For parents, understanding The Sense Connection enhances the skills needed to raise happy, well-adjusted children who will become successful, emotionally-balanced adults. For spouses or lovers, gaining insight into the ways in which primary sense channels compliment and conflict with each other can shift the balance from discord to harmony. And for friends and co-workers, a firmer grasp of how we as individuals view the world could mean more fulfilling and productive relationships and careers.

Can understanding others be as simple as identifying their primary sense channels and adjusting accordingly? Naturally, the sense mode does not define the entire personality. But it can offer you some useful short-cuts to understanding. Consider the many ways we put ourselves and others into neat, tidy, limiting pigeonholes. We've heard so many of these expressions: "What do you do?", "Where are you from?", "What's your sign?" These categorizations are merely stereotypes, whether professional, regional, ethnic, astrological, or even the result of The Myers-Briggs examination. Worse than that, they're dead ends. "He's an only child." "She's a Pisces." These stereotypes do not allow room for adaptation, for coming together and making a connection. By adding The Sense Connection to our lexicon, we can find a way to understand others quickly and accurately and then modify our interactive style to fit better with theirs, whatever their profession, cultural background, or birth sign.

The Sense Connection

Discovering How Your Five Senses Determine Your Effectiveness as a Person, Partner, and ParentBy Natalie Robinson Garfield

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2009 Natalie Robinson Garfield
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4401-6559-7

Contents

Acknowledgments..............................................xiOverview.....................................................xiiiCommon Senses:...............................................1Sense Mode Profile Test......................................2Sense Connections Briefly Defined: KATOV.....................5The "Click" of a Couple......................................22Sexual Incompatibility.......................................33Psychotherapy................................................38Friendships..................................................43Duo-Dyads....................................................53How Quickly They Grow........................................75Sibling Favoritism...........................................83Tuning in to a Preteen.......................................87Preparing for the Future.....................................93Interview Intuition..........................................99Office Frantics..............................................110Classroom and Consequence....................................118Attorney Attunement..........................................128Modal Meditation.............................................135Maturing Modes...............................................146Sense Secrets................................................151Final Thoughts...............................................159Bibliography.................................................161

Chapter One

Defining the Sense Connection

Common Senses:

The Sense Channel Theory

This book is about the crucial impact of sense channels on our lives. To identify your primary sense channel, as well as least dominant ones, you may wish to complete "The Sense Connection Questionaire." When you complete the questionnaire, your scores will show which senses seem to dominate your perceptions: kinesthetic (how you move), auditory (what you hear), tactile (what you feel), olfactory (what you smell and taste), and visual (what you see). As we proceed, exploring the development of your primary sense channels and how they affect the way you interact, make your living, make love, raise your children, and perceive yourself and the world, keep your initial sense identity in mind.

Sense Mode Profile Test

You may be kinesthetic if ... You crave physical exercise. You are always on the go. You have a sense of life being something you move through. Your career is a climb to the top. Your relationships have to do with pulling away from someone or drawing closer. You can read a map and take the initiative in finding a new route. You can follow football or basketball from diagrams. You may be auditory if ... You are bothered by poor acoustics. You can hear a melody and reproduce it vocally or instrumentally. You often hear music in your head. You are impressed with someone's speaking voice. You find certain phrases, turns of speech, or authors' styles thrilling and memorable. You have a reputation for being a good listener. You may be tactile if ... You have strong fabric preferences or sensitivities. The seam of your sock being out of line is irritating. It feels particularly good to return to your home or to remain there. Animals are deeply important to you. Long-haired dogs are more appealing than short-haired ones. You feel cozy in a book-lined study. Fresh linen on your bed is particularly inviting. You may be olfactory if ... A wonderful birthday gift is your favorite cologne. It often seems to you that the sauce needs more seasoning. It is important that you eat in your favorite restaurants often. Your nose can tell that the season is about to change. You know there is road work being done around the corner by the tar odor. You find it difficult to kiss someone who has recently eaten garlic. You don't see the point of flowers that lack perfume. You want to join the coffee-of-the-month club, which sends a different coffee each month. You can actually feel satisfied reading Gourmet magazine, You may be visual if ... When someone speaks to you from behind, you feel the need to turn around to take in everything that the person is saying. Ribbon for gift wrapping with one gold side and the other in silver gives you a rush. You feel good about yourself when you look in the mirror in the morning and like your outfit. Shades, tints, hues, and color combinations capture your interest. You can match colors accurately. It's no problem to buy socks to go with a sweater that is at home in a drawer. You get excited about the displays and decorations at holiday time.

Sense Connections Briefly Defined: KATOV

Kinesthetic Auditory Tactile Olfactory/taste Visual

John Locke noted that everything we know about the world is through what we see, hear, smell, touch or taste. I would add the kinesthetic sense of spatial perception to that list of inputs.

Kinesthetic individuals understand, experience, absorb, and take in the world through movement and exploration in space. They may find themselves at odds with current societal expectations. As an example ... fear may inhibit a child's drive to explore the world through movement, thereby changing a natural kinesthetic person. Since our education system requires that the student sit quietly and listen; many kinesthetic children are not able to maximize their potential.

