How to Build a Nervous System Care Plan: The 8 Senses
🎙️ This is a transcript of Episode 15 of the Nervous System Care & Healing Podcast with Liz Zhou, a therapist specializing in neurodiversity, complex trauma, & psychedelic integration. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube to receive notice when future episodes come out.
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01:27 The science of the nervous system
03:45 How our experiences of senses spans across birth to death
05:55 How to build a sensory care plan for the nervous system
11:02 Interoception: a sense of internal bodily awareness
13:54 Resourcing through the 5 senses: sight, sound, smell, touch, & taste
23:37 Beyond the 5 senses: proprioception & intuition
29:45 There's no one-size-fits-all care plan
31:29 Imagine a world that cares for sensory needs across all phases of life
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Intro
In this episode, I'm going to be sharing some really practical info about how to care for the nervous system through a sensory lens, through the five senses and beyond. This episode is for you if you need tools and ideas on how to regulate your nervous system.
The reason why I focus on the nervous system so much is because we all have a nervous system. We all experience the world through our senses. One day we will no longer live in this nervous system or be in this body. So when I think about creating a sensory care plan for myself, I actually start by imagining what will I miss most about being a human once I'm no longer in this body?
So I'll turn that question back to you: What will you miss most about being a human once you're no longer in this body?
It's a pretty deep question.
The science of the nervous system
To start off this episode, I'm going to share some of the science behind the nervous system. Not because you have to understand all of the nitty gritty details in order to take care of the nervous system, but because I know that this scientific lens is helpful for a lot of folks and that some of us might integrate this information better if we can understand the full context behind it.
The brain develops in phases from the bottom up, from the areas of the brain that are in charge of the most primitive functions of the body, like heart rate and breathing, to the more sophisticated or complex functions like conscious thought.
So in terms of brain development, what develops first is the brain stem, which is responsible for sensory motor input and autonomic or automatic functions like breathing and heart rate and survival responses.
Then what develops second is the midbrain and the limbic system. This is responsible for attachment like the bonding between self and others as well as emotional development.
Then what develops third is the cortical brain. So this is in charge of thinking, learning, language, and inhibition.
The point here is that there are different parts of our brain that do different things. If we focus nervous system regulation efforts on the thinking, feeling and language parts only, then we miss the sensory aspect of our experience and we miss the oldest part of the brain.
When we're dysregulated in the nervous system, we don't always have access to all parts of the brain. It's certainly much harder to access the rational logical thinking parts when we're in the middle of a shutdown or burnout or emotional meltdown. That's when we do need to speak to the nervous system in the first language that it understands, which is sensory input.
How our experiences of senses spans across birth to death
So in the process of researching this episode, I came across some really interesting information about how our experiences of the senses spans across the lifetime from birth to death, this whole spectrum of life.
There is evidence to suggest that some sensory development begins in the womb.
So even though the majority of an infant sensory development does occur after birth, some of it begins before we're even born. I think that's really cool. So research shows that taste is the first sense to form. It initially begins with the development of sensory receptors in the face, the lips and the nose, as early as eight weeks into pregnancy.
Then there's also sense of sound. So babies are likely able to hear while in the womb. Starting in the 1980s, research has found that babies prefer listening to their mother's voice rather than a stranger's voice shortly after birth, which suggests that babies might learn to recognize their mother's vocal patterns while in the womb.
Now, if we fast forward and then turn the wheel to the dying process, hearing is one of the last senses to go before death.
So even if a dying person may become unresponsive or seem unaware of their surroundings at the end of their life, they might still hear what is being said to them. This of course depends on the specific circumstances of the death, but in general, is why loved ones are encouraged to continue to speak gently to the dying person, even if the person can no longer respond at the end of life.
The point here is that our senses are with us from pre-birth to death (and who knows what happens after that). That's why it is so important to be taking care of our nervous systems, because it is the vessel through which we experience life.
How to build a sensory care plan for the nervous system
So how do we take care of ourselves? What does this actually look like? I call this building a sensory care plan where we're focusing on the five senses and beyond. So I want to first define senses.
One scientific source defines sense as a group of sensory cells that responds to a specific physical phenomenon and that corresponds to a particular region of the brain where these signals are received and interpreted. So basically for any physical phenomenon that we experience in the body, there is a sense that goes with that.
