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Sensory Exercise

Location: Indoors (a space where participants can sit in circle)

Time: 30 minutes

Materials: Sensory Exercise Handout (for facilitator)

Objectives

• To facilitate one’s agility in accessing sights, sounds, images, pictures, and associations with internal feelings of peace and beauty.

• To strengthen the sensory register, which serves as a bridge from short-term to long-term memory.

Directions

1. Describe the purpose of the activity and the way it will proceed.

2. Encourage participants to use their senses of sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing to access mental images. The images can be from the present, remembered from the past, or live in the imagination.

3. As each participant describes the imagery, instruct others in the group to use their imagination to experience those images in their own mind.

4. Select two volunteers for a short demonstration to the group.

• Facilitator: In the first round, we will use our sense of sight to notice things in the surroundings that are red, or things that you remember seeing that are red.

• Volunteer #1: I see a red shirt.

• Volunteer #2: I remember red hot candy.

• Facilitator: That’s good; now use the sense of smell and the color orange.

• Volunteer #1: I remember the smell of orange blossoms.

• Volunteer #2: I can remember the smell of a tangerine that has just been peeled.

5. Chooses a sensory channel and a color for each round.

6. Go around the circle, not moving too quickly, but encouraging participants to take the time to savor the images. The slower, more deliberate, and more expressive the participants are willing to be, the more that will be gained through the activity.

7. Have participants share at least ten expressions of one sensory channel-color combination prior to changing the channel or color.

Observations

The sensory register is associated with our senses—seeing (visual), hearing (auditory), moving (kinesthetic), feeling (tactile), and smelling (olfactory). The sensory register is involved in memories that last briefly, perhaps a few seconds or a few minutes, but are then forgotten. This activity was performed twice, once with a group of thirty-five and once with a group of twenty-two. With the larger group, it was markedly more difficult to engage the group, and several participants were unable to maintain the focus on sense and/or color. In the group of twenty-two, there was a greater awareness of the categorical designations and effort to comply with rotations. In the days following the activity, several women from the smaller group reported they had adapted the process into a bedtime relaxation exercise.

Inspired by: Childhood games with siblings.

Sensory Exercise HANDOUT

1. Think about:

Your current surroundings

Your memories

Your imagination

What is in your future?

2. Using one sensory modality:

Sight

Hearing

Smell

Touch

Taste

Temperature

3. Using one color:

Red

Orange

Yellow

Green

Blue

Indigo

Violet

Brown

Black

Gray

White

Clear

“Experience is the only teacher.”

MILTON H. ERICKSON