3 Ways to Enhance Your Senses and Alter Your Consciousness

Our senses are the building blocks of conscious experience. Could manipulating your senses manipulate your consciousness?

In Against Creativity, Oli Mould relates the story of an architect who lost his sight. The architect found that he experienced cities differently. This change to one of his senses engendered wholesale changes in his consciousness.

We can alter consciousness by undergoing the loss of sensory input. Is it possible to turn the dial in the other direction?

Enhancing our senses is a matter of attention and play, as is all skill development.

Consider proprioception — our sense of our body in space. I was recently informed of a study on professional soccer players. It found that high-ranking players perceived time more slowly than amateurs. Experience changed as sensory skill increased.

Enhance your own proprioception by making use of your body in ways that test and challenge this sense. Try juggling, or drawing. Each of these also draw upon sight and touch.

Take another group of senses, such as smell and taste. Improve these by paying attention to what you eat. Close your eyes and inhale the food’s aromas. Chew your food carefully. Become conscious of the feelings and thoughts these sensations engender.

Improve your hearing by listening to music with greater attention. Rather than receiving a song as a wall of sound, listen to the same track on…