OBJECTIVE
This module equips facilitators with the skills to guide learners thought the LISTEN TO YOUR SENSES tool, activating sensory reflection through a guided, immersive experience, fostering bodily awareness and the exploration of one’s physical and emotional perceptions.
By the end of the module, facilitators will be able to:
- Present the tool and its purpose.
- Support learners in exploring, recognize and describe their own sensory preferences.
- Use the LISTEN TO YOUR SENSES tool as a trigger for psycho-physical awareness and as a foundation for more empathetic, personalized spatial design.
CONTEXT
This module follows directly from Module 1 (OBSERVE) and builds on the identity and emotional awareness work previously undertaken. While OBSERVE focused on reflective, narrative, and cognitive aspects of the self, LISTEN TO YOUR SENSES shifts attention to the body, intuition, and multisensory perception. The aim is to help learners engage more fully with the lived experience of space, cultivating sensitivity to atmospheres, textures, sounds, and other sensory qualities that influence comfort and wellbeing.
In this stage, learners are encouraged to connect with their own sensory preferences while considering the sensory experiences of others – future inhabitants of the spaces they will design. By becoming more attuned to subtle bodily and emotional cues, learners deepen their understanding of how physical environments affect mood, behavior, and relational dynamics. This awareness is essential for their emerging role as wellbeing-focused interior designers: it enhances empathy, supports thoughtful intervention choices, and prepares them to create environments that respond to both functional and emotional needs.
PURPOSE
The purpose is to promote bodily awareness, increase sensitivity to environmental stimuli, and collect insights for wellbeing-centered spatial design.
PREPARATION
- Download the presentation to introduce the tool
- Print the LEARNER HANDOUT
- Prepare the LISTEN TO YOUR SENSES tool:
- 1 cardboard box or folder (A3 size, rigid and closable)
- 1 blindfold or eye mask per learner
- 4 A3 sheets (one for each sensory experience), each with a black adhesive pouch containing the stimulus to explore
- Prepare drawing and creative reflection materials: markers, pencils, or colored crayons, cut-outs, glue, etc.
- Print the OBSERVATION & INTERPRETATION sheet
- Set up a welcoming, quiet environment
DURATION
1,5 hours
CONCLUSION
At the end of the activity, facilitators guide learners to reflect individually on the activity, then share their experience verbally or through a creative medium. This helps consolidate insights and make sense of what they sensed and felt. Facilitators encourage listening carefully and without judgement. This phase helps learners transform personal sensations into reflective insights, fostering empathy, bodily awareness, and an understanding of how sensory perception affect comfort, wellbeing, and interaction with space. It is also an opportunity to collect qualitative observations that can guide interventations in real-life contexts.
RELEVANCE TO SPACE RENOVATION
The relevance of this module lies in guiding personalized space design, uncovering latent needs, and supporting choices aligned with the inhabitant’s identity.
This module provides facilitators with the framework to help learners translate sensory experiences into actionable insights for spatial design. By guiding learners through tactile, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and visual explorations, facilitators support them in identifying preferences and dislikes, sensory stimuli that evoke comfort, wellbeing, or unease; emotional and bodily responses connected to environmental conditions; latent needs and desires that may not be explicitly expressed but can inform design decisions.
This activity strengthens learners’ ability to listen to themselves and others, providing a foundation for person-centered, wellbeing-focused design that takes both functional and emotional factors into account.
Made with love by Wellhome team
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
