Have you unleashed your sexual beast?

One of the things that most people seem to have a problem with these days is sex, even if it is just not getting enough of it. To complicate matters even further it is a subject that is shrouded in forbidden mystery and social taboo, not to mention religious dogma and shamed memory. Considering the odds against, it is a wonder that sex is still practiced at all! 

I think the answer to this curious state we're in can be found in the design of the human body where a few things immediately become clear:

• At the age of puberty our bodies undergo a total transformation that specifically prepare us to actively participate in the open sex market.
• The transformation that occurs at the time of puberty is not limited to physical changes, but includes a total rewiring of the brain, and activation of a new prime directive. A directive that is so overpowering that it has been known to drive some people mad.
• Besides probination, mutual sexual engagement is without argue one of the most enjoyable experiences anybody can ask for, almost as if our bodies have been uniquely designed for pleasure.
• While our environment serves up a pretty tasty array of appetizers, it is a poor excuse for the real main course… The butt naked, burning flesh mutual rapture to be had in shared orgasm.

If you combine these design specifications with an overpowering prime directive of survival you have, what some would quite rightly consider to be, a loaded weapon. Just point and shoot, or in the case of the human sexual beast, point and sniff…

Considering the facts I suppose that all the social and religious taboo that remain in society could serve some kind of purpose, but that still does not give us any reason for guilt or shame. Isn’t it about time that we start to enjoy one of the most complex and intricate design features we are capable of, the ability of pleasure.

Wake up and smell the roses

If you are like me, chances are that the first time you take notice of your sense of smell is when you get home in the evening and start preparing your evening meal, although in my own case I have to admit that even then I sometimes have to be reminded before I take any notice.

The reason why we do not engage our sense of smell is that our modern day environment leaves us with very little to enjoy nose wise. Most of us are challenged since our early morning drive to work by smelly exhaust fumes and general suburban smog.
Scientific discoveries however indicate that our sense of smell is probably one of the senses that have the strongest links to memory, and that smell, together with hearing, touch and taste are important components of our ability to recall events or information.

According to an article in ScienceDaily, Dr Jay Gottfried explained that: "...rather than clumping together the sights, sounds and smells of a memory into one bit of the brain, the memory is distributed across different areas and can be re-awakened through just one of our sensory channels. This mechanism would allow human beings more flexibility in retrieving their memories."

By waking up our senses we are in fact gearing our memory and increasing our brain activity. Fortunately our daily morning routines provide ample opportunity to wake up in the true sense, and a simple way is to choose any of the activities we automatically go through every morning before starting our day. A practice like shaving gives a man a lot of opportunity for indulgent sensory delight, from the smell of the shaving cream to the bite of his after shave, and women have an even wider choice of wake-up routines to choose from.

Just a 10 minute indulgence of our senses can make a world of difference in how we start our day. Once we start our day with our senses in high gear we will find that our minds generally follow the trend set by our senses and we start to see the world much clearer. As if by magic we notice more color and feel more alive. By waking up our senses we open a whole new world of discovery, and all it takes is notice.

In a sense this kind of awakening is a lot like life itself where everything tends to go by pretty much without any excitement until we actually start to notice. When we do we suddenly find answers to questions that have haunted us for months, and solutions to problems we thought were impossible to solve. With the latest scientific research supporting the value of our senses we can no longer ignore that fact that our senses are more than just vestiges of our evolutionary past, they actually make sense!

The nose knows...

Most people can recall someone in their lives who had a nose for trouble, be they the motherly figure that knew when mischief was brewing, or the fiend that always knew when trouble was afoot. The nose is also linked to various other expressions, all with the implication of some "higher" purpose or greater knowledge. Take for instance the expression: "Being led by the nose", or describing someone as noseying around. It now seems that many of these expressions are being supported by scientific discoveries, proving that there is a very good reason that the nose knows.

In a range of experiments towards understanding the human brain and how it works, scientists have found that our noses play an important role in a wide range of human experiences. Findings that our sense of smell and emotions activate the same areas in our brain begs the question whether there is any link between our emotional well being and where we have been poking our noses?

In addition, our sense of smell seems to be active even when we do not notice any, and it has been proven that what we smell may influence what we visually perceive when the odor is linked to memories with negative emotional content. What we smell may therefore filter or color what we see, and in the case where someone was being led by the nose it may just be that the person they following was pleasant on the nose.

Unfortunately no-one can blame their nose for anything because it also seems that we have a semi-conscious ability to increase our perception of smell which causes the neurons in our olfactory bulb, the area in our brain responsible for our sense of smell, to light up in anticipation even if there is no odor. It also gives us the ability to adapt to unpleasant odors, allowing us to ignore them when they permeate the air we breathe from day to day.

All of which still does not fully explain the fact that my mother could smell out secrets, but there seems to be enough reason to pay attention to the person who is smelling the rat. As far as the expressions go I believe they may all have some origin in fact, even if those facts are only now being discovered by science.