Guided Sensory Meditation

Description

This guided mental exercise is like a workout for your senses, strengthening and expanding them. Powerful senses are a vital tool in our nature/bushcraft toolkit, and enhance our life in all other areas. I make this a regular practice, often before I go to bed, and it only takes a few minutes once you get the "feel" for it (pun intended). Practiced regularly, you'll notice a big difference in your awareness and ability to "come to your senses" instead of being trapped in thoughts.

**Skip to 4:15 to go directly to the meditation, skipping the introduction.

If you practice it outside, it can serve as a sort of "communion" with the ecosystem you're in. After a few minutes in this meditative state, you'll know a lot more about the animals, birds, weather, terrain, and location of any human influence in the area. It's the perfect way to begin "setting camp" during your adventures. Once you find your campsite, sit for a few minutes in this meditation, and for the rest of the stay, you'll be more "tuned in" to your environment.

Visit http://rewildu.com/classes/ for unique educational opportunities in rewilding, wilderness skills, mindfulness, martial arts, primal fitness, homesteading, and more.

Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods,opening your senses,enhancing your senses,strengthening your senses,guided meditation,Yoga

Video Transcription

you've heard me say it before our senses are one of the best tools that we have not only out in the wilderness we're in a bushcraft setting but in our regular lives as well we live in a world where we've created all of the sensory stimuli that shouts at us all the time so our cell phones ring loudly to get our attention horns on carbs glare at us stop lights bright red bright green bright yellow all of these things that shout at us shout at us so that we don't really have to be tuned in with our senses in order to function in our daily lives in our world of Technology and civilization that we've created but if you get out into nature your senses are key they are what allow you to tune in to all the rhythms that are going on out here in the world in the real world but here's the thing back in our regular civilized lives where everything's shouting at us we actually aren't getting that much out of life unless our senses are also alive consider a conversation with somebody we've learned just to tune in to the words we often have arguments and disagreements you said that no you said that and that's because we're only tuned in to the most gross sensory stimuli that's happening in the conversation and that's the actual words if we could look into a person's eye

if we could see their body language if we could see their facial expressions there would be completely new layers of understanding it would be happening even in an average conversation with your your spouse your friend your children our senses give us so much if we can cultivate them and open them up and get out of that default mode of living in our culture which says only pay attention to something if it's glaring blaring and shouting out loud reweld University almost every student learns a sensory meditation and what this is is just an exercise for your senses and it helps us to tune in to most of the sensory stimuli that is going ignored all the time and people have told me that they like this so much that they want me to put it online so that other people can benefit from it so the remainder of this video is going to be a guided meditation essentially if you want to make use of it and I urge you to give it a try just sit quietly listen to the words and let me guide you through it your eyes will be closed for most of it so I just have a winter scene out in front of you and you don't really need to watch it just to hear my words and what I say now guide you through opening up each of your senses in turn and then in the end opening up all of your senses in a very special way so I hope that you get something out of this and would love to hear your thoughts your feelings in any experiences you have with it you

this exercise will increase the powers of your senses by expanding the range of their capabilities in effect you're learning to tune in to more of the information that's already there the more you practice the sensory meditation the more your senses will start to take in more and more of the world around you if you practice it enough you will begin to feel like your senses have become almost superhuman compared to what they felt like before after the description of each sense I'll be silent in the video for time to give you a chance to really soak in to each sense and expand it for the first two senses I'll pause for about 30 seconds and for the rest of them i will give you about a minute that may be too short a time for you so feel free to hit pause take as much time as you like to really soak into things and then hit play again knowing that you'll have about another minute before the audio starts up again let's begin imagine for a moment that you can close all of your senses just allow them to shut down and quiet and then open up your sense of taste I realize you're probably not eating or drinking anything in this moment but still there are subtle sensations of taste available to you just settle into that sense of taste for a moment and see if you can perceive anything

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now you can let the sense of taste quiet and close now you can open your sense of smell just breathe in quietly deeply through your nose and see if there are any sensations any sense or smells that come to you take a moment with it and just notice

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now your sense of smell can close away and you can open up your tactile sense your sense of touch this is a powerful sense in most of us humans and yet it is so underused almost all of the tactile sensation that we encounter goes unnoticed as you're sitting notice the pressure of your bot or legs on the chair or the floor the sensation of your clothes against your skin your eyes where they're pressed together your tongue inside your mouth as you breathe the expansion and contraction of your muscles in the air going in and out of your nose or mouth become that sense of touch see if you can become aware of the full range of tactile sensation that you are now in this moment experiencing see it as a symphony and taken whole symphonic sound the whole symphonic touch

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now your sense of touch can gently close we'll open up our sense of hearing we've learned to focus on one sound at a time to label those songs but here see if you can take in again the whole symphony notice any sounds that are coming to you there's no need to identify them or label them simply here if you're outside sometimes even when you're inside your sense of hearing can expand over miles as passively as you can become your sense of hearing and just take it in you

now your sense of hearing can gently close and in a moment I'll ask you to open your eyes before you open your eyes become aware of what's visually available to you even with your eyes closed you may notice colors shapes take it in

our sense of sight has become very very focused only on our foveal vision what's directly in front of us yet our site takes in a wide peripheral range when you open your eyes see if you can become aware with a soft gaze of the full peripheral vision that's available to you become aware of light shadow geometry texture simply take in the whole scene again like a symphony and allow yourself to become your sense of vision open up your eyes and take in your whole visual field you

now your eyes can softly close now we're going to open up all of our senses but we're going to do it in a very special way I'd like you to entertain for a moment the possibility that instead of five senses you only have one sense the sense of touch vision is really light waves touching your eyes hearing is really sound waves touching your eardrums smell and taste are chemicals touching your tongue or the inside of your nose in a moment when I ask you to open your eyes you're going to engage this single sense this single tactile sense that encompasses all of your other senses and in this way you're going to become a single sensing organism reaching out and taking in the full sensory experience that is happening in the very moment that you're in I'll ask you now to open your eyes and to open all of your senses as a single sense and become that sensing organism you

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this concludes the meditation of the senses and again the more you practice it the more your senses will open and become more and more aware please let me know if you try it what you experience and if you do notice an opening of your senses over time thank you so much for watching and listening you