To do this exercise, it is good if you have access to a coffee shop or a small restaurant – somewhere with low activity, but still public. You need to find a seat, possibly order something so as not to be seen as loitering, and hopefully have some paper and a pen with you. Relax yourself: sit comfortably and close your eyes if it helps you. Focus on your breathing and try to build up a steady pattern, then open your eyes.

Now you must use your senses: pretend that everything you sense is directed at you. Everything that you see, everything you taste, smell and feel as well as hear are all directed at you. (For example, I did this at a local coffee shop and found myself thinking that because I was smelling the coffee it was tempting me, that it wanted me to order it.) When you are finished this, write down your senses in order (it also helps to have done this before hand) leaving some lines or space to write, then write whatever you thought that sense was directing at you or trying to tell you. It is good to do this immediately after the practice, and if you find yourself not knowing why you sensed something, leave it blank. The more you practice this, the more you’ll understand it.

This is a sort of controlled paranoia. It is to get you closely tuned with all your senses and all things around you. The thing that is good about this practice is that unlike the mental state of paranoia, you can turn this off and not focus on your surroundings as much as you had. If you did this properly, you should have noticed many smells and things that you never really had taken into account before. If it helps, when you get home or even while still there, you can write about it as a story, make a painting or collage of what you sensed or even compose a music piece if it helps you understand it. I would like you to post on this thread what you had under you sense columns (sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste).

When you have posted, you can move on to exercise two in this same subforum.