Getting Started:
The Five Senses
Tap in to the power of your five senses as a path to a happier, more mindful life.
Coming to Your Senses
Each of us engages with the world through our own particular complement of senses, whatever those might be. Our senses can help us cheer up, calm down, live in the moment, experience more pleasure and energy, deepen connections, and even touch the transcendent.
While experts argue for the existence of dozens of senses—including balance and body awareness—we’re most familiar with the “Kindergarten Senses:” sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. These five serve as our ambassador senses, because they’re the senses most obviously supplying us information about the world.
Now more than ever, it’s easy to get stuck in our heads or behind a screen, and forget to engage with the world around us. Tuning in to our five senses can awaken our mindfulness and revive our sense of excitement, connection, gratitude, and wonder.
Engage with Your Senses
Discover how you can transform your everyday life through your senses.
Life in Five Senses
In her latest book, Gretchen Rubin explores the mysteries and joys of the five senses as a path to a happier, more mindful life. From the simple pleasures of appreciating the magic of ketchup and adding favorite songs to a playlist, to more adventurous efforts like creating a daily ritual of visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rubin shows us how to experience each day with depth, delight, and connection.
Five-Senses Journal
Each of us engages with the world through our own particular complement of senses. This six-month journal is designed to help you explore your sensory world through creative prompts. The pages invite you to record daily sensory observations, note memories that arise, create five-senses portraits, and reflect on how your senses work together to shape experiences.
QUIZ
What’s Your Most Neglected Sense?
Of your five senses, this is the sense that you least often turn to for pleasure or comfort. Even if you’re highly sensitive, you may not spend time exploring or cultivating it. Take the Five-Senses Quiz to discover your neglected sense and use this self-knowledge as a shortcut to a richer life.
Dive Deeper
- 35 Ways to Look at Art
- How to Increase Focus and Productivity Using the Five Senses
- 30 Ways to Boost Creativity Using the Five Senses
- Do You Have “Foreground” and “Background” Senses?
- I Embrace Anything That Helps Me to Experience the World More Deeply
- Is There a Place You’d Like to Visit Every Day?
- Exploring the Five Senses: Notes From the Sensonics Smell Test
- How to Heighten Your Senses
- Why and How You Might Create an “Audio Apothecary”
Suggestions for Tuning In
To experience the profound power of tuning in to the physical world, you might…
- Explore a sense using an experiment or illusion (play with kinetic sand, watch a video of the McGurk effect)
- Share a sense-experience with others (attend a concert, visit a perfume counter)
- Indulge in a modest splurge to better enjoy a sensation (freshly-ground spices, oil paints)
- Reflect on memories sparked by a sensation (play a song from your teenage years, wear an old sweatshirt)
- Make a daily visit (botanic garden, coffee shop)
- Identify healthy, sensory treats (take a bath, flip through a book of photographs)
- Deepen a sense-experience through education (learn guitar, attend a tea tasting)
Want an even quicker shot of vitality and exuberance? Try these exercises right now:
Life in Five Senses Video Series
This video series features five mini experiments to explore your senses. You can do these experiments in any order you’d like. You can also download and print the Reflection Sheet to record your experiences.
Explore your sense of sight
Try This at Home experiment: Turn your smartphone to grayscale; sometimes, we enjoy something more when we enjoy it less.
What you’ll need:
- Your smartphone
- Optional: Reflection Sheet
Explore your sense of hearing
Try This at Home experiment: Add beautiful sounds and clear clatter.
What you’ll need:
- Your smartphone
- Optional: Reflection Sheet
Explore your sense of smell
Try This at Home experiment: Test your sense of smell by plugging nose.
What you’ll need:
- Something with a strong smell
- Something with a strong taste
- Optional: Reflection Sheet
Explore your sense of taste
Try This at Home experiment: Taste a few drops of Heinz ketchup. Can you detect sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami?
What you’ll need:
- Heinz ketchup
- A cup of coffee
- Optional: Reflection Sheet
Explore your sense of touch
Try This at Home experiment: Have fun with cornstarch—squeak it between your fingers, make into a non-Newtonian fluid.
What you’ll need:
- Cornstarch
- Optional: Reflection Sheet