In order to meet current evolutionary challenges, we human beings would do well to get more familiar with neuroscience, quantum mechanics and human biology. We are neural ambulatory networks of sensory modalities and sensibility connected to the interconnected world around us from within our bodies.

Quantum physics has profoundly impacted our understanding of human biology. We don't have only five senses, we conservatively have at least 21 but likely 33. In order to better understand interoceptive awareness, we need an upgraded understanding of our innate sensory perceptual capacity.

Our electromagnetic bodies are magnificently powerful! We can time travel via memory that holds sensations; we can communicate powerfully via proximity, without words; we can heal by therapeutic touch and breath, feeling into our pain, aided by light, touch, sound, water, empathy, curiosity, compassion. Therapeutic touch is invaluable for our health and wellness and it is rooted in science. Unless and until we share a common understanding of our extraordinary human neural architecture, we will be unable to transform our way of life in order to survive.

Within the transformative process of embodied healing, we meet the extraordinary sensory capacity of our quantum nature. The Universe is not mostly composed of particles, as we have been taught and erroneously believe. It is made up of dark matter. The dark is mysteriously generative. Like the subconscious of the human being, the Universe appears in form as light to our eye, but also disappears comprised mostly of vast darkness. Einstein said, what we see with our eyes is a delusion of our consciousness. Surely he was referring, in part, to the unseen dark matter of our cosmos. Our psyches mirror the cosmos (see mirror neurons in the brain). Quantum physics tells us that merely by our looking, we change what we view. We see what we look with--our inner awareness beneath our level of conscious awareness is perceiving, in a subtle but profound way, and communicating to our cells, in ways we simply trust, but do not understand.

What do heart coherence, quantum physics, neuroscience, emotional intelligence, presence, microbiome, self-healing, mitochondria and our sensory perceptual capacity all have in common: US!

Just as we are continually learning new things about deep space, the same can be said about the science of deep human being. Our senses give us the means to access our outer world, as well as the internal one and it does this without our direction.

It's far past time to update the Aristotelean model of human sensory perception. His treatise De Anima (350 BC) proposed the five external senses we commonly know. But what is the true number of senses? What does current science reveal? We have learned quite a bit since 350 BC. And since sensory perception and higher perceptual ability work together, it should motivate us to get more curious.

Let's start with the conservative number of human sensory modalities as ten:

1. Vision 2. Hearing 3. Smell 4. Taste 5. Touch 6. Pain 7. Mechanoreception 8. Balance 9. Temperature and 10. Blood pressure. Even if you do not understand what they each mean, physiologically, just considering what science has discovered is progressive.

Then consider that number as the accepted (21); Vision, e.g., would count as made up of two sense modalities, Light and Color within it.

(Vision)

1. Light

2. Color

3. Hearing

4. Smell (2000 or more receptors)

(Taste)

5. Sweet

6. Sour

7. Bitter

8. Salt

9. Touch

10. Pain

(Mechanoreception)

11. Balance

12. Proprioception or Joint position

13. Kinesthesis

(Temperature)

14. Heat

15. Cold

16. Blood pressure (one of the 11 Interoceptors)

17. Blood O2

18. Cerebrospinal fluid pH

19. Plasma osmotic pressure (thirst?)

20. Artery-vein blood glucose difference (hunger?)

21. Lung inflation, Bladder stretch, Full stomach)

The radical version counts 33 sensory modalities: Light, Red, Green, Blue; Hearing; 2000 or more receptor types for Smell; Sweet, Salt, Sour, Bitter, Umami; Light Touch, Pressure; Cutaneous, Somatic and Visceral (Pain); Rotational acceleration, Linear acceleration, Proprioception, Golgi tendon organs, muscle spindles (Muscle stretch); Heat and Cold; Arterial blood pressure, Central venous bp, Head blood temperature, Blood oxygen content, Cerebrospinal fluid pH, Plasma osmotic pressure (thirst?), Artery-vein blood glucose difference (hunger?), Lung inflation, Bladder stretch and Full stomach.

Are you beginning to see the profound level of subtlety and specialization of the human sensory perceptual system? The point is not to focus on how many senses we have or fight over how to count them, but to understand how all of this intricate internal data is informing our perception.

The bottom line is that we make a mistake in concentrating on senses, and even in arguing about how many there are. Perception is what matters, and sensation is what accompanies it. -Bruce Durie

Our bodies are intelligent beyond our wildest imagination, and that intelligence is distributed throughout. Afferent neurons carry 80% of sensory information from receptors in the skin, organs, fascia into the CNS (spinal cord and brain). Efferent neurons carry motor information from brain out to the peripheral nervous system and make up 20% of sensory information. Interneurons connect the sensory and motor neurons.

We can stretch beyond the mere physical representations that define "reality" by tapping into embodied awareness and upgrading our understanding of scientific knowledge in the service of evolving our perceptual acuity. There are profound implications for our health and ability to be part of our own healing and wellbeing. We are deeply connected to the electromagnetic force of life on both the grandest and most minute level.

It will require the death of our misconceptions, and outdated information to take fuller advantage of our quantum nature to address current challenges at this time of seemingly insurmountable disagreement, suffering and confusion. "Perception goes way beyond the palette of sensations and involves memory, early experiences and higher-level processing," writes Durie.

Next week, I will go into more detail from my experience innovating in Integrative Neuromuscular Therapy in my 30+ year clinical practice. Until then ... Liz