Each summer we select audience favourites from The Gist archives to share with all of you. This year we are doing a throwback to our early days with a series on the senses and their impact on our collective well-being. Not just our five physical senses but also our awareness which allows us to develop better habits of mind, feel more compassion for others and practice grateful living. Given the degree of upheaval and hyper-partisanship around the world there is no better time to revisit how we can think about and respond more critically to everything going on within and around us. Whether you've been with us from the beginning or are new to The Gist, we hope you enjoy this summer selection.
We have been exploring our sensory world through John Kabat Zinn's book 'Coming to Our Senses'. This week we examine what John calls 'our most delicately attuned sense'. Remarkably our noses can detect even the faintest aroma with even as little as a few parts per trillion. Our sense of smell is of course largely dependent on our environment and the molecules that are carried by the air around us.
But even more remarkably our brains can conjure up olfactory memories as if they were real and close to original smells that are particularly fixed in our minds - perhaps pleasant smells of comfort foods, our favourite flowers, the soil after a rain, the fresh scent of clean laundry. Equally we might recoil at unpleasant smells that we recall from past experiences. See full transcript here.
Photo credit: Paula Corberan

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