How Many Senses Do You Really Have?

You have been taught since you were very young that you have 5 senses. Sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch. But is that all the senses you have? Do you have more? Or do you really only have 1 sense?

Do You Have More Than 5 Senses?

How can you have more than 5 senses? Don’t seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting, and touching pretty much encompass all there is to sense? They can perceive any external stimulus.

But in reality, you have a lot more senses that you don’t think of. These ‘other’ senses are independent of sight, taste, touch, smell, and sound. A few of them are: hunger, thirst, time, itch, pressure. And two more with fancy names that in my own personal health struggles have given me problems – proprioception and equilibrioception (sense of balance). These innate abilities allow you to know where your body parts are. And they also help you keep your balance. Most of us never think of all the ways we interpret the outside world.

Here is an article that lists a lot of the other senses you may not be aware of.

In addition to all these senses that help you interpret the external stimuli, you also have your instincts and intuitions. That internal sense or feeling you get. This sense has also been called the sixth sense or ESP (extra sensory perception). Even Spiderman had his “Spidey Sense”. Your instincts and intuitions help to alert you when you are doing something right – or doing something wrong.

Or Do You Have Only 1 Sense?

The definition of sense is ‘a faculty by which the body perceives an external stimulus’. What science has done for thousands of years is to break that faculty down into every different way sensations are perceived. But don’t you really have just one sense that manifests itself in many forms? You have the innate ability to understand and interpret the outside world. It may be through sight or hearing or smell – but this sensing of the environment around you comes in all different forms. Sometimes it’s even your instincts and intuitions.

I like to keep things simple. Instead of breaking down your way of sensing the environment around you into many different kinds of senses, you can just realize you have one sense that tells you what you need to know.