All the 80% left SENSE & FEEL and you are mostly unaware of it!
1&3 - Johnson Tsang
2 - Illustration Javier Jaén - Article New Yorker.
1- Does sensing define your thoughts?
I always felt our senses define reality, rather than reality define our senses.
As a kiddo, I was always told, that I complicated things too much; felt too much about too many things.
I was asked to look for simplicity,
and although it pissed me off so much! …. I tried to fit in.
Today, I understand why it never made sense, because I didn’t make it all up,
I did feel it all, and it was very real for me.
It is why India was such a nourishing and inspiring Home, and why I had the power to hijack my family to Australia, because it was as meaningful as a death threat.
Throughout my design practice, I create many WOW environments and find great pleasure in witnessing the experience of my customers. This was possible because my sensory network although not always easy to navigate is rich, deep, and quirky.
2 - How much do our senses define our reality?
In the last 2 weeks, I learned how much our senses define our reality,
and this takes me yet again to a whole new dimension.
A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled onto the course on Sensory Intelligence by Anne-Marie Lombard and felt it was the perfect addition to loop in, a strong structure around the Intuitive Intelligent Institute, the Polyvagal Theory and the Biophilia design course that made me create my new program.
Although still in the middle of the 12-module’s course, I am under the spell of the sophistication of our brains and how its activity to Sense first, is the gate defining our reality.
The moment our brain receives a sensory stimulation, 100 billion neurons fire through a network of quadrillions of synaptic connections, choose and filter, partly through The RAS ((Reticular active system in the brainstem) part of the salient network, transmute and produce neurotransmitters, identify and communicate your level of comfort and safety to your Autonomic, Dorsal or Vagal Nervous System, through your hypothalamus and Amygdala and categorise emotions and anchor a memory in the Limbic system.
All of these BEFORE you can take 1 breath and know anything about it!
80% of your Brain's activity
focuses on making
SENSE & FEELINGS
….
on 20% is left to THOUGHTS!
By the way….
That makes me wonder why the world still values so much what it thinks rather than what it feels...
3 - So your senses define your reality,
But could you create a reality to define your senses?
What if you could design an enriched environment based on your sensorial thresholds that shape your well-being, reduce your heart rate, modulate your blood sugar, regulate your production of stress hormones and neurotransmitters,
A space where you feel you belong, that makes you feel safe and welcome, a workspace where you have implemented strategies with salient stimuli helping to self-regulate your attention, focus, energy, stress, and creativity.
And beyond the design of your zoom background, that has your back, create an environment with applied and bespoke strategies to your own unique sensory landscape, levelled with each sense threshold, transforming your workspace into an ultimate well-being, well-sensing, enriched environment you will thrive in.
The applications in workspaces are seen in hospitals, in call centres, and in large corporate offices and they often overlap with Biophilic design and architectural principles.
When we understand that 90% of a company’s cost are its employee,
focusing on their well-being is a no-brainer!
We see a new focus on multi-sensory designs in large infrastructures like restoring igloos, hospital multi-sensory rooms for mental health patients, attention to sound pollution and creation of white noise, modular standing workstations, natural light and temperature unit regulators, and so many more applications.
I would take these strategies a step forward and add my passionate voice to the ones of Ivy Ross (Vice President of Design for Hardware at Google and Susan Magsamen (founder and director of the International Arts+Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University), who argue in the book “your brain on arts” that
The experience of the arts and beauty biologically changes us
and is one of the main reasons we have so far survived!
So jump in and question your space.
Is it allowing you to self-regulate?
Are you asking the right questions?
Is it making you happy & joyful, focused & creative, confident & curious?
Wishing you a gorgeous day or night ... wherever you are on the wondrous planet...
Agathe Lazaro