Making sense of ourselves

Making sense of ourselves

How do we make sense of ourselves and the world around us?    

Our five senses of sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing enable us to interact with our external and internal environment, providing us with information to make choices and strengthen our chances of survival. 

Smell, our olfactory sense, is directly linked to the limbic system: the most ancient and primitive part of the brain that deals with emotions, which explains why we usually have an emotional response to smells, although this can be as personal as the memories they trigger.

There are 6 basic types of smell: sweet, fruity, spicy, burned, putrefaction-like and paint (terebenthene). From the 110,000 or so smells in nature, humans perceive about 100-200. In addition to getting our digestive juices flowing (have you ever notices that your mouth waters when you see or even think of your favourite foods?), what we often refer to as taste is actually smell.  Our sense of smell is 10,000 times more sensitive than our sense of taste, which explains why we may not be able to taste or enjoy our food as much when we are 'blocked up' with the cold.  


Whilst our digestive juices can be triggered by our sense of smell and sight, the process of breaking down and digesting food starts with the mouth. If you chew a piece of bread long enough for example, the enzyme amylase in saliva will convert starch into sugar, which is why it's important to chew, chew, chew. Taste, our gustatory sense, can recognise 5 basic kinds of taste: sweet, sour, bitterness, salty and umami (savoury).

The sense of sight, our visual sense is considered to be the most complex of the five senses. Just as with our eyes, we don't always see thing in 20 - 20 and can often have a blind spot.  

Auditory perception, is our ability to perceive sound by detecting vibrations.  Different sounds can elicit a range of emotional responses from soothing to fear.  

As everything is made up of vibration and pure energy, JustBe In-Tune Music is based on the DNA of the essential oils contained within the signature blends. The music's written in 432hz - the same frequency as birds and bees.

Whilst the other four senses are found in specific parts of the body, our sense of touch is found in all - originating from tiny nerve endings found in the dermis layer of the skin. A couple of 'Sense-sational' facts: the skin is the largest organ of the body and 60% of what is applied onto the skin is absorbed. With the average woman applying 200+ chemicals onto her skin every day, it may be time to consider a natural alternative.

Are we limited to five senses? What about our sense of fun, sense of purpose, sense of self

According to Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) in addition to the 5 senses, our world is filtered through our beliefs, values, experiences and assumptions. How we act and feel is based on our perception of the world rather than the real world.

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Anais Nin

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