Making full use of all your senses will help you improve every area of your life. The exercises in this section will increase your sensory sensitivity, and gradually build your confidence and ability to continue doing many day-to-day activities.

Visual Memory

In the past you've used your vision to confirm information coming from your other senses. Sensory exercises can help increase your overall sensitivity and abilities, and gain trust in all your remaining senses. Your visual memory can be used to recall past experiences and help you form a mental picture of any situation or environment.

Remaining Vision

Use whatever remaining vision you have to the maximum extent possible. Also, check out the lighting in your home. Different types of lighting in certain areas may help you move around more safely. But support your reduced vision with information that can be gained by learning to trust and rely on your other senses.

Hearing

Hearing often decreases with age, although it obviously differs from one person to the next. If you are having difficulty with your hearing, you should be tested by an audiologist. Some people will need a hearing aid to improve their hearing. Regardless of how much remaining hearing you have, as with your reduced vision, continue to use it to the maximum!

Learn how to better use your sense of hearing. For example, if you concentrate on what you are hearing, and where sounds are coming from, you will be able to gain more information about your surroundings. In this way, your environment will feel more familiar, safer and comfortable to you.

Smell and taste

Smell and taste can be affected by medicine. As people age many more are on medications. But you should continue to use your senses as best you can. And be aware that if someone says something smells pungent, but you believe it smells fragrant — you can both be correct. Being consistent in what you can identify is the most important thing.

Skilled Professional Support

Although improving the sensitivity of all your senses is important, it is equally advisable that you consider the potential benefits of receiving rehabilitation services from skilled professionals, such as Orientation and Mobility Specialists and Vision Rehabilitation Therapists, in the fields of blindness and low vision.

Indoor Visualization Exercises to Maximize Senses

Here are some exercies you can do to maximize the use of all your senses. These sensory exercises will increase your sensory sensitivity, and gradually build your confidence and ability to continue doing many day-to-day activities.

• Maximize Your Sense of Hearing
• Maximize Your Sense of Touch
• Maximize Your Sense of Smell

These exercies will help stimulate your visual memory and will help you build a clear mental picture of every room in your home. They will also give you useful clues so you are able to more confidently move around your home, and locate different areas and items.

Repeat these visualization exercises until they become natural and automatic ways to better understand your environment. Gradually, you will begin to feel much more in control, more comfortable and secure, and far more confident.