The Felt Sense: Key to Healing and Awareness

“The body will never misguide you, you can trust it, and you can trust it absolutely.”

—Osho 

The felt sense is a doorway to healing, inner knowing, awareness, and more presence. Its illusory because we have forgotten the language of the body and are conditioned to turn our conscious awareness to our thinking mind and its interpretation of outer cues.

The felt sense informs us consciously and subconsciously all the time and learning to tap into this wisdom of the body is the path to deeper self-connection, better self-regulation, and presence. The journey to self is an inner journey and we often miss because we think the answers are outside of us. Our felt sense is an invaluable tool and necessary support for this inner journey.   

What do I mean by the “felt sense”?

The felt sense is the actual sensation in the body.  Our bodies are finely-wrought instruments that are constantly regulating based on both our inner and outer environments. At all times our bodies are responding to our surroundings and it happens so automatically that we are not even aware of it for the most part. To understand the felt sense we must tune into our bodily sensations. The felt sense is the first layer of our ability to experience our lives. It informs and influences our emotional reactions and thinking minds.

 “A felt sense is not a mental experience but a physical one. Physical. A bodily awareness of a situation or person or event. An internal aura that encompasses everything you feel and know about the given subject at a given time—encompasses it and communicates it to you all at once rather than detail by detail. Think of it as a taste, if you like, or a great musical chord that makes you feel a powerful impact, a big round unclear feeling. A felt sense doesn’t come to you in the form of thoughts or words or other separate units, but as a single (though often puzzling and very complex) bodily feeling.” — Eugene Gendlin

Our felt sense is a doorway to access and heal past trauma, it connects us to our intuition and our deeper more eternal wisdom. Unfortunately, most of us disconnect from bodily awareness at an early age, losing access to our felt sense.  Our minds become the single lense through which we experience this world and our lives.

Relearning felt sense requires enhancing body awareness. Body-oriented therapies that rebuild body awareness and cultivate the felt sense, such as compassionate inquiry and somatic experiencing, kundalini yoga, and breathworkare transformative and healing on all levels, body, mind and spirit.  Research suggests that cultivating the felt sense can help with a multitude of mental, physical, and emotional health conditions, including but not limited to depression, anxiety, obesity, chronic pain, auto-immune distress, eating disorders, etc.  

There are many benefits to Connecting to the Felt Sense, including:

·       Understand the language of your body

·       Receive the messages it is sending to support you

·       Cultivate heightened sensitivity

·       Deepen your intuition

·       Improve your emotional and relational intelligence

·       Release trauma held in the body gently

·       Become more grounded and at home in your body

·       Experience well-being, peace, and connectedness

·       Increase awareness and presence

All of this sounds wonderful and so how do we connect to our felt sense? Simply by paying attention to the sensations in the body. Simple right? But not easy. It takes practice and intention, especially at first.

What are sensations in the body? They are not emotions or feelings or perceptions— but the physical experience of/in the body. Sensations might include:

1.     Body temperature sensations: warm, hot, burning, cool, cold, clammy, chills, icy (I felt my face grow hot as I spoke).

2.     Pressure – even, uneven, supportive, heavy (my chest feels heavy).

3.     Tension – solid, dense, warm, cold, protective, constricting, angry, sad, loose, tight (my stomach feels like it has a knot in it)

4.     Pain – ache, sharp, twinge, slight, stabbing (I feel a twinge in my left wrist)

5.     Tingling – pricks, vibration, tickling, numb (my hands are tingling)

6.     Itch – mild itch, angry itch, irritating itch, subtle itch, small itch, large area of itching (I feel a burning itch in my lower legs during meditation)

7.     Weight – light, heavy (my body feels heavy; I feel lighthearted)

8.     Color – (I feel a red haze inside; my heart is blue)

To connect with your felt sense you simply begin taking time to notice your body sensations. You can take time to scan and listen to whatever your body is communicating by first scheduling time with yourself to tune in consciously in a quiet space. Right before bed is an excellent time as you are lying down. Ask yourself how you are feeling in general, tired, satisfied, frustrated, etc. and then see if you can go deeper and see what body sensations are there. If you feel comfortable what sensations accompany this feeling. If you feel frustrated what sensations in the body accompany this feeling? You can also scan the body starting with the feet and moving up. “My feet feel tight, my calves feel heavy, etc.”.

Another way to connect to your felt sense is to practice asking yourself throughout the day: “How am I”  – and then stop for a few minutes and feel into the body, notice the sensations.  Another cue is whenever anyone asks you “how are you?” instead of automatically answering “fine” take a few seconds and see what the body has to share before answering.

How many times has someone asked you “how are you?” and you have replied “oh, I’m fine” without a thought? This is what we do to our own selves, our own bodies. We don’t inhabit our bodies and our lives are less rich, less vibrant, less connected and less peaceful as a result. The felt sense is really the thread that we weave the tapestry of our lives with. If we are out of touch with that – how can we heal what our body remembers, how can we be present, how can we be embodied?

One of the reasons I am so passionate about Compassionate inquiry is because the sessions create a safe space for the felt sense to become a familiar and powerful tool toward healing and presence. I have witnessed time and again how healing and empowering this is for my clients.

Please note: It is important for people who have experienced severe trauma to get support in remembering the felt sense if feeling in the body is at all triggering. When we start to relearn the language of the body experiences, emotions, and memories may surface to be released - the healing and support is key. Don’t hesitate to reach out to schedule a session if you need support working in this way.

© Deva Arani aka Tanya Shimer All rights reserved.