Sensehacking: How to Use the Power of Your Senses for Happier, Healthier Living

you might well be a ‘sensory junkie’. This is a term used to describe those shoppers who crave multisensory stimulation.

We are, in other words, increasingly exposed to a simulated version of nature, which raises a crucial question to which we will return later: ‘What, if anything, is lost when we attempt to reproduce nature in the mediated sensorium?’ This issue becomes absolutely key when architects, designers and others try to capture the benefits of nature by pre

It is interesting to note the stress that is placed on the olfactory benefits of nature in the Far East. The focus of forest bathing is really on the inhaling of volatile substances called phytoncides. These antimicrobial organic compounds, derived from trees, include such wood essential oils as α-pinene and limonene. This focus on the olfactory co

It does not stop there, though, for one group of Italian psychologists reported that the size of the object we associate with a specific odour can influence our reaching behaviour too. They found that when we smell something small – think of a clove of garlic or a pistachio nut – then our motor system is automatically primed to pick up a small obje

In fact, creative solutions were up threefold following a good night’s sleep. What is more, we can also learn new contingencies between sounds and scents while we sleep. Furthermore, presenting sounds and scents associated with stimuli that were learned during the day while in slow-wave sleep helps people to consolidate their memories. However, bef

In her 1995 book Worlds of sense: Exploring the senses in history and across cultures, Constance Classen charts the evolution of the sensory landscape over time through an analysis of our attitudes toward roses. By scouring the works of Western writers, poets and gardeners, across the centuries, she finds that while early writers such as Pliny focu

Music is probably the single most important sensory cue as far as sensehacking exercise is concerned. It motivates us and it may even be used to entrain (or synchronize) our own behaviour to the musical beat. No surprises for guessing that loud, fast music works best. Music provides a highly effective means of modulating our mood and emotions, and

Moon Ribas has a seismic sense. An implant in her arm allows her to feel the earth’s seismic activity, with a sensor in her elbow vibrating every time an earthquake occurs anywhere on the planet.38 And there is also Neil Harbisson, a British artist who grew up in Catalonia and was born with achromatopsia, a severe form of colour blindness. He calls

When we smell something distinctive such as a strawberry, we tend to look preferentially at those objects that we associate with their source, and pick out objects much faster when in the presence of their distinctive scent or a sound associated with them.15 You can see, then, how an ambient scent or background music can do much more than merely in