There are lots of senses way beyond the five that we all know and reference. The sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. Across time, some people have proposed that there are up to 50 or more senses that we experience as humans. So I'll share some examples of what those are.
One is thermoception, the sense of heat. There is nociception, the sense of pain, perception of pain in the body. Equilibrioception, the sense of balance. Proprioception, the sense of bodily awareness, which we'll get into more later. There's even a sense of colour, a sense of the mood associated with a colour. There's sense of gravity, sense or sensitivity to air and wind pressure, sense of hunger and thirst, sense of self.
There is so much here, but for our conversation to keep it simple and digestible, I will be focusing on seven senses, the five traditional ones and then two other ones that really impact our everyday lives as well.
The first step to building a nervous system care plan is to learn to recognize when you're overstimulated, when you're understimulated, and when you feel just right, and we might call this the Goldilocks meter.
A special note here, if you are neurodivergent or highly sensitive like myself, you might find that the world isn't designed for your nervous system at all. The world can feel really loud and chaotic and overwhelming. Then sometimes it can feel underwhelming and boring as well. So it's easy to become dysregulated when the environment around us simply is not meeting our needs.
I would really start by figuring out what your signs of overstimulation and understimulation look like. To really notice the sensations, the energy, or the emotions that come with these experiences when you feel them in your body. Because how you experience them is going to look different than how another person experiences them.
Maybe when you're overstimulated, you feel angry and irritable and overwhelmed. Maybe you even feel confused, like you're not sure what's going on and your energy might become restless or chaotic or tense. You might experience sensations of tightness or tension in your shoulders or in your chest or maybe there's heat in your face or in your feet.
Whereas maybe when you're understimulated, you feel bored, annoyed, restless. Maybe your energy feels blah or lethargic and you might experience heaviness in the body or you might feel off center. These are all examples.
Maybe when you're at that just right, happy medium level, you feel content and peaceful and relaxed and your brain is in this flow state. Maybe in the body you feel like your shoulders can relax or your breathing becomes this nice deep slow pace. Depending on how your nervous system works, you might find that there are other ways you track your experience.
So I'm using this language of emotions and sensations and energies here because that's what works for my brain. But for you, it might be colors and images and symbols. Maybe when you're overstimulated, you feel like you are the color red. Wen you're understimulated, maybe you feel gray or some other color.
As long as you have a sense of what you're feeling inside, that's what matters here. Your internal measurement scale does not have to make sense to everyone else. It just has to make sense to you.
Interoception: a sense of internal bodily awareness
When you do check in on your nervous system and notice what's happening inside (like, I'm really overstimulated right now), you are actually using one of your senses and this sense is called interoception.
This one isn't talked about a lot, but it is the ability to perceive and understand internal bodily signals. Interoception is what allows us to recognize when the heart rate is increasing, when your breathing patterns change, or when you feel hunger or pain in the body. So when you realize in the moment that you're overwhelmed or having sensory overload, you're using interoceptive awareness.
I do want to note here that not everyone has a strong sense of interoception. You might be listening to this and thinking, I don't really know what I'm feeling inside ever. Or I can't really tell that I'm overwhelmed until much later after I've had a meltdown. So I do want to acknowledge that that's a thing to struggle with interoception and that we can build up this awareness and strengthen it across time.
The reason I share all this is because:
It's helpful to notice if you tend to get overstimulated or understimulated or both. This will determine whether your sensory care plan involves more sensory seeking behaviors or more sensory avoidant behaviors.
Because if you tend to be overstimulated, you'll want to avoid the input that is overwhelming you, like the loud sounds or the harsh lights or uncomfortable textures. Whereas if you tend to be under-stimulated, you might need to seek out experiences that stimulate your nervous system in a good way so that you can reach that just right level.
Resourcing through the 5 senses: sight, sound, smell, touch, & taste
Once you've learned to recognize signs of dysregulation in your nervous system, that's when we can explore options for what types of sensory care can actually address that dysregulation. Ask yourself:
What nourishes you? What resources or regulates your nervous system? What brings you joy? What makes you feel happy to be alive?
