5 simple exercises to boost your sense of touch
What's the story
Our sense of touch, or tactile sensitivity, is vital for many everyday tasks and skills - think typing on your keyboard or simply enjoying the feel of different fabrics.
By enhancing this sense, you can increase your dexterity, decrease clumsiness, and even improve brain function.
This article presents five easy finger exercises to boost your tactile sensitivity. You can effortlessly include them in your daily routine.
Texture test
Touch and texture identification
This exercise involves objects with different textures like cotton balls, sandpaper, and silk.
With your eyes closed, attempt to identify each object based on its texture. Spend two minutes exploring each one.
This activity not only sharpens your tactile senses but also enhances cognitive skills by creating a mental texture map.
Tip strength
Finger-tip push-ups
Finger-tip push-ups: You guessed it right, you do push-ups on your fingertips instead of your palms.
If you're new to this, start with five reps and slowly build up as you get stronger.
This exercise is great for strengthening your fingers, building endurance, and improving your overall sense of touch by forcing you to balance and stabilize with just your fingertips.
Digital dexterity
Piano playing simulation
Even without a piano, miming the motion of playing can greatly improve finger dexterity and sensitivity.
Simply lay your hands flat on a surface and practice pressing down as if striking piano keys rapidly in sequence.
Aim for three sets of two-minute sessions each day.
This exercise not only enhances tactile feedback from the fingers, but also significantly improves coordination between them.
Malleable manipulation
Clay modelling or dough kneading
Working with clay or dough—anything that needs molding—is a great exercise for improving tactile sensitivity.
Pushing, pulling, rolling, and squeezing the material gives your fingers a variety of sensory feedback while also strengthening your hand muscles.
Spend a minimum of 15 minutes a day on this activity to see the best results.
Sensory reading
Braille reading practice
For people with normal vision, trying to read Braille can be a fun and challenging exercise to increase finger sensitivity.
Braille characters are tiny raised dots that represent letters and numbers, and are read by touch alone.
You don't have to become proficient at it, but dedicating 10 to 15 minutes a day to feeling and attempting to identify these characters can greatly enhance tactile sensitivity in your fingertips.