What is a Sensory Diet?
Have you heard the term “sensory diet” before? It sounds food related but a sensory diet consists of providing the body with regular sensory experiences to help the ourselves feel ready to take on whatever the day has in store.
How to Create a Sensory Diet
The first step in building a unique sensory diet is to figure out the sensory inputs you enjoy. Consider all of the senses: taste, smell, sound, touch, sight, vestibular, and proprioceptive (refer to The Three Secret Senses to learn about proprioceptive and vestibular input.)
Once you’ve figured out your favorite combination of sensations, you’re ready to create you’re sensory diet.
Next, it’s time to find ways to incorporate these sensory inputs into your day as much as possible to help maximize how you feel. What are things you’re already doing? Do you listen to music in your car? Try listening while sipping morning coffee, taking a shower, or eating breakfast. See how it impacts your morning mood and alertness levels. Begin experimenting with all of the senses and take notice of how the body is feeling on each day. If the sensory input or activity helps you feel calmer, more alert, or generally in a better mood, that input may have a regulating impact on you.
If you enjoy olfactory input (smells) try burning a candle within sight or diffusing essential oils. How about taste? Have a sour, sweet, or salty snack. Take some time to move the body with vestibular input but swinging in a hammock, going for a walk, or sitting in a rocking chair. Need some proprioceptive input? Try lifting weights, sweeping, vacuuming, raking leaves, or shoveling snow. These simple tasks provide the body with sensory input that improves awareness (both physical and mental), calms nerves, increases endorphins, and strengthens neural pathways.
Sensory Diets for Children
Providing children with sensory input (and often ourselves by participating) may be as simple as playing tag, setting up a brief obstacle course, playing in a sand box, or assisting with households chores.
Anything repetitive that gets the body moving can have a regulating effect. Need to get a lot of energy out? Try getting silly and building a pillow tower and knocking it down. Getting the input in on a regular, predictable basis helps improve the regulating impact and overall sensory processing abilities of the individual.
Sensory diets involve incorporating activities at regular intervals throughout the day. Start small with one activity, once a day. It helps to keep the activity at the same time each day for consistency. Then gradually increase or decrease the input based on how the body responds. We can apply this same concept to our children’s bodies. Try to see where yours and your children’s/family member’s sensory preferences overlap and try to create time to participate in sensory diet tasks together.
Keep in mind, the body’s needs may differ from day to day and season to season. Try to listen to what the body needs each day and don’t be afraid to experiment with new sensory inputs!
