Sensory Play
We have a lot of senses: the five we learned as kids in school - sights, touch, taste, hearing and smell - yes, but there’s several more! These include balance, proprioception (our joints and muscles mapping where our body is), interoception (all the internal sensations of pressure, chemicals, temperature), and pain. All the sensory systems working together is known as sensory integration. The brain uses information from each sense to direct behaviour and adjust other body systems.
With sensory integration, we can successfully manoeuvre in our environment. For example, when you sense thirst, you can find a container and a water source to pour yourself a drink. That response - getting a glass of water - makes sense to us.
However, we sometimes meet people whose response does not make sense to us. Somewhere in the integration process, the information can get mixed up, lost or amplified (for more information, look into sensory thresholds), or there’s lagging skills for the response. Lagging skills can happen for lots of reasons, including lack of exposure.
The first time we encounter something, we don't know how to respond to it. In neurotypical folk, our brains look to others to see how they are responding. If everyone around me seems fine and happy with this situation, I will relax and try it out, too. But if the people around me - especially if these people are my caregivers - seem stressed and anxious, I will be, too! This anxiety is quickly and automatically associated with the sensory information I’m processing, so that my brain knows to be on alert next time I encounter it, too.
If our range of safe experiences is very narrow, we will experience a lot of anxiety because a lot of things will be outside our known safety zone. We’ll often incorrectly label something as dangerous when it’s not. This is why it’s so important to experience a wide range of sensory experiences: by learning what’s safe, I experience less fear, worry and anxiety.
Our brains are hardwired to play. In play, we explore, experiment and observe. In play, we see how others are responding to varied situations. In play, we can practise responding, too. We can try new things, knowing it’s low-risk. This way, we know how to respond when we encounter it outside of play.
If you look up sensory play on the internet, the first things that come up are probably sensory bins. These bins are a lot of fun and a great way to make exploring new touch sensations appealing. You can include textures like gritty, slimy, rough, soft…anything you can imagine! But sensory play doesn’t have to mean lots of prep time or expensive toys, and it’s certainly not limited to our sense of touch.
Going for a walk to listen for birds or to the sound of the river can help stretch our hearing range, as well as teach our eyes to adjust for different lighting conditions and see nuanced shades of colour. Touching trees, rocks, and mud all provide a wide range of touch sensations. The air outside might be still or moving with wind, and can be any temperature on the skin.
Even eating homemade food can help widen sensory tolerance because it won’t taste exactly the same twice. If something tastes different than we expect it to, we might decide it’s not safe to eat, when it really is. Widening our range of experiences helps us correctly identify when something isn’t safe.
Our modern lifestyle includes a lot of indoor sitting activities, so many people aren’t getting the proprioceptive or vestibular experiences their bodies have evolved to expect. Big body play that includes taking risks and testing our strength is necessary to learn the safe boundaries of our own body’s abilities. Jumping from different heights, climbing, running on different surfaces ( such as grass, sand, or shallow water), all teach the brain to pay attention to how our bodies move, what the range of our abilities are, and which of those sensations are, in fact, safe.
Including mindful moments of checking in with our bodies during play helps develop our awareness of our internal sensations. We learn to read our body’s signals to know when to slow down, re-fuel, and rest.
When the people around us are relaxed and calm, we take that as a cue that it’s safe to continue exploring. As soon as the people around us become tense, afraid or upset, we do too. It’s a big part of our body’s survival instincts.
Sometimes we unintentionally teach the children around us that something is unsafe and should be avoided. We do this with our facial expressions, body language, and our behaviours. By incorporating that sensory information into play, both the caregiver and child can experiment and explore and re-learn that it is safe, and reduce a lot of stress and worry in their daily lives.
Sensory play is how our brains practice, explore, and make connections. This is true at any age! Knowing that we take in a broad range of sensory information, we can be intentional about including safe sensations in our play. Widening our range of tolerance and refining our senses helps us make smarter choices, and feel more confident in those choices. Sensory play is a great tool that promotes wellbeing and mental health across all ages and stages of our lives.
