The missing two senses…
I painted this image a few weeks ago and I was still trying to figure out what it represented. At the time, I was frustrated by how much I use my phone for information and connection. However, while studying embodiment practices for my Master’s in Therapeutic Arts - exploring concepts through sensory perception and the body - many levels of meaning began to surface. Suddenly, the image made sense: it is about capturing the environment through TWO SENSWS that the Western world often overlooks.
While exploring embodiment exercises, I realized that to truly feel my body, I have to close my eyes. Sight delivers too much information and curiosity, it drags my attention right into my mind, pulling me away from being in the body and sensing. I felt like something was missing between the mental, physical, and sensory experience... and then this blew my mind! In readings I discovered two 'missing' senses that are crucial for me!
“Generalised western recognition of the human senses includes sight (vision), hearing (audition), taste (gustation), smell (olfaction), and touch (somatosensorial), but from a Dharug Aboriginal standpoint we also include:
* Intuition, Oolgna, and the imaginative Ngara.
While there is a loss within English translation, terms associated with Oolgna include intuitive, felt, ‘gut’ sensations that are viewed as a bodily alert signal.
The term Ngara refers to the imaginary, an ability to actively observe through a sense of curiosity, connected to dreams and visionary encounters.
Western concepts of the five senses—sight, sound, smell, touch and taste are therefore elements that contribute to only a portion of the human sensory experience, whilst deeper perceptual insights (oolgna and ngara) enable us to feel, respond, connect and adapt to the environment.
Western culture also ranks and labels the ‘proximal senses’ (touch, taste, and smell) as inferior with the sense of sight considered the dominant mode for the progress of science and ‘object-centered thinking’.
From aboriginal standpoint, the notion of sight as the dominant sense would create an imbalance: relying merely on sight significantly limits our capacity to obtain an immersive bodily experience. Perceiving through our seven senses provides us with a multi sensory breadth of knowledge with which we can connect deeply to Country.”
Cameron, E. (2020). ‘Healthy Country, Healthy People’: Aboriginal Embodied Knowledge Systems in Human/Nature Interrelationships. The International Journalof Ecopsychology. 1(1)