Life in Five Senses
How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
'A charming journey through the science and experience of fully engaging your senses of smell, taste, touch, sight, and sound' - Adam Grant, author of Think Again
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project turns to the five senses.
For more than a decade, Gretchen Rubin had been studying happiness and human nature. Despite all she'd learned, she began to realize that something was missing: she was spending so much time stuck in her head that she wasn't noticing the world around her.
In this journey of self-experimentation, Rubin explores the mysteries and joys of embracing the senses as a path to a happier, more mindful life: from the simple pleasures of appreciating ketchup and adding favourite songs to a playlist, to practicing daily rituals and attending Flavor University, she discovers the power of tuning in.
Life in Five Senses is filled with profound insights and practical suggestions about how to heighten our senses and live fuller, richer lives - and, ultimately, how to move through the world with more vitality and love.
'An inspiring and practical guide to living in the moment' - Susan Cain, author of Quiet
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Rubin (The Happiness Project) turns her attention to sensory perception in this flawed offering. Reeling from an eye doctor's passing comment about her predisposition for a condition that can cause sight loss, Rubin realized she'd been "allowing the sensations of life to slip away unobserved," whether the feeling of her husband's stubble or New York City's "heady of car exhaust, marijuana, and honey-roasted peanuts." Rubin dedicates a chapter to each sense, weaving together research, personal observations, and musings on its importance to her life. "Taste" involves a food tour of the Lower East Side's Jewish cuisine with her mother-in-law and children, which helps her realize how bonding over food can "deepen relationships." The heated tiles of a hotel bathroom floor and a hug, meanwhile, show how touch can confer pleasure or comfort, and daily visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art help the author differentiate subtle variations in color. Rubin suggests practices for readers to deepen sensory awareness, among them hosting a "Taste Party" to compare different varieties of familiar foods. While this outing has its revealing moments, it lacks clear purpose, and Rubin's aims to extract "deeper insights about the human experience" through sensory awareness are too broad. The author is undoubtedly enthusiastic about her material, but that alone doesn't salvage this.
