Certain animals have sensory seeing mechanisms in their skin.
For example, even a blinded chameleon will take on the coloration of its environment.
Human eyes are simply highly differentiated skin cells.
They are the organs through which vision normally functions, but a different kind of vision is also possible with non- specialized skin cells.
Blind people, for example, can usually detect the existence of light even when infrared and ultraviolet energy are largely excluded.
This radiation sensing process can even be extended to discern individual wavelengths of different colors.
The Soviet Rosa Kuleshova taught herself to distinguish colors, read print and discern movements with her skin alone.
Examined by hard-nosed scientists, Rosa, while blindfolded read newsprint and sheet music under glass with her fingertips! She could identify the color and shape of patches of light projected onto her palms, and could even read the small print of a newspaper with her elbow.
Professor K.B. Duke took the stage name Kuda Bux and astounded many people in the U.S. with his blindfold vision performances.
He explained that his talent was self-taught and that it took him 11 years to master it.
After placing lumps of dough over his eyes and covering them with wool bandage, Bux could read books, move through an obstacle course and even ride a bicycle.
This phenomenon is not new, for there have been many recorded instances of 'skin seeing' among the sighted as well as the blind.
In fact, children from ages 4 to 12 are especially sensitive to training in this ability.
The Instituda Mas Vida in Mexico City was featured several years ago on the TV show “You Asked For It,” and they illustrated several children reading and replicating various kinesthetic movements while blindfolded! Colors have different electromagnetic frequencies and interact with the body in different ways.
The colors of your clothes and objects in your immediate environment have led to a whole new field of color psychology.
Blindfolded students that have learned to discern colors have indicated that there are distinct textures that are more or less different to the touch.
Yellow feels very slippery; red is sticky; green is stickier than red, but not as coarse; dark blue is the stickiest.
Light blue feels the smoothest; orange has a rough, coarse and braking feel; violet has even a greater braking effect on the fingers.
Black is the most sticky, viscid and braking of all.
White is smooth though coarser than yellow to the touch.
Even when colored papers are in trays, students can learn to feel the effects in the air above the colors.
While some students read colors with their fingertips, others use the tip of their nose, their earlobe, their elbow or even the backs of their necks! Blind students can learn the color of lights on their skin in 1 to 3 weeks, while sighted students may take up to twice as long.
Some students can distinguish colored shapes under a glass plate, with triangles more easily identifiable than circles or squares.
(The glass usually has to be under one-sixteenth of an inch thick.
) As an exercise to begin distinguishing colors with your skin, purchase various colors of construction paper that all have the same texture grain.
Test yourself with your eyes closed as to whether you can distinguish any differences.
Now just as you shifted your conscious awareness into your peripheral vision in the "Exercise -- Improving Peripheral Vision Awareness," shift your conscious awareness to your fingertips for optimal discernment.
About 10% of people tested have been found to have an already existing color-distinguishing ability.
(Kinesthetic people learn this ability faster than visual and auditory people.
) Now assume a comfortable position.
Gradually relax all your muscles, from your toes to your head and slowly do some deep, abdominal breathing (review "Exercise -- Relaxation" and all the breathing exercises).
Working with color pairs at first, have a partner alternately give you black and then white sheets of paper for starters; then red and green sheets and so on.
While blindfolded, lightly touch and feel each paper; then feel the air just above it.
After daily practice at attempting to perceive the colors with your 'sensing' ability, greater accuracy will finally take place.
Make a game of it.
Distinguish the difference between magazine pictures of men and women.
Use pictures of single objects and shapes.
Use flash cards of letters of the alphabet.
After continual practice, an intuitive knowingness develops that is hard to describe, and your mind will begin receiving the correct images.
Now look at and impress certain items in the room with your mind.
Close your eyes and retain the vision for as long was you can -- not as an after-image, but imaginatively.
Practice with furniture, maps, pictures, flowers and other objects.
Continual diligence and practice will bring about a 'seeing' on another level, but it might take weeks, months or years to develop the ability fully.
Scatter small objects (spoons, forks, pencils, erasers, matches, etc.
) on a table in front of you.
Look at them and then close your eyes.
Now from memory alone, touch and identify each object as you visualize its appearance.
This imaging and memory practice eventually brings about an actual 'seeing' of the objects in a sensing way.
Imagine yourself having a special surgical operation where the sensing nerves of both your hands have been linked to the nervous tissue of both your eyes -- thus enabling you to see with your fingers.
Now go back to your colored construction paper, and practice, practice, practice.