FIRST EXERCISES

Seeing, Listening, Smelling and Tasting

Going Broadband

– extract from Chapter Three

All the exercises are good to do for half a minute a day. So once you can follow it, it's about two minutes for four exercises. Short periods reduce the concentrated work-load, make it easy, make it fun. First, if it's interesting or enjoyable you'll want to repeat it. And as well, short regular periods of stimulation act as a catalyst: it's the best way to tell your subconscious "it's time to remember".

Generally speaking – go outside – then:

Seeing

– extract from Welcome to the Panorama, and Chapter Three.

Find a blank wall, or a monotonous area of sky, or a boring focal point, and focus on it – but look at all the interesting things happening all around it. (Far easier to do outside where things are moving)

Listening – extract from The Simple Sense of Now, and Chapter Three.
Because sounds are often quiet or quick, and especially nowadays with the constant noise of machines, it is necessary to listen out, to listen actively.

Listen Out for Changes. Listen out for sudden sounds, nearby and in the distance. It depends on where you are and what sort of background noises there are, but i often find it useful to listen out for children and dogs. At night for hedgehogs and owls. You might not often hear them, that's irrelevant, listening out for them is the vital part.

Smelling

– extracts from Chapter Four.

Tasting and smelling are intrinsically connected, and they are a far stranger and deeper world than seeing and listening.

With tasting, i'm referring to the taste of our own body, this is part of your basic feeling of being alive and it's so taken for granted we don't notice it anymore. Start to discover it by noticing the contrasts, all the different taste areas on the lips, under the tongue and above it, behind the teeth, the roof of mouth and then as far down the throat as you can, maybe to your stomach..

The first smelling exercise is to notice that there is a difference in smell, between your 'in-breath' and your 'out-breath'. And at first, it's helpful to have something good to smell, a meal, or a flower, etc., or to have drunk whisky or coffee etc., then to develop the sense of smell notice the contrast between the 'in-smell' and the 'out-smell'.

This sensation is enhanced if you open your lips slightly, and then 'smell-in' and 'taste-out'.

There is an essential practical reason for developing smell-awareness by noticing the contrasts: If you only concentrate on the in-smell you will get dizzy, noticing the contrasting out-smell, regulates the speed of breathing.

Please continue with Chapter Two

Back to Chapter One : Individual Usage