Let's take a look at Jim Henson's in It's Not Easy Being Green, a book that will most definitely appeal to a kinesthetic child. Ernie has trouble falling asleep; so he uses many movement activities and ...

I hoof around my beddie just a-tappin' my toes Before I know what's happened I'm a-ready to doze. Yes, he dances himself to sleep!

The kinesthetic person needs to move in order to take in their experience! Just as visual people need to look and auditory people need to hear. In the words of Norman Cousins, "Laughter is inner jogging."

Auditory individuals experience the world primarily through sound and are powerfully affected by what they hear.

People who take in the world primarily through their ears are usually very sensitive to noise and unpleasant sounds. This orientation may begin long before birth, although we don't know a great deal about this as yet. The fetus is connected to the mother through the umbilical cord, which is a constant source of sound. There is some evidence that the fetus can hear in utero; a child is born with the ability to hear.

Daniel J. Levitin's This Is Your Brain on Music is a comprehensive discussion of the auditory mode. Composers such as Scriabin and Ravel talk about their works as sound paintings-notes and melodies are the equivalent of shapes and forms, and timbre of coloration and shading. Popular songwriters Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, and Lindsey Buckingham have also described their compositions as sound paintings, with timbre functioning as color does in visual art, separating melodic shapes from one another. I recommend this book to all you auditory people and to anyone who would like to enhance their perceptions through the auditory mode.

Although all our senses are sensitive to sudden changes such as a new smell, color differentiation, sudden movement, or a tactile stimulus such as a bug landing on us, the most sensitive channel is our hearing. Unexpected or sudden noises can startle us more intensely and more quickly.

"Speaking in storm language, a humpback, before it blows, lows a mournful ..." -Diane Ackerman

In the words of M. Scott Peck, "True listening is love in action."

Tactile individuals are keenly in touch with their emotions on the inside and their sensations on the outside. They pay attention to the input from their skin and the comfort or discomfort that it communicates to them.

In Communication Miracles for Couples, Jonathan Robinson writes that "in a recent study, 70% of all women said they would gladly never have sexual intercourse again as long as they were able to cuddle or have a long hug each day with their partner. Obviously, men and women are different when it comes to their sexual needs."

Sex and skin are intimately connected, of course. One can hardly imagine physical intimacy without caresses, rubs, strokes, pats, and skin to skin contact. Our skin is the largest organ of the body and crucial to life itself.

Much has been researched on the significance of touch for young babies. We are beginning to understand the hypersensitivity to touch in children on the autistic spectrum.

Olfactory/taste-oriented individuals learn about the environment through the nose and/or the mouth.

The smell of the country is the best place for these people; as a city usually makes them pinch their nostrils against its unpleasant smells. However, a city also offers a broad spectrum of gustatory choices. Smell may also rule our romantic choices to a surprising extent.

In Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget, Marianne J. Legato writes that there is "considerable evidence to suggest that we are drawn together by our sense of smell." She enlarges on the sex differences in that attraction: "Women do have a better sense of smell than men, possibly because of our estrogen levels." She also explores the biological imperatives behind attraction by smell.

"Opposites attract: one of the things we seek out in someone else's smell is that it is unlike our own. There's evidence that your odor type is linked to genes that determine your immunity. People of different odor types seem to have different immunological resistance-so that someone with odor type A might be immune to three different strains of flu, while B is immune to three different ones. Mating across odor types, then, is an evolutionary gambit to ensure that our babies have a wider band of immunity ..." Legato explains that we may get this information by kissing. "Kissing gives us the chance to get a great big 'taste' of the chemical signals the other person is sending." And, in this aspect of the mating game, authenticity matters. "Pheromone perfumes" are sold to enhance sexual attractiveness, but Legato doubts their efficacy: "There is scant scientific evidence that 'pheromone perfumes' do anything at all."

"A pheromone is a chemical signal that 1 party sends to another to influence its behavior." Let Jean Brillat-Savarin, the father of modern gastronomy, add a grace note on smell and taste. "The taste and the sense of smell form but one sense, of which the mouth is the laboratory and the nose the chimney."

Visual individuals assess situations by looking at them. A visual person can stand/sit in one place and take in the environment. Some visual children do very well in school, particularly if seated in the front of the room. For these people, seeing really is believing, and a picture really is worth a thousand words. Visual people who are farsighted can develop into proficient speed readers, which is a huge academic advantage.

Visual people usually design their environments carefully and dress with care, being very concerned about how they look.

Some of our earliest games are visual games. Peek-a-boo is a universal first game between infant and adult. It promotes the development of object constancy, challenges the significance of being able to see, and delights the infant. Hide and seek is the more advanced version of the same game, for the enjoyment of mobile children. Seeing and being seen are crucial.

