My current journey with pillar 4 of wellness – spiritual wellness – is in equal parts incredibly challenging, and wonderfully reassuring. I am learning about ‘Standing’. Standing with rock solid steady ground beneath my feet during times of trouble and turbulance. Feeling the pull of gravity is a powerful sensory system, vestibular sense, providing connection to the earth, steadiness and…
The big win of sensory wellness, is the ability to self-regulate for wellbeing and productivity, but….. there is a crucial step between emotions and productivity: behaviour. For a truly healthy and productive life, certain lifestyle choices are crucial, and unfortunately a good, hard, honest look at WHAT we do, is required. Not always easy, I know. Really seeing ourselves as…
Should I rent a co-working space? Should I study in-person, or online? Small flat or big dormitory? Big company or smaller business? Openplan or own office? Big university, or smaller private college? Career in marketing or auditing? These questions are regularly asked in my sensory consulting business, and unfortunately depend on further questions (to which luckily there are clear and…
How many hours (if you are brutally honest) are spent in your optimal activation band? The secret to either calming or alerting our nervous systems, sits in all things sensory = The Reticular Activating System, our sensory relay structure, which also controls levels of activation/alertness. All we need are: *Regular (honest) body check-ins*Insight into our unique sensory profiles*Strategies to alert,…
Understanding which of your sensory systems are easily triggered, and which can be used powerfully to regulate your system, can make life profoundly more comfortable, healthy, happy, and productive. #sensoryprofiling#sensoryregulation#selfmanagement#selfawareness#healthandwellness#bottombrainwellness#productivity#overload
When working with adults & students struggling to achieve optimal focus and a state of creative thinking I refer to the methods of a top athlete preparing to compete. There are a number of specific Do’s and Dont’s to achieving optimal activation/peak performance state (at work or at school). Dont’s: Don’t spend time on your screen the night before, or…
The gold nugget to grasp around sensory processing is 1) how quickly, and 2) how intensely, you register sensory messages from the environment, and your internal body organs. Over-registering of the work environment may result in distractibility, attempts to control outcomes and processes, fatigue, increased stress and anxiety, and potential conflict with colleagues. Under-registering of the work environment may result…
Sensory Informed Design (SID) to increase wellbeing and productivity of an exhausted post-pandemic workforce should be our next priority. Trauma informed design (TID) is already a growing and brilliant field utilized in workspace design. The workplace shapes us, knowingly or unknowingly. It evokes emotions (anxiety vs boredom) sensory experiences (triggering vs regulating) social opportunities (inclusivity vs exclusivity) and contributes to…
Dual awareness from a sensory perspective is all about the impact our internal sensory wiring has on the external work environment, and vice versa. There is a constant eb and flow between the world and our internal levels of arousal. 11 million sensory messages bombard the brain per second, and this can either be triggering or regulating. A fact which…
I am back at the piano, for the first time in 27 years! I closed my gr8 books following a traumatic final exam, never to touch the black and white keys again, until last week. Granny Ida’s beautiful heirloom Babygrand’s silent accusations forced me to take action. I can already play ‘Jingle Bells’ and ‘When the Saints’. Humbling, hilarious, but…
The IEB Matric results have blown me away! Huge congratulations go out to all learners, teachers, parents, and wider support structures, as this is always a team effort of gigantic proportions. I hope you are celebrating in style. Learning consists of 3 (equally important) processes: 1) registration of information/input 2) processing/orientation of information, and 3) reproducing; also referred to as…