The Felt Sense

 By Don Shetterly

By far, we under-utilize this part of human biology and healing.  The felt sense is critical and powerful to changing the direction of our lives, increasing awareness, and consciousness and helping us heal the experiences of our day.

I've learned about the felt sense through the work of Dr. Paul Canali, known as Unified Therapy.  Felt sense, in my understanding, is about feeling the emotions and what is going on in life in the body.  It is the connection between those emotions and the body, including the mind.

All too often we only focus on what we feel, or that emotions are present.  We tend to focus on it from a mind approach where we are in our heads, but not in our bodies.

Emotions are outward manifestations of what is going on in life.  They are our reaction to events and experiences, originating from deep within us.

Felt sense takes us into the moment where we feel the experiences and emotions in our body, not just observe them in our reactions.  When we stop and allow ourselves to go in and feel them, it is then that we have the power to change them.

Most of us will feel the emotions, and feel pain in our bodies, but we don't connect the two together.  The felt sense is where we are able to do this.

Being aware of how these things connect to our body and our mind is the key to working with them.  The more we can work with the experiences and emotions we face, from a connected mind and body interface, the more we can make major changes in life.

These changes are not limited to physical only, but our increased consciousness and awareness.

A good quote from Eugene Gendlin's book, Focusing, puts this in perspective.

"The change process we have discovered is natural to the body, and it feels that way in the body.  The crucial move goes beneath the usual painful places to a bodily sensing that is at first unclear.  From this new vantage point, the traditional methods of working on oneself are seen to have been mostly pain-centered.  People get into and repeat over and over their painful emotions, without knowing how to use the body's own life-centered and inherently positive direction and force." (Focusing)

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2017 by Don Shetterly

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