The senses have crucial roles in healthy development, and evidence is mounting that they also have crucial roles in pathological development. "As the workings of hypochondriacal thought have begun to receive serious attention, much of the research suggests that the brain of the hypochondriac, like that of the person with obsessive-compulsive disorder, becomes an enemy of the restful mind. Barsky and colleagues found that hypochondriacs report higher than average sensitivity to bodily sensations-heat, cold, hunger, and noise. Barsky proposes that hypochondriacs may be prodigiously attuned to their bodies." To heat, cold, hunger, and noise, I would add movement and visual stimuli and the ill effects of either too much or too little.

Sense Mode Profile Test

In the following questionnaire, some of the answers are more obvious than others. It is fashioned after the popular Myers-Briggs self-administered personality inventory and addresses hierarchy, strengths, weaknesses, and degrees of sense mode intake. To take the test, circle the letter for the response that most reflects your own behavior.

1. You're in an airplane, and take-off is delayed. You quickly A) look at a magazine. B) clean your nails.

C) pace up and down the aisle.

D) ask the stewardess for a drink or a snack.

E) put on your earphones.

2. When you think about an event you are planning to attend next weekend, you would most like to know

A) what kind of food will be served.

B) how you will get there and back.

C) what you will wear.

D) what the ambience will be like.

E) what to expect.

3. A friend is taking you out for your birthday. You choose

A) to go dancing.

B) to go to an Italian restaurant.

C) sitting by the fire together

D) concert.

E) a film.

4. Medical science is developing synthetic body parts for advanced transplants. Toward this research, you contribute $25.00 to the development of

A) noses.

B) eyeballs.

C) legs.

D) hands.

E) ears.

5. To relax at the end of a hard day, I like to

A) turn on the stereo.

B) cook a satisfying meal.

C) do exercises.

D) read a novel.

E) sculpt or sew.

6. At a carnival, you are most likely to

A) make a beeline for the rollercoaster.

B) linger near the hurdy-gurdy.

C) find the cotton candy.

D) clutch your cuddly teddy bear prize.

E) watch the carousel.

7. Which person would you most like to meet?

A) Georgia O'Keefe

B) Henry Moore

C) Enrico Caruso

D) Mick Jagger

E) David of David's cookies

8. How did you study for final exams?

A) by rewriting the material and underlining.

B) by pacing back and forth and/or taking many action breaks.

C) by rereading the text.

D) by stocking up on your favorite foods.

E) by saying the material aloud or listening to tapes.

9. Christmas is two weeks away. You write to Santa Claus asking for

A) cologne.

B) a jumbo box of Crayola crayons.

C) a satin pillowcase.

D) a Beatles album.

E) a wrist odometer.

10. Remember a special moment from your childhood. Which experience evokes that moment?

A) The buzz or tinkle of voices.

B) Grandma's baking.

C) a trip away from home.

D) a glowing photograph.

E) cozy, soft, warm, fuzzy things.

Scoring Key

The answers that reflect the visual sense are 1A, 2C, 3E, 4B, 5D, 6E, 7A, 8C, 9B, 10D.

The answers that reflect the tactile sense are 1B, 2D, 3C, 4D, 5E, 6D, 7B, 8A, 9C, 10E.

The answers that reflect the auditory sense are 1E, 2E, 3D, 4E, 5A, 6B, 7C, 8E, 9D, 10A.

The answers that reflect the kinesthetic sense are 1C, 2B, 3A, 4C, 5C, 6A, 7D, 8B ,9E ,10C

The answers that reflect the olfactory sense are 1D, 2A, 3B, 4A, 5B, 6C, 7E, 8D, 9A, 10B.

1. See how many you chose in each category.

KINESTHETIC:_________

AUDITORY:_________

TACTILE:_________

OLFACTORY:_________

VISUAL:_________

2. Multiply each number by 10. A score of 3 in the visual category (3 x 10) would mean that 30 percent of your sense connection is visual.

Dr. Ellen Langer, a professor and researcher at Harvard University, spoke at a conference in 2006 about maximizing experiences. "Fun begins when you make a mistake. Give up the idea of the perfect image (how it should be) or perfect words! Just be receptive, not reactive." When attempting to discern another person's primary sense mode, take her advice. If you make a mistake and remain receptive, the other person can correct you, and the fun begins!

Many professionals in the field of development and interpersonal relations focus on the concept of attunement. Daniel Stern was the first to speak vehemently about the importance of attunement of the primary caregivers to the baby for positive development. Dan Siegel defines "empathy as attuned communication ... thinking about the other person." This is an endorsement of sense channel practice. It is another way of saying that we all should step out of our ubiquitous narcissistic bubbles.

Determining Your Sense Mode

How do you relax?

1. kinesthetic: take a walk, do aerobics, go dancing, pace the floor, work out

2. auditory: listen to music, play a musical instrument, turn on the radio, sing

3. tactile: cook, bake, do needlepoint or woodwork, sew or do handiwork, garden

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Sense Connectionby Natalie Robinson Garfield Copyright © 2009 by Natalie Robinson Garfield. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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