Let’s start with a statement I think every Christian will agree with: God intends for us to use our five senses (sight, taste, touch, smell, hearing) to engage with him. I hope this is not controversial. Yet there are some pockets of Christianity (at least in America) that seem to have concerns when our senses are used in a therapeutic or counseling context. I am sympathetic to these fears, even as I myself have concerns about how those fears are wielded. In this post, my aim is to 1) give a very brief overview of how the Bible speaks of our five senses; 2) how sensory engagement can be faithfully used in a therapeutic/counseling setting; 3) charitably explore why some Christians are cautious about this subject; 4) offer reasons why I ultimately believe those concerns are excessive.
The Bible and Our Five Senses
Rather than providing five Bible verses that speak to the reality of all five senses, I will simply highlight a few biblical passages that serve as shorthand for the wonder and utility of our senses as God-given portals to engage with him and his world.
- Psalm 8:3–4 — “When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars that you set in place—what are mere mortals that you should think about them, mere human beings that you should care for them?” There is nothing like looking up on a clear night at the stars that are countless light years away. In those moments, at least four things are true: we are captivated, we are not thinking about ourselves, we are amazed at the Creator who spoke those stars into existence, and it is our sight that is mediating all of that.
- 34:8 — “Taste and see that the LORD is good.” Here, the psalmist is employing metaphorical language to beckon his hearers to be captivated by the glory of God. He wants his hearers to engage with God at more than a merely cognitive level; he wants them to engage with their whole being (thinking, desiring, feeling, willing, etc.) through their bodily senses.
- Ephesians 5:2 — “Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Here, the apostle Paul utilizes the sense of smell to help his readers/hearers better understand and imagine the beauty of Christ’s sacrificial life and death, which in turn is meant to foster determination to follow in Jesus’s footsteps.
Sensory Engagement as a Way to Help Someone
The passages above hopefully serve as examples of how our senses can facilitate our enjoyment of God in the course of daily living. On top of this, however, sensory engagement can help individuals who are struggling with unpleasant experiences and are seeking help. Examples include someone who is experiencing a flashback (a spontaneous, upsetting, and intrusive memory) or a panic attack (instant, severe fear that has physical responses like nausea, pounding heart, shortness of breath, etc.). These often occur even when a person is not objectively in danger in the moment; they feel traumatic. Trauma can be life-threatening situations (“Big T” trauma) or scenarios that simply feel overwhelming to one’s capacities (“little t” trauma). When memories of these events or experiences are triggered, the past suddenly invades the present moment, in a way that can feel anywhere along the spectrum from uncomfortable to incapacitating. Using one’s physical senses to engage with the world around them is a great way to return to the present moment and turn down the “volume” of fear. You may have heard this sensory-facilitated effort to stay in the present moment referred to as “grounding.” Biblical counselor Brad Hambrick offers some practical examples of grounding[1]:
- Sight – Go to a mirror and make eye contact with yourself. Allowing your eyes to dart around the room seeking a threat loosens your visual anchor to the present. “Own” what you do with your eyes. As you look at yourself, see a competent adult; this is particularly helpful for those who experienced trauma as a child and return to feeling child-like during their experience of a flashback or panic attack. Keep your eyes open. The darkness of having your eyes closed creates a blank canvas upon which your imagination can depict your memories or fears. Keeping your eyes open is a choice you can make that is a sign of courage and autonomy. It represents a new attitude which recognizes you are larger than your memories.
- Smell – Keep your favorite scent handy; a potpourri sack or scented candy in your pocket. Pull it out when you feel a flashback or panic attack beginning. The deep breath you take activates both the calming influence of a pleasant smell and the calming effects of cooling the nasal cavity. Memory is more closely associated with the olfactory sense than any of the other five senses because the olfactory sense registers in the brain’s limbic system where emotion is also housed. Enhance the impact of your calming smell by having it present during activities you enjoy (i.e., favorite hobby, a warm bath, listening to calming music).
- Touch – What are your favorite sensations? Smooth velvet. A leathery baseball. A cool ice pack. A warm cup of coffee (probably decaf at a time like this). Keep these things readily available. But as you access them, don’t view them as an escape valve. That only exacerbates the sense of danger. Choose them as an exercise of your will about what you will give your attention to. Another means of using touch is soothing self-touches. What do you do with your hands when you’re stressed? Wrench your neck. Ruffle-pull your hair. Scratch your skin. What if you chose soothing touches instead? Massaging your temples. Relaxing your hands and shoulders…. If you’re at home when you begin to experience a flashback or panic attack and have a pet, call them to you. Stroke their fur. Pay attention to how they lean into your hand or the affirming purr they give. Allow this to help keep “your safe here-and-now” in the forefront of your experience.
