ORIGINS

At age five Nusa realized her multisensory concert of perception was not shared by people around her. First, she sought to discover the difference, and then to understand the bridge to common ground. Raised amid multiple cultures and languages, with a cultural anthropologist mother she observed and began a journey to understand how people think, perceive, organize their thoughts about reality, make choices, and the basic underlying laws of action and interaction. This led to the ability to map patterns, thus making the invisible visible. This made it possible to study invisibles such as personality, culture patterns and human dynamics. This enabled the building of the original bridge she sought, answering early questions: Why do people choose the words they choose? What part do cultural perceptions play in the decisions we make? How do we perceive our present circumstances? Is there an underlying common ground?
 

MULTISENSORY LEADERSHIP

Leaders make a meaningful difference in the lives of others. Leadership has been defined in terms of power, followers, ruling and control; often yielding a short-term dominance approaches.  The SENSE SMART™ Center for Multisensory Leadership supports a different kind of depth leadership in which involvement, alignment, integration, and power are a natural byproducts. We bring expanded perspective and develop capabilities in across industries and cultures with individual leaders, their teams, organizations and community systems, coaching and health providers, educators, and families.

Multisensory Leadership is a way of drawing on the concert of information and expanded perspectives of multisensory intelligence to lead with centered presence, deep understanding and robust engagement.

Synesthesia & MULTISENSORY INTELLIGENCE

Synesthesia literally means to perceive (esthesia) together (syn). Synesthesia is the involuntary convergence of sense perception in which an outer sense is accompanied by additional corresponding inner sensory information. Such as, “I see you move, and hear the inner sound.” Synesthesia occurs in a small percentage (estimates range 4-12%) of Western populations. However, all babies are synesthetic. And cultures vary in how multi-sensory they are.  Multisensory intelligence is the reconnection to dormant synesthetic ability. This is a source of intelligence that can be developed and strengthened, thereby accessing, using, and building on ones inherently broad bandwidth of human capacity.

INVISIBLES & the limitations of language

What are invisibles? Invisibles influence our lives at every turn, and language is insufficient to the task of their navigation. Invisibles can be intra and interactive human dynamics, emotions, verbal and non-verbal communications, organizational and power structures, phenomena that may not be perceived or noticed. overlooked information, self-defeating patterns and repetitions, seemingly irrelevant intuitive sensing, and other influencing factors that do not fit expectations. 

Language has the limitations that it disappears once spoken. What is said has the spotlight, and we either listen fully, or partially while preparing a response. For this reason, mapping is a liberating process for drawing out deep intelligence and insight. Thoughts, once spoken disappear, but when anchored symbolically, they become part of a growing landscape of understanding. Because language is processed in a sequence a false priority falls on what or whomever is speaking at the moment. Life is non-linear, thus, as in nature, we are capable of perceiving multiple happenings at once, visually, in space. 

visual mapping

Visual mapping is the graphic capture of the essence of meetings, conferences, and presentations simultaneously during the event. It can bring life and understanding to complex, charged, multi-layered, multi-voiced situations in a way that removes the tendency to target, by creating a shared visual space in which all involved can begin to see not only individual elements, thoughts and events, but patterns and connections. Symbols and essential meanings can land in a third space, freeing minds to fully engage more than can be spoken, and see patterns, gain insights, and find space for natural, self-organizing direction to take shape. 

CONnect

Please feel free to connect. If you have specific questions, or you are working in a situation or group who would benefit from the clarity and inclusion of Visual Mapping, Transition Coaching, or Engagements, please reach out here or via LinkedIn.

If you would like to learn more about Mutisensory Intelligence, Leadership or how you can use Multisensory Methods in your communications and organization, we are here for you. 

WHY

The challenges, and pressures of today are multidimensional. It make sense to use multi-dimensional thinking to get through bigger and more complex problems. If you knew that, like a time release capsule, you could chose to grow your brain and use capabilities that were part of your original intelligence set … would you chose to do that now?

I love timeless things. Yet old thinking becomes stale and brittle when used for current challenges. As Einstein suggested, to get results and to find solutions needed now, we must access answers differently. It makes sense to start from the bigger, deeper and more dimensional ground with which we were born.

Nusa’s superpower is synesthesia and the ability to activate multisensory awareness and skill in pivotal moments. She brings innovative perspective and multisensory approaches that expand way of knowing, so people can lead with subtle and deeper forms of information.