You can also ask yourself, what experiences will you miss most about being human? These are all gateways to understanding your sensory care needs. I will share some examples here based on the five senses, but I'm not just gonna hand you a list and say, do this exactly, because this is so individualized. I will encourage you to reflect on your own nervous system. Because you know best what your system needs.
I will also note that most experiences are multi-sensory. So even though I am organizing this into specific senses, this is sight, this is sound, et cetera, everything on this list overlaps with each other. Also, access to the senses can vary depending on your body, depending on abilities or disabilities that you may have.
SIGHT
For sight, sensory care could look like watching the sunset, sitting in a garden and admiring the plants and the flowers, looking up at the mountains, looking up at the stars, looking at a rainbow.
These are all nature examples, but non-nature ones would be looking at a photo of your loved one, admiring a certain color. You could even make it a game for yourself. See how many places can you find this specific shade of green? Or how many times today do you encounter this shade of orange?
In the psychology literature, in terms of visual processing, we talk about experiences of soft fascination versus hard fascination. Soft fascination is when we can rest our gaze on something, usually in nature, that is pleasant and soothing to look at and that allows space for reflection. If I watch the leaves floating down the stream or if I watch the clouds drift across the sky, that creates an experience of soft fascination for my brain.
That can offer relief from the hard fascination of looking at a screen or doom scrolling on a phone. Because with hard fascination, we're often straining the eyeballs to stare at a screen that's the size of a brick. Whereas with soft fascination, you can literally feel the eyeballs relaxing. Your gaze gets to travel across the periphery, across the x-axis, and that can be very regulating.
SOUND
Now for sound, the auditory processing, sensory care could look like listening to a song that makes you want to dance or a song that makes you cry in a good way because crying can be cathartic and regulating. You could listen to the sounds of nature like bird songs or ocean waves or a bubbling stream.
If you don't have access to nature in a direct way, maybe you live in a really busy city, then maybe you explore sound machines as an option. You could also listen to your favorite TV show playing in the background, or listen to your cat's purr. Or if you're needing to avoid further auditory stimulation, maybe you go for silence and put on those noise-canceling headphones.
Other options I enjoy are listening to singing bowls and listening to binaural beats. You can find playlists on whatever music app you use and these are literally designed to help relax the brain.
Sound is basically vibration that is traveling through the body. So sound itself is a multi-sensory experience. One fun fact that I found while researching this episode - this one is for any cat lovers out there - cat purrs are good for our health. Studies have shown that the frequency of cat purr vibrations corresponds with the healing frequency that promotes bone growth. I find that to be pretty cool.
SMELL
Now our next sense is smell and sensory care could look like smelling a bonfire, a specific flower or plant, the perfume or scent of a loved one, or sniffing in essential oil like lavender.
The way that smell is stored and processed in the brain is really interesting. The olfactory system of the brain, which is responsible for smell, is positioned right next to the amygdala and the hippocampus. These are the emotion and memory centers of the brain. This is really different from other senses like sight and sound, which have to first travel through the brain's thalamus before they reach the amygdala and hippocampus. Smell is different because it sits right next to these centers. It doesn't have to travel through the thalamus.
This is why smells can evoke memories and emotions in a much stronger way than the other four senses, let's say. If you smell a certain scent, maybe one that is connected to a memory from your childhood,that might evoke a really strong emotion compared to if you were just shown a photo or heard a sound that's associated with your childhood. There's something about smell that cuts directly through the brain, goes right to memory and emotion.
This phenomenon does go in both directions, where a smell that is associated with a joyful memory, like the best day of your life, can fill your body with joy. Whereas a smell associated with a trauma or a stressful experience might be triggering to the nervous system in a really visceral way as well.
It's theorized that because our ancestors in ancient times really relied on smell to survive and to navigate their surroundings, their brains evolved to prioritize sense of smell plus sense of navigation plus a sense of memory.
The way that our brains are wired now as modern humans in modern times is a reflection of the skills and the senses that our ancestors' brains needed to survive.
That's pretty brilliant. I share this so that we can use this sensory phenomenon to our advantage. Because you can choose to expose yourself to a smell that is resourcing to you. Like...
your favorite flowers from your wedding day or something like that. That can regulate the nervous system in a really deep way at a cellular level. You can also, if possible, choose to avoid certain scents that just don't sit well with you or that feel triggering in some way.
