Everyday Mindfulness — Get Your Superhero Senses Tingling

Are You Ready To Turn The Volume Up Way Past 11?

Photo by Joey Nicotra on Unsplash

Please use these mindfulness exercises liberally, they may literally change your life.

This was the first mindfulness exercise I can ever remember doing. At the age of 14 (pre-internet, when dinosaurs were still the main mode of transport). I was going through a martial arts phase and read everything I could get my hands on and came across this Ninja/Shaolin/Samurai technique. It woke me up to the world around me and by the end of the week I used my new perceptual awareness to walk for an hour across my busy hometown eyes-closed using primarily hearing, proprioception and memory — and not get mowed down by a grumbling T-Rex.

Senses Or Perception?

Aristotle postulated five senses but science tells us that there are at least 21 and maybe as many as 33 senses. Which is mind boggling, everything from how much salt is in the blood to our perception of time. And this is what this method is really about — focusing and enhancing our perceptions. We’ll use perceptions/senses interchangeably here.

“The bottom line is that we make a mistake in concentrating on senses, and […] how many there are…