Maximize your springtime as a sensuous experience. Launch yourself completely and playfully into this fantastic season. You’ll simply feel great, make yourself smile from the inside out and hone your “savoring” skills. Spring is the perfect time for you to immerse yourself in a natural, sensory experience.
Make your life richer and more pleasurable by exploring spring with all five senses—or more accurately, all seven.
Be Watchful. Spring has sprung early this year—after a mild winter across the U.S. There’s a beautiful, lush layer of light-green growth that has fluffed the tree branches and shrubbery, and tender, leafy shoots and colorful early blooms are everywhere. The spring season in all of its glory is a sight to behold. The color, texture and movement of this visual splendor create opulence and intensity. Be present—go outside or sit beside an open window—and take in the vivid greens and yellows and pinks and purples. Watch the wind blow the tender leaves and watch the branches sway back and forth. See the raindrops slowly form puddles in shallow places on the lawn or stone path or sidewalk. Experience springtime with your eyes.
Listen Closely. Layer your sensory experience by becoming more aware of the auditory splendor around you. When you watched the wind, did you hear the leaves rustle or the whoosh of the harsher wind that blew in the spring storm? The tweeting and twirping of songbirds is a predictable image that poets use to evoke spring, but listen more sharply: do you hear the raindrops outside your window or on your rooftop? Do you hear the laughter of children playing outside, coaxed out of their houses by the warmer weather? Unless you live in a tropical place, you’d forgotten the whining drone of leaf blowers and weed-eaters until a new spring called out landscapers like a small army summoned for active duty. Listen: your neighbor is singing while she plants her container garden with tomatoes, peppers and kitchen herbs. The unique sounds of spring are infinite.
Be Mindful…by getting In Touch this spring. Turn some soil in generous mounds with your hands—even if your gardening is from a bag of potting soil. Join the Landscaping Army and pick up twigs and broken branches under a grove of trees and feel their rough bark or jagged edges. Run your fingers tenderly along the edges of a flower petal. Feel the rush of water through the garden hose—the primal energy of nourishing your grass or garden with fresh water. Consider this, too: the reaching and bending you do during your spring chores outdoors adds another level of sensory experience called kinesthetic experience. If the winter restricted your outdoor fun to brisk walks, the springtime offers your body—arms, shoulders, back and hips—the chance to lift, crouch and bend as you clean up outside or arrange your outdoor furniture for another year of having fun and making memories with family and friends on your deck, terrace or poolside.
Catch a Whiff of springtime. When I imagine the scents of spring, I conjure up the scent of confederate jasmine, of freshly mown grass mixed with wild onions, of smoldering hot charcoal briquettes. Spring rains saturate the whole landscape with a distinctive smell of earthen moisture, and the soil beneath your feet gives more easily under your weight as you walk in a pasture, garden or park. Breathe deeply and slowly as you relax in the spring air and notice the difference between the heavy weight of humid air and the light crispness of the air on a cooler spring day. You’re feeling even more alive than before; enjoy it.
Taste the Lusciousness of spring fruits and crisp vegetables. Spring introduces fresh, crisp, tender tastes to our palates and conjures up such delicious sensory memory, too. Notice the moist nectar of spring berries as you swallow each juicy morsel and feel the sensory sensation of organic experience: the awareness of your body’s internal function. You feed your body delicious tastes as your mouth, tongue and tummy register sensory delight and the satisfaction of gustatory pleasure. Your plate is a colorful and delicious array of new tastes, bursting from a dormant winter when your meals were created from a different sort of comfort food. Berries, spring lettuces, tender root vegetables—your spring smorgasbord is fresh and fantastic. Indulge in the tastes of springtime.
Be a pleasure-seeker this season. Experience springtime with a fresh perspective and a new awareness. Captivate yourself by its sensory beauty and splendor. As Joseph Campbell once said, “People aren’t really seeking the meaning of life. We seek the experience of being truly alive.” Seek that experience in the pleasure of this season then. Immerse yourself sensuously in springtime and feel
Truly Alive,
Dr Mell
