Let Your Mind Wander With Your Senses

January 26, 2026

I started teaching a new type of class last week, a one-session feast of the senses. As adults, we tend to over-use our sense of sight to take in information about the world, but for children, the world is so new, that they use all five senses to learn about this place we all live. When we are primed to remember a childhood memory using all five senses, it’s amazing the detail we have encoded. It’s there; we just need to be prompted to remember it. This new class prompts participants to go back to childhood and see what details they remember. It’s pretty fascinating to see what comes up!

The experience made me wonder whether if as adults we can be prompted to encode memories in such sensory detail. What happens if we really take note of our surroundings right at the moment? So I decided to experiment.

I’m sitting here under a blanket in front of our still-lit, still-decorated Christmas tree drinking a glass of wine and enjoying the blanket of white outside. I haven’t always appreciated the nuances of winter, but, weirdly, as I’ve aged, I do. Don’t get me wrong, I get plenty cold. I always have. I’ve just learned to dress for it. Lots of layers.

I have three distinct varieties of long underwear. The thin ones come out in early fall. The medium ones become necessary around Thanksgiving. And by now, I’m well into thick long underwear season. If it’s particularly brutal outside, I am not above layering the thin under the thick (what I’m wearing right now). The combination traps heat remarkably well.

I love how the sharpness of the cold air wakes both me and my senses when we cross country ski, or as I shovel the driveway, or when I go for a winter walk. It takes a bit of effort to convince myself to leave the house, but I’m never sorry when I do. I love the sound of snow crunching beneath my boots. I love coming home to the smell of a pot of soup simmering on the stove ready to be served with a slice of homemade bread spread thick with creamy butter.

It’s taken me a long time, but I even appreciate the dark mornings now. I’m awake and busy before the sun comes up and somehow that feels as if I’m particularly industrious. Occasionally, when I pay attention, I catch the sunrise breaking across the snow-whitened backyard. The pinks that reflect off the white surface of the yard always makes me catch my breath.

In my sensory experiment, my mind wandered, but it wandered by way of the senses. I thought about how I sense winter and what about that sensory information that gives me pleasure. I read somewhere that luxury is having access to opposites—such as being hungry and then filling one’s stomach. Winter provides me that idea of luxury in start relief. Cold air crawls under my jacket when I venture outside, and warm air, deliciously, thaws the chill when I'm enveloped into its protection. I particularly noticed that contrast this afternoon, and experiencing the two poles is indeed, I think, a luxury.

Where would you go if you gave your mind permission to wander sensorily right now?