5 Ways to Sharpen Your Senses While You Exercise
Ultrarunner Barbara Powell used to run as an escape from everyday life — a chance to zone out while burning off energy and clearing away stress. She aggressively pounded the pavement while ignoring sensations in her body. She loved running, but she frequently found herself injured and burnt out. Disconnecting from the world had led to disconnecting from herself.
It was only when Powell swapped asphalt for dirt paths that her running shifted from painful to freeing.
“When I go trail running, I need to pay attention to what’s going on around me,” says Powell, MA, NBC-HWC, a holistic performance coach for Life Time Mind. “It gives me the perfect environment to connect to my senses.”
Instead of zoning out, she began tuning in — first out of necessity, then with intention. And this brought new rewards: “I was able to make important shifts in order to nurture my body and create sustainability with my workouts.”
Whether she’s doing a long weekend run through Minnesota woodlands or traversing the Rockies in preparation for the Leadville Trail 100 Run, Powell now scans for obstacles like roots and rocks, tunes in to the sounds and smells of her surroundings, feels the ground beneath her feet, and takes heed of each breath. Every run is a moving meditation — a multisensory, mind-body experience.
You don’t have to be an elite athlete or master meditator to enjoy a sensory experience while working out. The benefits for all exercisers can include enhanced body awareness, strengthened neural pathways, improved performance, and simply more enjoyment during a workout.
“Sensory experiencing” is the practice of cultivating your awareness of sensations inside and outside your body. Internally, you might pay attention to muscle tension, balance, body position, a change in breathing or heart rate, pain, or even the sense of time passing. Externally, you might notice aspects of your environment — relying on visual, auditory, olfactory, and other systems to take in what things look, sound, smell, feel, and taste like.
These five expert tips can help you tune in during your next workout.
( 1 ) UP YOUR FOCUS.
As Powell discovered when she took up trail running, choosing movements and activities that demand your full attention is one way to ramp up your sensory experience and stimulate the brain during a workout. “Some of the most impactful exercises are those that require either reaction to the environment or some kind of coordinated movement,” says Tommy Wood, PhD, an athletic-performance consultant and associate professor of pediatrics and neuroscience at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
He recommends activities that require a coordinated sensory response and involve dynamic and unpredictable environments. Examples include outdoor activities such as trail running, mountain biking, and rock-climbing; team sports like soccer, basketball, and doubles pickleball; and dancing — especially choreographed routines. With strength training, incorporate movements that involve timing and coordination, such as medicine-ball tosses, agility ladders, and partner exercises.
Balance training is another way to force the body and brain to work together. Wood, who is cohost of the Better Brain Fitness podcast, emphasizes that tasks must be appropriately challenging to reap the mental benefits. “For balance work to be challenging, you have to have a risk of falling over,” he says.
To that end, Wood recommends dual-task training. Try standing on an unstable surface while catching a ball. Balance on one foot while doing an upper-body exercise. Whatever you choose, it should be difficult enough that you feel like you really need to concentrate.
( 2 ) SENSE THE NATURAL WORLD.
Engaging with the natural world allows you to take a “sensory rest,” says Powell, borrowing a term from author Saundra Dalton-Smith, MD, who champions the concept in her 7 Types of Rest framework (learn how you can recharge your physical, mental, emotional, creative, social, sensory, and spiritual self at “The 7 Types of Rest.”) Natural inputs — hearing ocean waves, seeing a beautiful mountain landscape, feeling the texture of rocks or sand beneath your feet — give your nervous system a break from the sensory overload of the modern world.
Cultivating a calm state also makes it easier to tune in to your senses and meet yourself where you are, Powell explains. “When we make the deliberate choice to turn down the noise, we can listen to our bodies and become more connected to our physical well-being.”
And engaging the senses through nature is often more accessible than paying attention to the body’s intrinsic experience.
For some people, it might be overwhelming or even impossible to detect internal sensory cues — even basic ones like hunger and thirst.
Powell notes that various factors — neurodiversity, body dysphoria, social conditioning, and cultural variations in how sensory cues are valued — can make it more difficult to observe one’s own physical signals. Dissociation stemming from traumatic experiences, as well as from racism, ageism, or gender bias, can also play a role.
Meanwhile, noticing the effects of the environment on your senses — what it looks, sounds, smells, feels, even tastes like — is a relatively safe and easy place to start.
( 3 ) GO BAREFOOT.
Your hands and feet are particularly rich in sensory receptors, relaying messages to your brain via touch, pressure, temperature, and pain. While most people’s hands are experienced sensors, our feet are less adept at using their touch receptors to feel and explore objects.
“If your feet are not stimulated over time, they can tune out and become a sensory dead end — where ultimately the sensory organs aren’t ready to pick up information the way they need to,” says Kate Strozak, MSc, NCPT, LMT, a movement coach and massage therapist who specializes in applying neuroscience to movement training.
If you’re accustomed to wearing thick, cushioned shoes, Strozak recommends transitioning to more minimal footwear and eventually going barefoot while walking around your house and during workouts. “Once you’re comfortable walking barefoot on firmer surfaces, then you can expose your feet to unpredictable surfaces,” she says.
At home, consider creating a rock box: Fill a box with rocks of different sizes and shapes, and practice standing on and moving around in them, incorporating movements such as squats or hip hinges. “Your feet are constantly bringing sensory information in, so your brain has to be more aware of what you’re doing, which primes your focus and attention,” explains Strozak.
( 4 ) REDUCE ARTIFICIAL INPUTS
Technology is a ubiquitous part of many workouts. Exercisers might listen to music or a podcast, watch a show, catch up on news, scroll social media, or check in with their fitness tracker while training. There are certainly benefits to tech: Listening to a curated playlist can be energizing, and monitoring your heart rate can help you stay in the zone.
But when it comes to sensory experiencing, tech isn’t a friend. The combined effect of technology is sensory overload, overwhelming the brain’s ability to process information and pushing the nervous system into a more stressed state, explains Powell. We may then zone out to cope with the barrage of inputs.
Adds Strozak: “I think the hardest but most significant thing for most people is to not listen or watch things while they’re exercising, because it’s a distraction and it’s not offering value to what you’re doing. Rather than watching or listening to something, be aware of your environment and let your brain have that chance to process.”
( 5 ) STAY FLEXIBLE.
Not every training session needs to be a sensory experience. Wood recommends considering your goal during a workout and asking yourself whether being more in tune with your senses can support that goal.
“If you can afford to get more sensory input or do something more cognitively complex without hindering a given performance or training goal, then go for it,” he says. “But sometimes the goal is just to get the work done.”
This article was written by Nicole Radziszewski, a writer and personal trainer, and appeared as “Sharpen Your Senses” in the November/December 2025 issue of Experience Life.
