Introduction

The central nervous system is made up of your brain and spinal cord, and is responsible for most of your body's functions. Think of how much your brain and spine absorb every day! How does our body release this energy? While this isn’t a simple science diagram, we can use this picture to motivate us to focus on activities that release things stored in our body. We’ve covered some of these so far: rest, sleep, yoga, meditation... But in this course we will go further in exploring this. This course will give you practical tools to minimize your stress response, and identify things you can do when you feel anxiety in your body.

We are all familiar with the five basic senses of sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste, as well as the proverbial sixth sense, or ability to intuit thoughts, feelings or energies from other people and situations.  We are taking in stimulus from all six of these at all times, even when we aren’t cognizant of it.  Everything we experience first comes into our awareness through our senses.

Think for just a minute about everything that your body absorbs on a regular day through what you see and hear.  On days when you have a big event such as a concert or a football game, or even a trip to the movies, then your senses will be receiving extra stimulation.  

The Highly Sensitive Person

A highly sensitive individual, or HSP, experiences most of their sensory information at an increased level.  The nervous system of an HSP is turned up to high volume. Sounds can be louder and more irritating, or the individual can’t filter out background noise from a one on one conversation.  Lights will appear bright and can hurt their eyes.  Smells both pleasant and unpleasant can be overwhelmingly strong.  Tactile stimulation can be heightened as well. In many cases, some HSPs have trouble with the feeling of clothing on their skin.

But being an HSP isn’t all over stimulation all the time.  HSPs also have high emotional responses, both “good” and “bad”.  HSPs tend to have vivid dreams and be highly creative.  As HSPs have all of their senses heightened, many of us have psychic or empathic abilities.

If you think you may be highly sensitive, or want to learn more, take the quiz included in this section. There are no right or wrong answers, but the more you answer "True" to any of the questions, the higher of a likelihood you are highly sensitive.