Aerobic exercises get life-sustaining oxygen into parts of the body often starved. Aerobics for your senses have the same effect, enlivening them, waking them up, which in turn leads to a higher level of creative thinking activity.



Our five senses of taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing bombard the brain every second with millions of pieces of information. To bystanders, the children may be making a terrible din, but the mother is hardly aware of it until a friend says: "How do you put up with it!" The lesson? We quickly get accustomed to our environment so it becomes the norm, which means we fail to take notice of detail and the seeds of creative ideas.

The Challenge

So here is our challenge - to get the senses to break out of the box so we start noticing things again.

Here is an "aerobic brain exercise" to get creative "oxygen" to those senses:

Select in your mind something familiar. To illustrate what we mean we will choose a simple common object, A BOOK. Think of a particular book you enjoy reading. Now close your eyes and wrap your 5 senses around this object in your imagination and really live the experience.

TOUCH

What does it feel like to pick it up? Is it heavy, light? What is the texture of the cover? Glossy or grainy? Do the pages feel rough or glossy when you turn them over?

HEARING

What kind of sounds do you the pages make as you turn them? Is it a rustling sound due to fine paper, or a stiff sound caused by thick paper?

SMELL

Does the book have a distinctive smell? Do you detect a unique smell from the ink on the page as you scrutinize it with your nose?

TASTE

While not suggesting we take a bite, does your imagination suggest a certain taste? Our brains are amazing association factories. Often we associate a certain flavor with an object. What flavor is your book?

SIGHT

What catches your eye as you view the book on the table from the other side of the room? Is it the size? The color? The title? The artwork?

Once you have focused the senses on a specific object in this way, the once familiar object now takes on a life of its own and can evoke quite different emotions and reactions!

Just Try It

Skeptical? Just try it! It will only take between one and two minutes. The images imprinted on your brain can stay with you for a very long time. That is the power of concentration.

Where is all this leading us?

Creative thinking activity depends in part on the massive input that comes from the sensations our external organs transmit to the brain. Linking the most unlikely sometimes produces brilliant ideas! Applying these associations from your imagination to your task in hand can produce great results.

CONCLUSION: Try this aerobic brain exercise for your senses just before your next project or problem which requires serious thinking or creative thinking activity! You will never view familiar things the same way again and you might just give birth to a brilliant solution or idea.

Copyright (c) 2009 Michael A Jones