I went to dinner on Wednesday night at a place in London called ‘Dans le Noir’. It’s a restaurant that serves your entire meal in pitch darkness. You’re led to the table and served by blind waiters and have to eat your meal, pour your wine and interact with your dining partners without the slightest chink of light.

What struck me was how claustrophobic I felt in the darkness. Because I had no frame of reference for the size of the room or how to get to the exit, I felt completely disoriented.

The second thing that surprised me was how noisy the venue was. There were probably 80 diners in the room but it sounded like 500 people taking loudly to compensate for their sensory loss of vision.

The food itself wasn’t fantastic. The chef seemed more interested in surprising diners taste-buds with ingredients like lamb, rhubarb and raw celeriac on the same plate. I also had to rely on my sense of smell as a test before being confident enough to put food into my mouth.

It’s amazing how your 5 senses work in unison to help you through situations. Generally, at work, our senses of smell and taste aren’t at use – but our 3 other senses are. We‘re constantly using our senses of sight, hearing and touch to describe things and make sense of our surroundings.

We’re so good at it that it all happens unconsciously – we don’t have to think whether we’re using sounds or pictures or feelings to describe things – it just kind of happens. You might notice somebody say “I see what you mean” or “I hear what you’re saying” or “I feel we’re on the same wavelength” – all very different ways of making the same point.

The interesting thing though, is that if we do choose to consciously use all 3 of these senses to describe things, we create a much bigger impact. If our language stirs multiple sensations within somebody, or even a room full of somebody’s, we express ourselves more fully.

Most of our most vivid childhood memories involve multiple senses. You may remember hearing a song combined with a certain image, you may recall a clear picture combined with a specific internal sensation. When multiple senses are involved, there’s simply a bigger impact on our brain.

In 5 years time, I doubt I’ll remember what I ate at Dans le Noir. I couldn’t see it, feel it or hear it. I'll just have a random collection of tastes in the dark to remember it by.

If you're interested in how you can use simple twists of language to make a much greater impact, you might want to look at an Instant Impact Workshop where you'll learn to express youself by talking to peoples' emotions.