Final Blogpost

I came into this class looking to learn more about sensory experience in particular as a psychology student, but I was also hoping to integrate all sorts of “non western” perspectives to really delve deeply into what a more comprehensive understanding of the human sensory experience would look like. It’s extremely common, in general, for “research” to focus intently on the experiences of those from the global North and attempt to orient epistemologies around those findings while ignoring those from places that might be considered “peripheries.” Because there are so few, if any, universals about the human experience, it simply causes us to come to the insufficient conclusions about the nature of our senses in addition to the marginalizing effects of Eurocentric inquiry and research. 

This is what I found so powerful about this class. I’ve heard plenty about the mechanics and biological processes that produce sensory perception in my introductory psychology courses, but what I’ve missed are the complex and varying ways that people from different cultures make meanings of these fundamental human processes, and frankly, the latter is far more interesting. Religion is an excellent avenue to begin to survey some of these different constructions and meanings. 

Because of my own limited prior experience with religion, I’ve only really been able to think this way through the lens of Christianity as it pertains specifically to sensory experience. I’ve taken many world religions classes in the past, but I’ve never had the opportunity to learn with a focus upon the sensory dimensions of other religions and I found that it really helped in widening my scope of understanding as I hoped it would. Ultimately, I think that this class also taught me new forms of mindfulness that I can incorporate into my life. I’d previously thought of the senses as the individual components of perception that mesh together to allow us to navigate our environments, but now I feel as if there are entire new facets to interpreting sensory experiences that require reflection and can provide new insights.