How We Perceive and Connect with the World
How do we truly make sense of ourselves and the world around us?
Our five senses sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing are our gateways to both the external and internal worlds. They help us interpret our environment, make choices and ultimately, survive. But they also weave together our memories, emotions and experiences in ways that are deeply personal.
The Power of Smell
Our olfactory sense is directly connected to the limbic system – the ancient, emotional centre of the brain. This is why a scent can instantly trigger memories or emotions. Of the 110,000 smells in nature, humans can detect around 100–200. Our sense of smell is 10,000 times more sensitive than taste, which is why food can feel bland when we have a cold.
Taste – More Than Flavour
What we call taste is often a combination of taste and smell. Our gustatory sense recognises five basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. Digestion begins here too – enzymes in our saliva, like amylase, start breaking down starch into sugar, which is why chewing slowly matters.
The Complexity of Sight
Sight is our most complex sense, but even with 20/20 vision, we have blind spots – reminders that perception is never the whole picture.
Hearing and Vibration
Our auditory sense detects vibrations, with sounds capable of calming us or triggering fear. Everything is vibration, including music. That’s why JustBe In-Tune Music is composed in 432hz – the same natural frequency as birds and bees and inspired by the DNA of our essential oil blends.
The Sense of Touch
Found throughout the body, touch originates from nerve endings in the dermis. Our skin is our largest organ, absorbing up to 60% of what we apply. With the average woman using over 200 chemicals on her skin daily, choosing natural alternatives is worth considering.
Beyond the Five Senses
Are we truly limited to only five senses? What about our sense of fun, purpose, or self? Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) suggests that in addition to our senses, we filter the world through our beliefs, values, experiences, and assumptions.
As Anaïs Nin famously wrote:
“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
Perhaps true awareness comes not just from sharpening our senses but from expanding how we use them to connect with ourselves and the world.