How to use your 5 senses as a mindfulness practice

Stuck in your head? Busy mind? An over-thinker perhaps? Feeling stressed, anxious or overwhelmed? Worried about the future or ruminating about the past?

All of these significantly impact our sense of wellbeing and overall quality of life.

The following is a simple mindfulness exercise that you can easily incorporate into daily practice. The purpose of this is to use our five senses to nurture present-moment awareness, and become more embodied and attuned to both our internal as well as external environments:

• 5 things you can see - notice colours, shapes and textures
• 4 things you can touch - e.g. sensation of clothing, seating, feet on the floor, temperature, air on your skin
• 3 things you can hear - distant or near e.g. own breathing
• 2 things you can smell - e.g. food, freshly cut grass, plants, perfume, scented candle
• 1 thing you can taste - e.g. food or drink recently consumed

Reflective questions to consider

Grab a journal or open an app to jot down your thoughts.

1. How can I easily incorporate this into my day-to-day? 

Just taking 30 seconds throughout the day can help build your muscle memory/ neural pathways and with consistent practice can become a habit over time.

2. In what ways will this benefit me as a consistent practice? 

Think holistically as possible in terms of wellbeing, relationships, productivity etc.

3. Which of your senses do you prefer? 

We often have stronger preferences for some senses over others e.g. are you more visual, auditory (sounds), kinaesthetic (movement / tactile), auditory digital (thinker) etc.?

4. Which senses could you develop further? 

By developing under-utilised senses, we can add to the richness of our present-moment experience.

Give it a go and let me know how you get on.

My somatic and embodied coaching approach

By somatic coaching, I mean supporting clients to embody what they have learned in a physical way, as opposed to just acquiring information cognitively.

It is one thing to understand something intellectually – in my experience working with many clients, sustainable results come from embodying this knowledge. In other words, it becomes part of who you are. This requires conscious practice to begin with but, after a time, an unconscious habit/competence.

Mindfulness personal and professional tools

I am a big fan of mindfulness practice, so much so that I have incorporated it into my coaching approach. The following videos give you a taste of some of the personal and professional development tools that I share with my clients:

• 90 seconds grounding technique
• Building emotional intelligence, resilience and agility

Naming our emotions without judgment or attachment is another powerful mindfulness practice, as described in the second video above.

Emotions can be helpful information or data (i.e. what’s important to us, our values, when a boundary has been crossed) – we do not however have to act upon our emotions.

In fact, taking a pause between stimulus and response or emotional trigger and reaction can be very helpful – a mindful pause – to consider how to respond instead (if at all) rather than an automatic and unconscious reaction.

I hope you've found this article useful - do reach out and let me know what resonated for you or any further questions you may have.