Hobbies To Please the Senses

Today is life—the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto. ~ Dale Carnegie

This week’s posts continue and conclude the series begun in May on hobbies.

Finding a New Hobby

Are you looking for a new hobby, or for ways to get more enjoyment or satisfaction from a hobby you already have?

The Redbook article “The Surprising Benefits of Finding a New Hobby” offers both inspiration for getting started and many ideas for new (and old) hobbies, especially for busy parents who might feel they don’t have the time to pursue activities simply for the pleasure they bring. You can also take the short and fun CNN quiz designed to match you hobby style to your personality (see my comment to this post, below, for my results, and share your own!).

Another way to approach finding the best hobbies for you is to think about your specific intensities or overexcitabilities.

Knitting for the Feel of It

One of the things I love most about knitting is the feel of the yarn against my fingers, which is why I would much rather buy less yarn of higher quality fibers in rich colors than cases of scratchy, inexpensive, dull colored mega-skeins. I also enjoy knitting and crocheting more when I can use specific needles and hooks, especially wood knitting needles and my grandmother’s fine, tiny crochet hooks.

In fact, many of the activities I have enjoyed in my life have had a strong sensual component: cooking with fresh ingredients, gardening (especially when the soil is soft and loose), walking in the crisp morning air. My mother’s hobbies and professional interests also pleased her senses, although she had a more finely tuned visual sense than I do.

Michael Piechowski writes of sensual overexcitability:

“Persons so endowed immerse themselves in the delight of beautiful things, sounds of nature, sounds of words and music; they note the form, color, and balance in anything around them. Specific aversions to certain tastes, smells, or touch, and the like are also common. Hedonism is often sensual. Sensual pleasure tends to be relaxing and temporarily satisfying.”

He goes on to say that release of emotional tension through sensual overexcitability can take the form of overindulgence, such as overeating, chain smoking, or compulsive shopping.

Could it be that carefully chosen hobbies that engage the senses could help to channel this tension in ways that are less harmful and more enjoyable? Examples are crafts of all kinds, of course, but also yoga or Tae Kwon Do, photography, scented soap making, drawing, community theater, or a cappella singing. Or you might think about tweaking a current hobby to enhance its sensual dimension, such as learning to develop your own film, a more hands-on experience that engages more senses than always using a digital camera, or using your photos to create hand-made scrapbooks. These “tweaks” also offer a new challenge, making the activity more complex, which increases the likelihood of finding flow in your hobby.

For more information about sensual overexcitability and how parents and teachers can help children to manage it, see the charts in Care and Feeding of Sensual Overexcitability by Lorraine L. Bouchard, Ed.D.

• What are more examples of sensual hobbies?
• What sensual hobbies to you enjoy?
• Do you think that sensual hobbies could ever get out of hand for someone with sensual overexcitability?