- Sound – Calming music, nature sounds, or even a white noise machine can help anchor you in your present surroundings. If you are sound sensitive, be aware of when you place yourself in high stimulation or high-volume environments. These can increase your baseline stress levels without you being aware of it and leave you more susceptible to a post-traumatic reaction. Calling a friend is an excellent use of sound as a calming mechanism. Whether you choose to talk about the pending sense of a panic attack or flashback or not, the interactive quality of a conversation is an excellent means of grounding yourself in the present. If you are willing to talk about the experience, this can be a good way to counter its messages of doom; rarely does any fear seem as great or close once we speak it out loud with a trusted friend.
- Taste – Whether it’s a soothing piece of sweet candy or a shockingly sour candy, you can always have a taste anchor in your pocket and there is no social awkwardness about accessing it. Panic attacks and flashbacks are foul experiences; having something pleasant tasting in your mouth can help counter the experience. There is also something casual about having a snack. While this is not directly linked to the sense of taste, it can be part of the experience of eating which is calming. The experience of fear is also physically draining, and the boost of energy from a healthy snack helps counter this.
Why Some Christians Are Worried
There are some who get nervous when it comes to using our senses to instill calm in response to intrusive memories and panic attacks. I very much want to be charitable here. I have no desire to create a straw man. As a matter of fact, I very much want to steel man this different perspective. In that vein, here are a few reasons why I think some corners of Christianity—including some in the biblical counseling world—view “grounding” with suspicion.
- These individuals do not want the focus taken off the Lord. They are aware of how easily people in general (including Christians) can become more infatuated with God’s creation than with God himself. They fear that God’s gifts will serve as idols that fascinate, while the giver of these good gifts (God himself) will be relegated to the background.
- They understand that cognition and volition play a vital role in the Christian life. By “cognition,” I mean mental awareness and focus. After all, the Christian faith is no less than what we believe and set our minds on. Colossians 3:2 states, “Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth.” And by “volition,” I mean the will to do what is right and pleasing to the Lord, even when our feelings tempt us to do the opposite. Much of life involves choosing obedience despite our emotional fluctuations and the allure of worldly distractions (e.g., Deut. 30:19).
- They are (often rightly) suspicious of techniques or methods that resemble secular counseling practices. Broadly speaking, secular counseling philosophies are highly devoid of God at all, let alone possessing a Christ-centered worldview. And therefore, when a counselor uses a concept or practice that is possibly “tainted” by its historical background in a godless way of perceiving life and people, these believers are understandably skeptical. When they hear a Christian quote Saint Augustine’s famous line, “All truth is God’s truth,” these brothers and sisters in the faith are prone to respond with the adage, “A half-truth is a whole lie.” I sympathize with the concern and appreciate their desire to be discerning.
Why I Still Think Engaging Our Senses is Helpful and Faithful
I’ll speak to this more generally, but as a biblical counselor myself, I’m also thinking of this topic in relation to how to help individuals who have wrestled with traumatic events and ensuing symptoms. Below are some reasons why I believe sensory engagement (what might be called “grounding” techniques) is a legitimate way to help people, along with reasons I think concerns about this subject are, to a degree, inflated by some.
- While I appreciate the desire to be discerning about the origins of ideas and practices, there is a difference between good-faith discernment and a form of automatically skeptical discernment that has already made up its mind. My impression is that some believers functionally discard anything that does not originate in a self-consciously and overtly Christian environment. I would simply say that while we should always be discerning, we should not be surprised if unbelievers in a secular environment offer good insights. Analogous to the Israelites making use of the Egyptian contributions (Exod. 12:35–36), Christians can and should be willing to consider and utilize helpful ideas and interventions wherever they are found. Selective mining for gold does not equate to wholesale acceptance of the surrounding sediment it came from. I am aware that “selective mining for gold” is tremendously dependent on godly intuitions, wisdom, and discernment by a given person in any situation. It is beyond the scope of this article to give numerous specific examples of how “selective mining” might play itself out, but for my purpose here, I want to encourage us to take seriously the notion that God scatters help and insight among his creation in a lavish manner.
