Life in five senses : how exploring the senses got me out of my head and into the world
For more than a decade, Gretchen Rubin had been studying happiness and human nature. Then, one day, a visit to her eye doctor made her realize that she'd been overlooking a key element of happiness: her five senses. She'd spent so much time stuck in her head that she'd allowed the vital sensations of life to slip away, unnoticed. This epiphany lifted her from a state of foggy preoccupation into a world rediscovered by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. In this revelatory journey of self-experimentation, she explores the mysteries and joys of the five senses as a path to a happier, more mindful life. Drawing on cutting-edge science, philosophy, literature, and her own efforts to practice what she learns, she investigates the profound power of tuning in to the physical world. From the simple pleasures of appreciating the magic of ketchup and adding favorite songs to a playlist, to more adventurous efforts like creating a daily ritual of visiting the Met and attending Flavor University, Rubin show us how to experience each day with depth, delight, and connection. In the rush of daily life, she finds, our five senses offer us an immediate, sustainable way to cheer up, calm down, and engage the world around us-as well as a way to glimpse the soul and touch the transcendent. A Life in Five Senses is an absorbing, layered story of discovery filled with profound insights and practical suggestions about how to heighten our senses and use our powers of perception to live fuller, richer lives-and, ultimately, how to move through the world with more vitality and love.
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- ISBN: 9780593743904
- Physical Description xiv, 335 pages (large print) : illustrations ; 24 cm
- Edition Large print edition.
- Publisher [Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified], 2023.
Content descriptions
Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references. |
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Table of Contents
Life in Five Senses : How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and into the World
Section | Section Description | Page Number |
---|---|---|
Seeing What Was Missing | 3 | |
Coming to My Senses | 14 | |
Seeing: The Voluptuousness of Look! Why No One Notices the Gorilla | 27 | |
Looking for What's Overlooked | 34 | |
Gazing at Faces | 40 | |
Making the Daily Visit | 45 | |
Collecting Color | 51 | |
Immersing Myself in Sight | 59 | |
Asking How to See | 62 | |
Shaping What I See | 68 | |
Seeing More | 73 | |
Hearing: Snow on Water, or How Silence Can Be Noisy | 79 | |
Creating an Audio Apothecary | 86 | |
Attending a Concert | 94 | |
Bathing in Sound | 99 | |
Taking the Microphone | 103 | |
Listening Better | 106 | |
Making the Daily Visit | 112 | |
Turning Down the Noise | 116 | |
Turning Up the Silence | 120 | |
Hearing More | 124 | |
Smelling: The Fragrance of Hot Sun, or Why "Unscented" Is a Scent | 129 | |
Educating My Nose | 137 | |
What's That Smell? | 143 | |
Adding Fragrance and Eliminating Odor | 147 | |
Capturing Scent Memories | 150 | |
Making the Daily Visit | 152 | |
Feeling Closer to Others Through Smell | 156 | |
Smelling More | 158 | |
Tasting: The Taste of the Tea and the Cake, or Why Ketchup Is Magic | 163 | |
Writing a Tastes Timeline | 173 | |
Admiring Ketchup and Vanilla | 181 | |
Understanding; How Tastes Differ | 185 | |
Comparing Tastes | 191 | |
Sharing Taste Memories | 199 | |
Making the Daily Visit | 206 | |
Lifting Taste by Dropping Sight | 209 | |
Tasting More | 214 | |
Touching: My Brain Out on My Fingers, or Why Holding This Stone Is Lucky | 219 | |
Giving a Loving Touch | 225 | |
Reaching Out for Comfort and Delight | 229 | |
Drenching My Sense of Touch | 235 | |
Touching the Intangible | 239 | |
Using My Hands to Ignite My Imagination | 243 | |
Making the Daily Visit | 248 | |
Touching More | 252 | |
Onward: The Chief Inlets of Soul, or How the Body Can Minister to the Spirit (and Vice Versa) | 256 | |
More Delight | 260 | |
More Love | 264 | |
More Energy | 269 | |
More Imagination | 272 | |
More Memories | 276 | |
Be Gretchen | 280 | |
Epilogue: Wider Than the Sky | 287 | |
Acknowledgments | 291 | |
Try This at Home: A Five-Senses Jump-Start | 295 | |
Further Resources | 309 | |
Notes | 313 | |
Suggestions for Further Reading | 323 | |
List of Works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art | 333 |