5 Easy Ways On How To Improve Spatial Awareness

Quite a number of people are curious on how to improve spatial awareness.

More so after knowing that spatial awareness is at the heart of learning.

Making meals?

That requires spatial awareness. 

Getting dressed? 

You still use it. 

Driving your car? 

That, too, requires Spatial Awareness.

So let’s see what it is, why it is essential, how it works, and how to improve spatial awareness easily.

Space As A Framework

Spatial awareness, also called spatial perception, provides us with a lens to comprehend everything surrounding us.

This includes people and objects as well as the emptiness we use to move around. 

More than that, it allows you to understand the relationship between two or more objects and your body in terms of space and distance. 

This also covers the degree to which we comprehend the relationship of objects when a change in position is applied to itself, even if it’s just a rotation. 

To briefly explain, spatial awareness is an essential tool that helps you understand the environment around you.

Moreover, it helps you how to interact with it.

I like to think of spatial awareness as a sort of psychic’s mind’s eye.

You have to be able to develop a sort of one-track mind that can branch out.

You will see everything simultaneously, where your body’s at, where your body is in proportion to obstacles, and where the obstacles are at in proportion to it.

In addition to spatial awareness, you will develop a spatial consciousness of the positions of things around you.

Hone In On It, It’s Important

We are born spatially aware, but we develop and improve this skill as we age.

If you don’t have this skill developed, you will end up finding yourself tripping over your own feet or bumping into things while moving around.  

An excellent spatial awareness allows you to make sense of the things you see around you.

It helps you to make a decision about your next action in any sort of situation.

This proves that it plays a vital role in the decision-making process.

You can find more details about this role here.

The importance of spatial awareness is easily found in our daily activities.  

Like in driving, when we have to keep the car in our lane or when we have to judge the distance space when parking.

Also, we use it when we want to organize objects on shelves or in boxes.

We have to mentally imagine different combinations and positions to choose the best in our situation.

Or when we find ourselves in an unknown area, we have to choose the road or direction that applies to our needs at that time.

You need to level it up

One great thing is that skills are being built.

Another great thing is that learning is your superpower.

But the best of all is that I’m here to show you how to use it.

1. Pick Up A New Hobby

Everyone has at least a camera phone today.

It’s time to start taking advantage of any opportunity to take photos.

Anytime, anyway.

Maybe, if you have some extra knowledge about photography, you can start your own project that you can work on every day.

The fact that you have to interpret spatial relations in your pictures is an excellent way to improve your spatial awareness.

It would be even better if you can make time to take part in some photography courses.

You can even sign up for art classes like painting or sculpture, or why not both.  

By visualizing the scene in your mind and materializing it in reality, you are forcing your brain to improve your spatial awareness.

Bringing the sculpture or the painting to reality will be a challenging exercise.

Thus, this will lead to great results in terms of spatial awareness.

Besides that, we all love doodling, right?

I’m sure that you, too, found yourself at least once bored in class, starting to draw aimlessly next to your notes.

So why not use this in favor of your spatial awareness?

Next time, you can try drawing memorized spaces like your apartment or even some imagery.

What about drawing some three-dimensional geometry from different angles or, even better, some puzzles which you can share with your colleagues for some fun.

 2. Play Like A Child

Games like chess, Jenga, and even Lego can help you build spatial awareness.

Planning ahead using 3D objects is an excellent element of this skill.

So, it’s time to play these kinds of games that allow you to exercise your spatial awareness.

As well, you can choose to solve a 3D puzzle-like Rubik’s cube.

It requires you to move the cube and think ahead to successfully solve the puzzle.

If you are full of energy and want to have more fun, I suggest another game called “The Floor Is Lava.”

It will help develop your spatial awareness of a specific set of objects in the space you are playing.

If you are one of those who can’t get their eyes away from the phones, it’s time to try using them for skills development purposes.

You can download apps and games that are excellent training for your spatial awareness.

Also, you can use the digital world to play first-person video games.

Some studies report that these types of games strengthen the spatial perception.

Moreover, they encourage the brain to quickly process spatial information.

You can visit Phys.org to learn more exciting video games.

In brief, the idea is to focus on games where you manipulate and move objects.

3. Stay Active

When you’re walking down the sidewalk, try to feel the ground.

Feel every undulation, every way the ground shifts and moves without looking at the actual sidewalk itself.

Just being able to feel without seeing all these things around you is a great way to train spatial awareness.

If you feel, get involved in something more creative.

You can ask someone to build an obstacle race or a maze for you that you are not allowed to see.

The only thing you can do is to roll and feel all the obstacles blindfolded to know where they are and try to finish the game successfully.

However, the most convenient, pleasant, and easy way to stay active is through dancing.

You can dance anytime you feel it.

You don’t need to have a reason, and it has great benefits on your spatial awareness.

It’s a win-win situation.

Dance itself is an art form.

It consists of some key elements such as body awareness, pathways, and shapes created by body movements.

Those elements build spatial awareness, which helps the body to move well through space.

Movement in dance implies control and management of space, one’s own, and someone else’s when the dances are in pairs.

That allows you to have a more advanced spatial concept than usual.

Do you want to know about the relationship between dance and spatial awareness?

Read through the research of Temple, Bently, & et al., about Using Dance & Movement to Enhance Spatial Awareness Learning.

4. Go On A Road Trip

It’s time to take a break and plan a road trip.

Trust me, this will double the improvements in your spatial awareness.

First, when you drive, you have to pay attention to the distances between the vehicles.

Similarly, parking will help you develop this skill by having to measure distances.

Just think about it.

Second, these days, many of us rely on our mobile devices to get us where we need to go.

If you want something challenging and you really want to work on your spatial skills, try navigating from point A to point B without the guidance of a GPS.

First, review the route you plan to take before leaving.

Then, check if you can successfully reach your destination with spatial perception.

If you get lost, don’t worry.

Everything is part of the process!

If you really can’t do it, there is an easier exercise that can bring the same benefits.

You can try to use a physical map to guide you on which path to reach your destination.

Also, if you are the sportsman type, you can plan your trip in such a way that you can enjoy your favorite sports wherever you are, especially since practicing a helps a lot to improve the spatial perception.

5. Renovate, Organize, Remodel, And Change

Another good way to develop your spatial awareness is to organize renovations at home.

Doing the layout (designing the interior) and arranging the furniture in your room, these ways will also allow you to improve your skills in positioning, visualizing, and rotating objects.

Why don’t you start organizing your storage room or tool house that you have in the garden?

Review the valuable and unusable things.

Start organizing, boxing, or throwing away what is not useful.

These ways can help you make your mental sketch of how everything will be when you have it ready.

If you dare, you can change the perspective a bit.

In addition to changing the space around you, you could try to remodel your vocabulary.

You have to make some changes in your vocabulary to expose yourself to a variety of spatial talk.

So, you can start by replacing words like “here” or “there” with more specific spatial descriptions.

Descriptions like “on the bottom shelf between the first two boxes” or “behind the last jar in the second drawer on the left” will allow you to create a mental image with the spaces to describe it to others.

In this way, you can easily use your everyday language to improve your spatial awareness.

Final Thoughts

To sum up, we tend to separate spatial awareness from our daily experiences without realizing that they are closely linked.

Therefore, the first step is to become aware of what is happening around us.

This is the first step on how to improve spatial awareness.

We need to know how we can respond or interact with the objects around us, depending on our relationship with them.

Therefore it is essential to know our skills and try as much as possible to improve them throughout life.

As I said from the beginning, learning is your superpower, and it depends only on you for what purposes you want to use it.

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