Symphony of Senses Meditation

When I was living in the woods for three months at Two-Wolf’s camp, we’d often do a meditation that expanded our senses. Over time, I adapted it so that it helps not only to awaken our individual senses, but to integrate our senses so that we can experience life as a symphony. One of the nice things about this meditation is that it is really six different meditations, so that you can experience just one or two if you like, or move through the whole series.

Here’s how to experience it for yourself –

Close your eyes and lie down somewhere comfortable. Outdoors is best, but inside will do. Take a few long, slow breaths and relax.

First Meditation: Smell

Begin with the sense that is most overlooked. Smell. Lying still, breathe in through your nose and see if you note any scents. Exhale, and smell again. See if you note anything different. Don’t label any of the smells – it’s not important to know what they are. Just smell them, and see what each smell ‘feels’ like. Then take three final breaths through your nose, and try to smell the mixture of scents. Let them mingle without any attempt to break them into distinct smells. See if you can sense them as ‘one’.
                                                                                                                             Delight in your senses!
Second Meditation: Taste

Now forget about smell and pay attention to your sense of taste. See what sensations of taste you are experiencing. Lick your lips, and see if you taste something different. If there is something edible nearby, place it in your mouth and experience the sensation.

Third Meditation: Touch

With your eyes still closed, leave taste behind and pay attention to your sense of touch. Begin at your feet, and feel whatever sensations you are experiencing there. Perhaps it is wind over your bare toes, or the squeeze and heat of your shoes. Move up your legs, feeling both inside and outside your body – the lay of your pants over your skin, the tickle of an ant walking over your ankle, the feeling of your weight on the earth. Continue up your body, feeling each sensation you can find. Again, don’t label them – just feel each one. When you reach the top of your head, take a moment to feel your entire body at once, no longer trying to distinguish between the feeling of your belly rumbling and the pressing of your back into the ground. See if you can, even for a moment, experience all of these sensations as one.

Fourth Meditation: Hearing

Now pay attention to your hearing. There are many sounds around us all the time that we completely miss. Notice each sound that comes to your ears -- not labeling, just hearing. Then see if you can experience all of the sounds as one. This is often the easiest sense to experience this with, as we’re used to picking out certain sounds in music (listen to that voice or that trumpet!), but we’re also able to hear the whole sound at once.

Fifth Meditation: Vision

Finally, vision. This is our most distracting sense, and often our most undisciplined. Open your eyes, and without looking around, see what is in your field of vision. Notice what things look like straight ahead of you, and what things look like in your peripheral vision. You’ll notice that your vision takes in much more than you usually notice. Once you think you’ve noticed each ‘thing’ within your visual field, see if you can experience all of your vision at once, as a single, unbroken field.

Sixth Meditation: Symphony of Senses

Our senses take on a beautiful richness when they can blend together, but we’ve become very habituated to focusing our attention on one thing, and often one sense, at a time. Beginning in the same order as the series of meditations (starting with your sense of smell), see if you can add one sense, then the next, allowing them to blend into a symphony of sensation. Often, this is very difficult at first – when we try to add a new sense, especially a powerful one such as hearing or vision, we tend to ignore all our other senses. But the more we practice, the more we can begin to experience all of our senses as a symphony. The result is that we daily become more aware of sensations that we’ve hitherto ignored. The world becomes richer and more vibrant, and we may find ourselves delighted by ‘ordinary’ things, like the patter of rain on the rooftop or the feeling of a sudden breeze moving through our hair.

We’ve been trained to constrain our senses – this meditation serves to open them up again so that they are free to do what they’re supposed to. You might be amazed at what your senses are capable of experiencing!

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