus who farm algae or birds that leave food to attract their prey.
(15, 18, and 19 are the core of Ecopsychology) -
Language and articulation sense used to express feelings, and convey information in every medium from the bees’ dance to human stories and literature.
-
Sense of humility, appreciation, ethics.
-
Senses of form and design.
-
Sense of Reason, including memory and the capacity for logic and science.
-
Sense of mind and Consciousness. Intuition or subconscious deduction.
-
Aesthetic sense, inc.creativity and appreciation of beauty, music, literature, form, design, drama.
-
Psychic capacity such as foreknowledge, clairvoyance, clairaudience, psychokinesis, astral projection and possibly certain animal instincts and plant sensitivities.
-
Sense of biological and astral time, awareness of past, present and future events.
-
The capacity to hypnotize other creatures.
-
Relaxation and sleep including dreaming, meditation, brainwave awareness.
-
Pupation including cocoon building and metamorphosis.
-
Sense of excessive stress and capitulation.
-
Sense of survival by joining a more established organism.
-
Spiritual sense, including conscience, capacity for sublime love, ecstasy, a sense of sin, profound sorrow and sacrifice.
-
Sense of homeostatic unity. Natural attraction as singular mother/seed essence of all other senses
WHAT SCIENCE SAYS
New scientific evidence indicates that all things in Nature are self-organizing systems that continually seek harmonious balance. The primary goal of Nature Visioning is to teach people that all of us, as part of Nature, can attain this same balance needed for enhancing wellness in our work, relationships, and creativity by reconnecting to our numerous inborn senses that already know how to think and act in accord with Nature.
​
These ancient senses are our connections to the energy that unites all things. The wisdom of our senses can show us how to satisfy our emotional, psychological, and spiritual longings, resulting in more rewarding relationships with others and self. They can teach us to think, feel, and interact in conscious, sensory contact with the healing powers of Nature’s supportive love.
Senses list created originally by Guy Murchie in "The Seven Mysteries of Life," and expanded by Dr. Michael J. Cohen in "Reconnecting to Nature."
​
Explore the world and self by blending creative photography and Nature around and within.