TOUCH
Next we're going to talk about touch or tactile stimulation. This type of sensory care could look like wearing your softest sweater, cuddling your pet, holding the hand of your loved one, feeling that physical contact, touching a tree and feeling the texture of the bark or holding a fidget, squeezing a fidget.
With touch, there is opportunity for co-regulation between humans or between humans and animals. Or it could be a self-regulation activity where you're not making physical contact with anyone else, but you're choosing what textures to expose your body and skin to.
TASTE
Finally, there is taste, the fifth of the five traditional senses. This might be your favorite dessert, a savory dish that makes your mouth water, or a sip of tea. We can also consider the texture of taste as well, because taste is such a multisensory experience. It is not just what we put in our mouths, but what we smell with our noses, what we see with our eyes, whatever senses we have access to. The tactile sensation can really determine how we experience the flavor of food.
We eat chips, not just because of the taste, but probably because we enjoy the crunchiness of the chips. We drink soup for the taste, but also the thick and smooth texture and how comforting that feels. Or we might eat cake because we love the sweetness, but also the soft and spongy texture.
TIPS FOR YOUR SENSORY CARE PLAN
When you're building your sensory care plan, keep coming back to what brings you joy, what makes you happy to be alive, and what are the sensory experiences that you will miss most about being human.
I see it like this:
We are renting our nervous systems for a finite period of time. One day we will give our bodies back to the earth. So between now and then, how do we want to enjoy this sensory experience of being alive?
When you reflect on your five senses, you might notice that you tend to be more affected in some areas than others. As an example, some folks have really significant auditory sensitivities, so they're more likely to be overwhelmed by an unpleasant sound or construction noises in the background than by the lights being too bright. Then other people are the opposite. Maybe it's the visual stuff that overwhelms them most or overwhelms them fastest, while other sensory inputs are more tolerable. It's really different for each person. Of course, we can all be affected in all of the senses.
Now I do want to add on a couple of other senses that don't get as much attention as the traditional five, but they do play a huge role in how we experience the world.
Beyond the 5 senses: proprioception & intuition
One of those senses is proprioception, and this refers to our sense of our body's position, movement, and orientation in space. So it's our sense of bodily awareness.
If you are walking up a flight of stairs, it is proprioception that is helping you lift your leg at just the right angle with every step that you're taking without necessarily needing to look at the stairs the entire time.
If you are writing with a pencil, it's proprioception that allows your hand to hold the pencil with the exact right pressure, not too tight, not too loose, instead of breaking the pencil or dropping it.
It's important that we give our bodies the proprioceptive input that our bodies enjoy or need. Anything that involves pushing or pulling something or pressure is activating the proprioceptive awareness.
Proprioceptive input might look like lying under a weighted blanket and feeling the weight and pressure on your body as well as the surface that you're lying on. It can look like jumping on a trampoline, dancing, doing pushups, lifting weights, even cleaning or sweeping the floor is proprioceptive and can be really regulating if you enjoy that kind of stuff.
It could be climbing on the playground, swinging on the swings, chewing gum, squeezing a fidget, kneading dough, kneading clay, lifting weights, right? Pressure, pulling, pushing. Taking care of our proprioceptive needs can help the body move energy in a really satisfying way. To me, it feels like scratching an itch. I notice that if I don't swing or climb something every once in a while, my body is itching to do that.
Finally, I want to mention the intuitive sense, also known as intuition. To be clear, this is not an official scientific term, but for some folks, nervous system health also means being connected to their intuition.
That's why I'm going to talk about that here.
Intuition is often defined as the ability to understand without conscious reasoning, and to have a gut feeling about a situation. Not being connected to intuition can feel dysregulating for some folks because intuition is what helps them discern whether to choose option A or B or to go somewhere or stay where they are to say yes or no to an invitation.
Sometimes when there is way too much information that is coming into our brains, too much sensory input from social media, the news, all the text messages and emails in your inbox, that can really block our sense of intuition because it's harder to listen to the inner voice, the sixth sense, or the gut instinct when there's so much noise around us.
There are practices we can do to nurture intuition and keep that alive in us if that's something you value. You might engage in self-reflection through journaling, like setting aside five minutes every day to jot down your thoughts or to doodle something that represents how you feel right now.
