Felt Sense

Felt sense is a phrase I learned in my coaching studies that I have fallen in love with and use often when facilitating coaching sessions and embodiment workshops. Felt sense is anything that we experience in our body mind / somatic mind. Making time to check in and “feel” our felt sense creates sensitivity with our body mind and is the initial step to building a relationship with it. We are all very familiar with listening to our cognitive thinking brain’s thoughts. Practicing listening to our body’s “thoughts” is a new practice for many of us. Felt sense includes physical sensations, emotions, thoughts, images, colors, textures, temperatures...anything that we can “hear” or “feel” as we slow down, take our gaze inward, scan our body and “listen.” As you LISTEN to your body mind and notice felt sense information, consider these things:

LOCATION: Where in your body do you notice a physical sensation?
SIZE: Is the piece of body mind info large, small, medium-sized?
SHAPE: Is it spherical like a ball, rectilinear like a plate or box, or in a line like a spear or pipe? Or is it amorphous and changing shape?
TEMPERATURE: Is it hot/cold/other?
TEXTURE: Is it smooth, velvety, silky, bumpy, scratchy?
MOVEMENT: Does it move around as you bring your attention to it?

My favorite and most supportive spontaneous sound these days is a deep growly yell that comes from deep in my throat. It always makes my throat scratchy if I do it enough times and makes a sort of sexy voice sound the next day! It feels very animal, primal, wild, like I’m really in a mode of protection and survival and power. Join me at a class sometime to hear me, or check out my youtube channel to watch and listen to some examples of my personal embodiment practice.