- To the best of my understanding of biblical teaching, our physical bodies and the physical world are not “second-class citizens.” The world is certainly more than just the physical, but in terms of what is real and good, there are spiritual realities (God, angels, virtues such as love, wisdom, patience, etc.) and there are physical realities (trees, birds, the sun, people, coffee, city buildings, etc.). God is ultimately the author and originator of both, and each arena is meant to enhance our interaction with the other. One is not intrinsically more important than the other. Both categories comprise reality in God’s world now, and they will still make up reality in eternity. Because I live in the world of biblical counseling, I am aware that passages such as 2 Corinthians 4 seem, to some, to implicitly critique sensory-facilitated ways of coping with trauma. This passage speaks of our outer bodies wasting away, while the inner person can be renewed day by day. I think the concern raised by some could be stated as, “The Bible as a whole and this chapter in particular raises the alarm against a focus on things that are temporary.” I love this chapter of the Bible. And while I affirm that our hearts can continually rest in Christ no matter our circumstances, I do not believe this equates to God not caring about our circumstances.
- My concern is that some Christians possess fears about “grounding” that I believe border on a kind of gnostic view. Gnosticism is an ancient view that treats immaterial things as good and the physical world as a kind of evil that needs to be subjugated. This ignores the totality of biblical teaching that the body and soul are both designed as good and are always engaged in a mutual two-way street of influence. What impacts one impacts the other. Grounding exercises activate the parasympathetic nervous system, thereby calming the body. When this “pre-work” has done its job, a person’s ability to think, reason, and consider (as opposed to just surviving) is drastically increased. While this may not always be possible—and in these moments, we still want to cry out to God and rely on his mercy—it seems to me that, if it can happen, it is a great kindness of God that should not be refused or treated as inferior.
- It also seems to me that there’s a subtle version of the so-called “prosperity gospel” that is advocated here. To be clear, I do not think this is the intention! But I do think this is dangerously close to the end result when we implicitly or explicitly say that simply trusting God will inevitably lead to an avoidance of fear (and therefore, we don’t need to engage our physical senses for the sake of calming our bodies).
- Related to the previous point, another concern I have for my Christian brothers and sisters who seem to disregard utilizing the benefit of our senses is that there often seems to be an overemphasis on cognitively taking in the right information (rationalism, thinking, mental agreement), leading to right volition (a will to do what is pleasing to God). These things are absolutely crucial. The Bible is all about them. We major on them. But they are not all that the Bible teaches about who God is, how he relates to us, and how we are to relate to him. An overemphasis like this runs the risk of caricaturing Christianity as sterile and dim instead of fruitful and technicolor. Another unintended consequence is that mere thought replacement is postured as sanctification. This view leaves out—likely not intentionally, but nevertheless functionally—the excellence, mystery, and wonder of things like God’s covenant love that is the backbone of our relationship to him, the reality of our multi-layered emotional lives (ever read the Psalms?), and our interactions with the world around our soul (our bodies, other people, our culture, the physical/natural world, and the spiritual realm).
- I have also heard 2 Corinthians 5:7 as another justification for strong skepticism/criticism of sensory-facilitated calming. That verse states, “We walk by faith and not by sight.” I’ll simply say this is not the best argument I have heard. “Sight” is not used by the apostle Paul in this verse to refer to our sensory perceptions (as if it’s a stand-in for sight, taste, touch, smell, hearing). It means something much more like “things that make sense to our natural understanding” (similar to Prov. 3:5). This verse doesn’t mean to never use your bodily senses!
Conclusion
For a Christian, everything in life—from the stars that dwarf our sun to the microscopic components of human cells—is meant to enable and assist our relationship with the Triune God. These things are subservient to God himself (here’s a point of agreement I want to hold tightly with those I’ve disagreed with in this post). Yet I want to be careful that their subservience does not equate to their disuse and disregard in practical life. All of creation and God-gifted human ingenuity are intended to help us more fully delight in who God is. In that spirit, C.S. Lewis says the following:
“I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.
Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.”[2]
There are likely many applications that could be made from this quote. But my purpose here is to simply conclude by saying that God is the “sun” who offers the use of our senses in the first place, and it is the use of these senses that allows us to trace every echo of his glory—the “green leaves moving on the branches of a tree”—along the “sunbeam” straight back to him. Our sight, taste, touch, smell, and hearing need not become ends in themselves. Their God-given function is to facilitate living wisely in his world and to foster relationship with him.
— Allen Mayberry is staff counselor at Rocky Creek Baptist Church in Greenville, S.C.
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[1] https://bradhambrick.com/countering-traumas-impact-part-2-of-3-intrusive-symptoms/. I am borrowing these 5 points word for word from this article.
[2] https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/resources/reflections-november-2019/.