When the outcome matters, right perceiving begets right action. When the future depends on right action, taking full stock is critical. To actually step back and see the bigger picture, connect the dots, identify what most matters, include even the quietest lives, and understand potential paths and scenarios at the right time is essential to solving critical problems. These are cognitive moves best made with full access to our deepest, best mental, somatic, and emotional intelligence. Do important future depend on your understanding and choices? If so, then seek sober truth: it is smarter to fully sense. Neuroscience will tell you: Yes you can … neuroplasticity is the friend of learning and growing brains for the better of lives, communications, relationships, learning and interactions.

The feeling when working in flow … is part of latent capacities waiting to be activated and applied in everyday work and life. Give us a call.

REFLECTIONS

Change and disruption heaves up learning and insights. The 2020 Pandemic has taught much. The challenge is to expand our capacity of perception to be able to make the most of the “gifts” embedded in disruption. We were born equipped, but habit and familiarity become blinders which maturity and adversity offer to uncomfortably remove. It is time to replace “comfortable,” with “love the truth” and “don’t know … stay curious.”

Now is also the time for folks to be “nervous-system aware.” It is no longer the job of neuroscientists and psychologists to notice when the system is stressed. Extended challenges teach us to exhale more fully and often. Breath-holding has long passed its limits. Let’s dip more deeply into our human capabilities. We all know there is intelligence in emotions, and that our “gut feeling,” and “intuitions” have wisdom. When times are triggered, we have the opportunity to push past simple norms and get smarter. Our brains are wired to adapt and grow under stress. It is time to welcome our native multi-sensory intelligence.

Imagine: What if what is subtle were lucid and vivid? What if the ground of what is consciously perceptible dropped just a little bit, rendering gentle intuitions, day or night dreams, and subtle sensations accessible? One would not want to rush to make meaning, as ambiguity seems an essential aspect of the brilliant multi-messaging genius harbored in these subliminal streams. The power of multisensory intelligence and leadership is inspiring because it is innate. What decades of work have shown, and neuroscience now supports is that reconnecting neural pathways — engaging multi-sensorially — can reactivate a lost intelligence; opening a broader, deeper and more informative world of understanding. What might come of deep understanding of and for our children, families, communities, businesses, organizations, cultures and world? 

PUBLICATIONS

Currently writing dissertation on Multisensory Leadership: the lived experience of influential synesthetes making a difference in the world. Multisensory parent-child book also in progress, Mommy Tree. Author and concept illustration and design for:

• Riding the Current Workbook; 2011, Co-authored, designed & illustrated with Madelyn Blair, PhD.

• Soundtracks for Learning by Chris Brewer, Chicago Press 2006.

• Samurai Chess, 1st ed., by Michael Gelb and Raymond Keene, OBE, 1998.

• “Engaging All the Senses to Increase Learning,” author, 2005, Association Management Magazine, Reprinted in various educational publications.

• Mapping Inner Space, 2nd edition, 2002, Co-author with Nancy Margulies, Chicago Press.

• Diversity Connects Us All,” author, ASAE Magazine (American Society for Association Executives) (2001); cited in the Florida Bar Journal (2003).

• Visual Guides to Diamond Heart Ridhwan training, available within the school (1999 - present) at 7-10 day training retreats.

• “Drawing Like Leonardo Da Vinci,” segment author in How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, 1999, by Michael Gelb.

• "Personality Spectrum," (1999) Enneagram Reference Poster artist and creator; used by international educators, students, children and families to more easily understand, explore and teach personality insights.

• Visual Guides to the Enneagram. Published for training events. (1997-2006)

• Thinking for a Change, by Michael Gelb, 1996.

• Lessons from the Art of Juggling, by Michael Gelb, 1996.

• The New Mind Map Guide, co-designer with Nancy Margulies and Michael Gelb (1992)

participate in research?

Thank you for visiting. I will be conducting research to track the development of multisensory capabilities with a select group of individuals. If you are interested in this, please let me connect.

More information

This is an introduction. If there is something you would like to know more of, please let me know. As part of my dissertation research, I will be interviewing people who are using multisensory ways.  Multisensory Newsletter will be available as well. If you have specific areas of interest or ideas, please connect.

I wish you well.