Awakening your senses
In honor of Spring, how about doing a week long exercise in awakening all of your senses this month? All six of them - yes, six - intuition is a crucial sense that is often overlooked. Let's figure out some ways to stimulate our senses, rev up our engines and get us fired up for all the beautiful things Spring has in store for us.

   Monday
Sight - there are obvious things you can do like go to the beach (if there's one near you), visit a beautiful garden, or hike up to an extraordinary new place where you can just gaze at the beauty surrounding you. Whatever it is, the theme should be doing something new, seeing something you haven't seen before. Maybe go to a museum and see an off-the-cuff sort of exhibit. If you want to focus more on actually exercising your sight, here's an easy but good one: stare at a photo with many items or people or lots of action in it for 30 seconds. Then, flip the photo over and write down all the details of the picture that you can remember. Spend a few minutes doing this. Then, turn the photo back over and compare. What did you recall? Did you see something that wasn't even there? What colors stood out to you most? Analyze what you remembered and try to figure out why. It can be a real trip!

   Tuesday
Hearing - rent a movie that you have never seen before. Blindfold yourself or simply close your eyes - the point is, you will not be looking at the screen. Listen to the movie for about half an hour, while writing down your impressions and what you think of the characters, what you think they may look like, who you liked and who you didn't, etc. Then rewind the movie and watch what you just listened to - and compare your impressions. Were you accurate? Whether you were or were not, try to determine how you came about your conclusions and why you liked or disliked certain characters.

Wednesday
Touch - it would be great to have a friend help with these last few exercises. Take some Ziploc bags and fill them with items of varied textures, such as sand, mud, jelly beans, marbles... anything that's very tactile. The more unique, the better. Fill up your bags and hide them from yourself in a box. After about a week (or however long it takes you to forget what you filled them with), pull out the box, reach inside and touch everything without looking. Write down the ideas that come to mind as you feel these items, no matter how strange or crazy. The goal is to identify what elicits reactions and inspiration.

   Thursday
Smell a wide range of items, from food to plants to spices to perfumes, and try to gauge how each makes you feel. What memories are elicited? For example, whenever I smell cloves or clove oil I flash back to being eight years old, snow outside my bedroom window and the smell of cloves that my mother is simmering over the stove. The same warm, cozy feeling of forever seeps into me.

    Friday
With taste, it's similar to smell, but take it a little further. Try some things you have never tried (sushi, escargot, plant roots, whatever), as well as some of your favorites. What makes you feel good and comforted (chocolate frosting, cherries, mashed potatoes, you name it!) and what takes you out of that comfort zone and into the freaky feeling of 'Do I really have to eat it?' Or better yet, if you're brave enough to try something you can't stand, spit it out!

 Saturday
Intuition - ah, the one sense that many women feel so disconnected from these days. What is it, exactly? That gut feeling in your belly that tells you when something is right or wrong. That inkling in the back of your mind that says, "Left, left, left" when you're trying to decide between two roads on your way to a party and you have no directions but kind of 'remember' how to get there. Some say it's a voice, some say it's a feeling. I say intuition is your instinct. It is the sense that has kept us alive for centuries. She needs to be trusted, so let's do a little intuitive muscle warming.

Grab a deck of cards and divvy them up face down, into two piles, red and black. Don't panic, you can do this, just trust the 'force'. I had to say that. Seriously, simply feel with your instinct, your gut and start two piles, don't worry about being right or wrong, you're warming up an underused muscle here. Relax. When you're done, flip the cards over and see how you did. Then put them away and try it again a couple of days later. Repeat this exercise weekly and notice how, each time you do it, you are getting more and more in tune with the 'instinct' of feeling the color.

Sunday
Now, for the best... an exercise in sense memory, pulling all of your senses together. Lie down somewhere very comfortable, close your eyes and relax. Take deep, energizing breaths. Then think back to one of your favorite memories from childhood and focus on reliving every aspect of that moment. Visualize everything slowly, as if it is happening in real time. See the people who were with you, what time of day or night it was, what you were wearing, smells that were in the air, the temperature against your body... try to recreate every detail that you can remember. Just relive that moment for as long as you can. When you come back to reality, you will have that same sensory feeling that you did when that moment was really happening.

The point of each of these exercises is to bring your senses more to life, to reinvigorate your body and soul and spirit. Taking just a small amount of time out each day for these exercises is a wonderful way to celebrate yourself. Hopefully, you will also begin to feel a trust in yourself that may have been in hiding. You know my mantra, "bring her on out to play".