Boost Your Five Senses
Throughout this enduring pandemic, people have been exposed to an incredible amount of stress. For much of this time, it has been difficult to find respite in the usual places, as our daily activities have been highly restricted in social interactions through digital technology. This website aims to provide the tools for enhancing daily life through sensory stimulation.
Five Senses Experience
The website is a resource for those who are looking for the activation of one or more of their senses - taste, smell, vision, hearing, and touch - to call up positive memories and emotions to enhance their overall wellbeing, bring joy to their life, reduce anxiety, stress, and depression. Feel free to navigate the website to focus on one sensation or try them all. Each person can experience sensations differently. Please discover what works best for you.
Taste
Taste is stimulated in human beings when chemical compounds are activated by special receptors in the mouth (Fleming, 2013). It influences the decision-making of what to eat, how to digest those foods, and recognize foods as familiar or new (Fleming, 2013). In turn, the act of recognizing foods is a physical sensation that can lead to physiological and mental outcomes (Fleming, 2013).
Vision
The eyes are the visual portals of the human being that allows the processing of environmental stimuli into neural understanding (Smart Vision Labs, 2017). By converting light into the eyes, the brain can determine these visuals based on factors such as distance, brightness, and colour (Smart Vision Labs, 2017).
Hearing
Hearing is the sensation that allows us to communicate and interact with other people and the environment through the auditory system. Sounds of the environment (e.g., human voice, music) travels into the ear, which is the human organ that makes use of aural stimuli to obtain information about the world.
Smell
The smell is an aid in survival and processing in daily life, such as feeding, mating, and fight-or-flight responses (Sherman, 2019). Otherwise known as olfaction, airborne molecules enter through the nose (olfactory channel) and attach to receptor cells of the mucus membranes called olfactory bulbs, which sends a neural response to the brain (Sherman, 2019). These centres of connection also connect to the limbic system, which is an area of the brain that regulates emotion (Sherman, 2019).
Touch
Touch involves the sensation of specialized receptors within three major tissue layers of the skin (the outer epidermis, middle dermis, and inner hypodermis), which sends signals through the nerves to the brain (Visible Body, 2021). Not all receptors are created equal, making the skin on some body parts more sensitive than others (Visible Body, 2021). When the skin comes in contact with external stimuli, the receptors register this feeling very quickly, sending messages to the brain upon contact. Certain stimuli can help the nervous system find a sense of calmness.
Stress and its Influence on Senses
Stress is defined as an intrinsic or extrinsic stimulus that creates a biological, physical, expressive or behavioural response of the human body (Bouayed, Rammal, & Soulimani, 2009; Yaribeygi et al., 2017). These environments can lead to the behaviour of anxiety, an aversive emotional state entices feelings of fear and flight, avoiding the source of danger, which range from increased blood pressure to severe diagnoses such as "panic attacks, phobias, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder, which can influence an individual's perception of their senses (Bouayed, Rammal, & Soulimani, 2009, p. 63). This website allows visitors to consider their sensory health as part of their self-care routine, noticing the impact of stress in everyday life. Enter into this virtual space to find ways to consider your health first.