Wonderbringers Newsletter with Monica Parker
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Hello Wonderseekers!
Spring is sprung, and my hay fever is in full force. I feel like I have a brigade of tiny, tickly pollen soldiers marching through my sinuses. The sensation is quite unpleasant, and the accompanying stuffed nose means I can't smell or taste very well either. My eyes are itchy too, so my contacts resemble the window of a sauna, foggy and wet. It's fair to say my senses are a little haywire from the hay fever.
It was Aristotle who first developed the idea of our five primary senses—sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste—and our senses are far more critical to our existence than we may appreciate. For example, smell is the quickest way we sense danger, as smells serve to warn us far faster than our sight or hearing can. Research shows that hearing loss increases dementia risk, as it contributes to faster atrophy of the brain. It’s well known that skin-to-skin touch helps babies bond to their parents, but it also reduces the mortality rate of preemies by up to 25%. And using a combo of all our senses helps us retain learning more effectively.
But we have many more senses than just those traditional five ‘exteroceptive’ senses that perceive elements of our external world. Our ‘interoceptive’ senses tell us when we are hungry or tired, ‘equilibrioception’ keeps us with balanced through a delicate interplay between our inner ear, our eyes and the soles of our feet, and ‘proprioception’ helps us know where our various body parts are in relation to our environment (like being able to touch your nose with your eyes closed).
And of course, there is our ‘sixth sense,’ which can sense things just outside of our ‘normal’ senses, like sensing someone is staring at you or that something is going to happen just before it does. Scientists find that people who are higher in these sixth senses are more adept at synthesising stimuli and hence can interpret their environment in a way that seems otherworldly. They also have more active mirror neurons and so are more empathetic than others, as well as more wonderprone.
How can you keep your senses sharp (other than taking a hay fever tablet now and then)? Try this great sensory meditation described by world-renowned mindfulness expert Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Some wonderbringers for me this week:
Watch: ‘Electric Garden’ short documentary: How an artist transformed a dilapidated hunting lodge into a house made of dreams.
No two people see the same exact rainbow. Here’s why.
Touch, our most complex sense: A landscape of cellular sensors.
I’ll be joining a panel on Thursday, June 12th, discussing the use of AI in hiring. I imagine it won't come as a surprise to my Wonderbringers readers that I’m not the biggest fan. If you want to join me while I am the ‘skunk at the garden party’ of a bunch of AI enthusiasts, you can register here.
With wonder,
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