Glossary

Sensory appreciation

The terms ‘sensory appreciation’ or ‘sensory perception’ refer to the information we get from the entirety of our senses. This includes sensory information from both our external senses and our internal senses (our kinaesthetic/proprioceptive, vestibular, and interoceptive senses). Our sensory appreciation gives us information both from our environment and from our physical condition and the use of our bodies and our whole selves. It lets us know what is happening in our environment and how we are relating to that. It lets us know our position and where we are in space. It lets us know how we are orientated, how parts of our body are relating to other parts, and how we are balancing, moving and using ourselves.

In the Alexander technique, our sensory appreciation has a wider importance than is generally understood. In his book, Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, FM Alexander states:

Sensory appreciation, from our point of view, has a much wider significance than is generally attributed to it. But it will be sufficient at this point to state that, taken even in the most limited sense, it includes all sensory experiences which are conveyed through the channels of sight, hearing, touch, feeling, equilibrium, movement, etc., and which are responsible for psycho-physical action and reaction throughout the organism.

If we raise an arm, move a leg, or if we make any other movements of the body or limbs, we are guided chiefly by our sensory appreciation or, as most people would put it, by our sense of feeling. This applies to the testing of the texture of a piece of cloth between one’s fingers, or to the gauging of size, weight, distance, etc. – in fact, to the employment of the “physical” mechanisms in the processes of hearing, seeing, walking, talking, and in all the other activities of life.

Our sensory appreciation or perception informs our felt sense of bodily knowing. (This is a wholistic knowing made up of a combination of awareness of external stimuli, internal bodily states, emotions, intuition, sensory appreciation, and embodiment.)

FM believed that a person’s sensory appreciation going wrong had very serious ramifications. See faulty sensory appreciation for more information.

Find out more about the senses and sensory processing.

See other glossary terms and definitions.