How Your 5 Senses Can Help You Stop Worrying

Food foraging seems to be all the rage these days. Travelers can set out to forage in forests and oceans for unique culinary experiences, gradually coming to appreciate how much the natural world has to offer. Foraging, at its core, is about sensory exploration. Its pleasure comes from noticing new tastes, shapes, or textures that we would ordinarily overlook and inhabiting a state of mind that is open to surprise. This seems logical when it comes to enjoying food and drink, but our work shows that our five senses can do much more. They can also support greater mental health. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] In one of the largest neuroimaging studies of formerly depressed patients, we observed that negative emotion robs people of their ability to sense—it literally turns off the sensory parts of the brain. In the absence of sensation, brain networks for self-judgment and rumination run unfettered—a neural recipe for worry and hopelessness. The solution may lie in focusing the foraging lens inward and exploring our internal sensory world, a technique known as “sense foraging.” By activating sensory parts of the brain, we can disrupt habitual self-judgment and rumination by giving our thinking minds new information to consider. Read More: ‘Forest Bathing’ Is Great for Your Health. Here’s How to Do It One of the brain’s most basic functions is to take random and noisy input from the senses and repackage it in ...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized freelance Source Type: news