If you’re looking for a way to decelerate for a few minutes, I’d highly recommend spending time with your senses. I work my way through some or all of these when I meditate.

Start with the senses you’re most familiar with, then work your way into the senses you don’t think about as often. That’s where the sensations really get interesting!

1. Sight. With your eyes closed, see what your eyes are seeing. Feel them relax. Thank your eyes for the good work they do.
2. Hearing. Visit one ear and listen just with that ear. Now shift to your other ear and listen to what that one is hearing. Let the sound move through your head from one ear to the other. Thank your ears for allowing you to hear the world.
3. Smell. Take in a deep breath through your nose and smell the world around you. Try to smell levels within levels. Thank your nose for this experience.
4. Taste. Spend time feeling the shape of your mouth. Stretch your mouth wide open as if you were yelling. Stretch out your jaw side to side. Then relax your mouth. Feel the heat of your mouth. Thank your mouth for allowing you to taste the world.
5. Touch. I start exploring “touch” with where my fingers touch. Feel the wind or sun on your skin. Sense your skin from your head down to your toes.
6. Sense the hottest point on your body and let your mind go there. Sense the coldest point on your body and let your mind go there. What’s making those parts hot or cold? Feel the sensation of the contrast between the heat and cold in your body.
7. Sense the pressure of the gravity holding you to the earth. Where do you feel pressure in your body?
8. If you’re sitting down, sense your balance as you sit up as tall as you can. Feel your alignment with the earth. Now stand and feel the balance of standing on both legs. Raise one leg at a time and balance. Open your eyes and pick a point on the horizon if you have trouble balancing. The more you do this, I promise, the easier it becomes!
9. Run your mind through your body and find any place that is in pain. Explore that place with your mind. Once you spend time with pain, it tends to lessen.
10. Find any place on your body that itches. Hang around and relax that point until the itch feels okay.
11. Sense what time it is, what the day and date are, what the season is, and what the year is. Sense if it’s early in the day or late in the day. Sense if it’s early in the year or late in the year. I like to think of time as long days or short days.
12. End with place – this is my favorite. Sense where you’re sitting or standing. Move away from yourself and sense the larger picture – near a roadway, near the ocean, in a state, in a country, on the earth. As I consider place, I picture myself riding on the Earth with the moon nearby as we spin around the sun. Then I picture riding the earth as the sun and all of our nearby planets fly through the Milky Way. Come back from space to the place where you started, where you’re sitting or standing, and be solidly in that space.

Take a deep breath, and thank the Universe for giving you this body with these senses. “Thank you for this day.”

Going inside your body and being thankful for your senses helps clear your mind, and helps you re-focus on the world around you. It can also give you a peaceful, unified feeling of being one with your body.

Now you’re clear – go get stuff done.

Happy organizing today.

I’ll leave you with a few eye-treats from Florence and Siena, Italy. Aren’t the details of this Earth a delight?