By Beheshta Taheri, M.A.

“Whatever you frequently think and ponder upon, that will become the inclination of your mind” ~ Buddha

According to a recent poll, Canadians reported being more exhausted and less happy than past years (The Angus Reid Institute, 2024). 

As I reflect on my clinical work, what brings many clients to the therapy room is a sense of overwhelm, stress, and stuckness. In an attempt to deal with it, clients (and some therapists alike) often find themselves in a perpetual thinking loop about their situation in hopes of arriving at a solution out of their misery, often to no avail.

It feels like we are working hard, and the brain reflects this by a serious doubling down on our problem-solving network (i.e. the Default Mode Network = DMN). Neuroimaging studies show that when we are stressed, the DMN goes into overdrive, as we ruminate and mull over our problems (Farb & Segal, 2024).

The DMN is essential in the context of meeting the demands of everyday functioning on autopilot – from brushing our teeth, to putting on clothes, driving to work, or analyzing a familiar problem and arriving at a solution. However, what if the tried-and-true solutions are not working? What if we need to free up and activate other parts of the brain that can help us arrive at novel, untried, yet helpful experiences?

When stressed, we are naturally inclined to protect ourselves against the stress. This plays out across many different mental illnesses, such as depression and anxiety. Ironically, it is in this very effort to protect, that we also cut ourselves off, and often become numb and unreceptive to new insights and experiences. Recent research demonstrates that shut down of the sensory regions in the brain predicts vulnerability to recurrence of depressive episodes, making them chronic and intractable (Farb & Segal, 2024).  

In a recently published book, Better in Every Sense: How the Science of Sensation can Help You Reclaim your Life, psychology professor and neuroscience researcher, Norman Farb and Zindel Segal, world-renowned expert on psychological vulnerability to depression, provides plethora of tools to help us get unhooked from the stuck-ness we may find ourselves in. In the book, they lay out the foundation for what is referred to as “sense foraging”, which “consists of two complementary abilities: decentering and distress tolerance”.

Decentering means stepping back to observe from one’s thoughts, feelings, and sensations without quickly reacting to them.” For those familiar with Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, it is akin to mindfully observing, and the STOP skills.

“Distress tolerance is the ability to bear the unpleasantness of what we might find”. This, according to the book, is similar to when we are watching a horror movie while tension is gradually building.

The authors suggest “toggling” or balancing between habit (DMN) and sensory modes. Embedded in sense foraging is its exploratory nature, which does not rely on habit. Rather, it receives novel input that leads to a different embodied experience, giving rise to agency and a growth mindset.

Here are 10 of my favourite sense foraging suggestions from the book.

1. Get to know your senses. Attend to sensations and allow sensory information, rather than some later inference or change be your criterion for success.
2. Find ways to connect with your senses even in the busy-ness of everyday life – e.g., feel your feet on a crowded street, or the wind when you first step outside. Notice the sight and sound of people’s faces and their voices, even though you may have a lot to do or think about. Most of all, get used to checking in with sensations arising inside your body, the building blocks of feeling, which, in turn become full-blown emotions.
3. Notice that some sensations form familiar patterns that are predictable. Get to know being stuck – even though this may be the least pleasant feeling, and many of us spend a great deal of our day in this place. Observe being stuck and feel good about noticing. This is the first step to getting unstuck.
4. When you feel stuck, learn to forage for change. When you are stuck, notice that almost all your sensory information shows a world that is dynamic, alive, and changing. If you can tune into other sensations in your own body beyond the constellation of sensations that give rise to the feeling of stuck-ness, you will notice that you are not actually locked into place – that’s just a description of an overly familiar unpleasant sensation.
5. Notice that dynamic sensations contain a universe of feeling tones. Once you get used to noticing the snap, crackle, and pop of changing sensations, you can notice them under the dominant feeling of stress on loop. Can you learn to notice these tones, to recognize that there is never only one feeling in play?
6. Make a game of sense foraging in a new location. Get used to moving into new locations and foraging for new, commonly ignored sensations.
7. Get intentional about sense foraging. Set a time and a place, and most important, go out and do it, even if it feels strange and awkward. Those are often signs that you are doing something new and you on the right track!
8. Find your access points. Don’t forage the same way someone else does.  Just because it works for them, it doesn’t mean it would also work for you. A resilient person will have a few different access points for sense foraging; some that provide a sense of relief, some that help build insight, and some that have fringe benefits like group activities that strengthen relationships with others.
9. Remember to toggle back to your problems. Don’t fall into the trap of only using sense foraging for relief while real problems build around you. Learn to forage for relief when you are overwhelmed, but also make time to forage for insight. Come back to the conceptual and notice if other options are available for after sense of foraging. Get used to toggling between these two modes to keep your eye on important things in life while also working to keep yourself relaxed, open, and flexible through sense foraging.
10. Think about the big picture. As you get more comfortable with sense foraging and toggling, you will feel like you sometimes have a greater capacity to think about the big picture rather than just survival (Farb & Segal, 2004, pp. 236-239).

Spring often signifies renewal, emergence of life, a new beginning. It literally marks the New Year (aka. Nowroz) in several parts of the world. For all those willing, begin this season by trying some of the above and make space for sense foraging as a new inclination of the mind!

Sources:

Segal, Zindel & Norman Farb. (2024). Better in Every Sense: How the New Science of Sensation Can Help You Reclaim Your Life. Little Brown, Spark, New York.