When most people start to meditate regularly, they primarily use only a couple of senses. Typically, these are hearing and touch. However, adding a couple more senses like smell and sight can significantly enhance the mediation experience. I am going to discuss each of the five senses and how they can be used to turbo charge your mediation practice.
Sight
Vision is one of the primary ways we gather information from our environment. It gives us depth perception for knowing where things are located, gives us a means of identifying what we are attracted to, and plays a big role in memory formation. Sight is a key factor in all we do, know, and experience. In mediation it can be used to help us focus our minds. When it comes to mediation, we traditionally believe sight is a distraction to focus. This is the main reason why we close our eyes. However, this is contrary to reality. Our eyes are hardwired to our brains. Keeping this in mind, it is easy to understand the close connection between vision and focus. A meditation exercise that incorporates vision is gazing at a lit candle. The object is to gaze at the candle keeping your mental focus on it for as long as possible. When your mind drifts the candle can be used as an anchor to bring your attention back to focusing on one thing. The longer you can gaze at the candle and focus completely on it, the stronger your ability to concentrate becomes. This exercise is very similar to focusing on your breath.
Touch
Our sense of touch allows us to use a hands-on approach to understanding our world. It allows us to know when something is too hot or cold, enjoy the feel of a soft pillow, and form a sense of intimacy with a significant other. When it comes to meditation touch can be used to feel tension in our bodies and allow the tension to relax away. It can also be used to form emotional connections for developing mindfulness and compassion for others. Doing a Body Scan meditation is a great way to become more in tune with your body. When you are more in tune with your body you get to know yourself even better than you thought possible. Once you have a good grasp of yourself and what makes you tick, it is easier for you to relate to others and develop more compassion for them.
Smell
This is one of my favorite senses to employ for enhancing my mediation experience. Our sense of smell is another dominate sense in forming memories. We all have certain smells that take us back to a specific time and place that is significant to us. Certain scents can also be used to help us relax and ease tension. This is the primary use for the sense of smell in mediation. Aroma therapy helps you to relax both your mind and body. I recommend using scented candles or a scented oil diffuser to fully utilize your sense of smell in your mediation practice.
Taste
Our sense of taste is what allows us to enjoy eating and nourishing our bodies. It also lets us know what might be harmful to our bodies with a bitter flavor. Taste is a great sense to utilize when you are doing shorter spot or micro meditations through out the day. I describe these two types of mediations in my post “How to Make Time to Meditate”. You focus on the taste of something you are eating. Is it sweet, salty, creamy, or maybe it has no taste at all? Focusing on the act of eating brings you to the present moment and gives your mind a moment to rest from your busy day. This brief respite gives you a moment to recharge your energy levels both physically and mentally.
Hearing
Our sense of hearing is very similar to our sense of sight in that it allows us to absorb information from our environment. Also like our sense of sight it is a key factor in the way we experience the world around us. What makes hearing so valuable in meditation is its ability to help us form mental imagery and follow instructions from guided meditations. It is also a very powerful tool in reprogramming our minds to change our belief system of what is possible in our lives. Transcendental meditation utilizes hearing for this exact purpose. Hearing is perhaps the most useful sense for mediation.
Now we have a better understanding of how to utilize the five senses in mediation. I hope you will use some of the techniques I have shared to take your meditation practice to the next level. One thing I want to point out is our senses are not distractions to mediation. Remember the core essence of meditation is the ability to focus on one thing. When our senses are properly used in mediation, they make it dramatically easier to achieve that goal.