It could be creative practices like making music or making art because that gets us out of the thinking brain and into a more expansive state of consciousness. You might do meditation or mindfulness practices or body-based practices like yoga and dance. You might connect with like-minded people who help you remember your intuition and who help validate that experience for you.
Spending time in nature to just be present and soak it all in, kind of slow down the pace of our thoughts, that can be really helpful for intuition as well. I see intuition as different from just thinking through things or figuring things out on a cognitive and intellectual level.
Intuition is more about being open to information in all forms that it may arrive to us, whether that is nonverbal, nonlinear, whether it shows up as these subtle messages from the universe or through dreams, or whatever it is.
When we're connected to intuition, we may also feel connected to something that is bigger than ourselves, like connection to nature or guides, spirits or ancestors, if that is a part of your belief system and worldview.
All of that can be so, so resourcing for the nervous system. So I would consider making intuition a part of your care plan if what I'm saying here is resonating with you.
There's no one-size-fits-all care plan
To summarize, these are the seven senses that I'm focusing on in a sensory care plan: sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, proprioception, and intuition.
Remember that we need interoception, that internal bodily awareness, to figure out what we're feeling and sensing in the first place and to figure out how to regulate ourselves from there.
A few final notes on all of this: number one, there is no one size fits all approach. Every nervous system is unique and what works for one person or for me might not work for you. That is okay. That's why we let ourselves experiment and learn along the way and also learn from each other.
You can also adjust your plan at any point. This isn't written in stone and your sensory needs might vary depending on the season. They might change as your nervous system changes or you might lose access to senses or gain access across your lifetime. I can certainly say that my sensory needs look different in the winter compared to in the summer because my environment is totally different.
My other note is that this doesn't have to be a super fancy and elaborate thing. Sensory care can be a two minute check in with yourself in the middle of a busy day where you just pause and notice how your body's feeling and then smell an essential oil or listen to your favorite song.
I know that self-care can feel really inaccessible or expensive or fancy in our world today. But you know, if you only have two minutes available, I just want to highlight that there are ways to care for ourselves in these micro ways. Little moments all add up and can honestly be more sustainable than these grand sweeping gestures. Because it's really more about the consistency than about the intensity or the fanciness of the experience.
Imagine a world that cares for sensory needs across all phases of life
Finally, it honestly makes me emotional and inspired to imagine what could be possible if we took our sensory needs as seriously as like physical health, for example. If we collectively designed the world to be more sensory soothing for people, to be gentler on the nervous system, I imagine that we would have fewer fluorescent lights in classrooms. We would be playing relaxing music and binaural beats in doctor's offices and emergency rooms. We would have soft blankets and stress balls that you can grab while waiting in line at the DMV. That could be our normal, our default sensory setting. We would also normalize the idea that
Adults might want to play on a playground or swing on the swings or climb on the jungle gym sometimes because that's offering proprioceptive input and our need for this input doesn't just go away because we grew up and aren't kids anymore. Adults can enjoy playgrounds just as much as kids can if we just let them.
Right now, because the design of our world isn't super sensory friendly, we kind of have to start with our individual nervous systems, developing that personalized plan. From there, that spirit of care can ripple out into our communities, to the people around you who also feel inspired to care for themselves in this way. Hopefully that can create this cultural change across our systems, across time.
I was reading a really cool article today about how there are some hospices that are starting to use sensory stimulation therapy to care for the sensory needs of people in hospice, using music and relaxing lighting and essential oils to calm their nervous systems. Because of course, who wouldn't want to be comfortable at the end of their life?
This really shows how this type of care is helpful across all phases of life. It's for anybody with a nervous system.
This is your invitation to take such good care of yourself because you are always worthy of care and you deserve to feel good.
If you need help taking care of your nervous system, I’d love to support you.
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About the Author
Liz Zhou (she/her) is a neurodivergent therapist, coach, and speaker. She helps highly sensitive, neurodivergent adults & couples heal their nervous systems and connect with their authentic selves, using brain-body modalities (Brainspotting, EMDR, IFS, psychedelic integration) that are quicker & more effective than traditional talk therapy. Liz offers Nervous System Healing Intensives online worldwide.
