‘The Feel of the Stones, Sounds of Cars, the Different Smells’: How Incorporating the Senses Can Help Support Equitable Health Promotion

Abstract

There has been limited consideration to the role of the senses in health promotion regardless of the prominence placed on corporeality in intervention and prevention strategies. Touch as a form of sense-making challenges the representational approaches that characterize health promotion methods to increase participation in physical activity. This paper explores recreational running practices through the sense of touch and is drawn from an in-depth qualitative research project with recreational runners in the Bulgarian capital Sofia. The project examined how recreational running was established and maintained within the city. This paper concludes that there is potential for health promotion to adopt a more open stance towards the study of sensual experiences of the built environment. Insights from approaches attentive to the senses hold promise for agendas and interventions in health promotion practice and intervention.