Everything You Experience and Create Emerges from the Felt Sense in Your Body
What is Your Felt Sense?
The development of your intuition is shaped by all your life experiences and unique character. It’s the source of your inherent originality and natural truths.
Focus
The felt sense is the foundation of focus—it is how you tune into and concentrate on the wisdom and signals of your body. This requires slowing down, turning inward, setting aside preconceived ideas, and creating space for new insights. It’s a way of listening to the quiet voice of “knowing.”
Focusing is a dynamic, intense method for aligning your mind with what is present. When faced with complex issues, it helps you ask: What is right for me? By engaging all of your physical and mental capacity, focusing allows you to perceive things with clarity and depth. It helps you distinguish between what your feelings are communicating and what may be outdated information. Living in this way—through focus and the felt sense—brings authenticity and depth.
Everything you do is possible only through your body, in contact with it. By listening to its subtle whispers and barely noticeable sensations, your experience improves. The felt sense is your essence, your compass, your inner guide.
Experiencing the Felt Sense
You typically feel the felt sense in the front of your body, between your pelvis and throat, as subtle sensations that relate to something in your life. It’s not like muscle pain but more like a lump in your throat, a weight in your stomach, a sense of heaviness or lightness. It’s personal and intimate. It starts with noticing the sensation, then finding words or associations that capture it. It may feel vague at first, but gradually insight emerges about what it wants to express. You focus on this area of your body, giving it some attention, until the message becomes clearer. The felt sense is focusing, an intentional attunement to a fleeting feeling.
Seeing your essence requires being fully present in the here and now. This felt sense exercise helps you cultivate that presence. What is the felt sense? It’s about directing your attention inward and listening to your body’s signals.
Felt Sense Exercise
Follow these six steps to connect with your felt sense:
- Sit comfortably and turn your attention inward. You can keep your eyes open or close them. Breathe calmly through your nose, feeling the air enter your body, following it inward. Begin by asking yourself a simple question: How do I feel today?
- Focus on your felt sense. Your mind may wander, drifting to thoughts about the outer world. Allow them to pass without engaging. They will come and go, while you focus on the feeling within your body.
- Describe your sensation with words or images. Use the list below if it helps. Try not to force anything; simply describe what you observe. Is there a specific area of your body that draws your attention? Give it some focus. Observe while staying aware of your breathing.
- When you find a word or phrase that best captures your sensation, focus more on that. Let yourself sink into the feeling.
- Notice how your body responds as you focus on the felt sense. Does anything shift? Does it suggest a particular direction?
- Close by expressing gratitude to your body. Without judgment, accept the message it has offered. You don’t need to change anything. Keep breathing calmly. Thank your felt sense for allowing you to tap into your inner wisdom.
Reflect: What do you notice? Can you name it?
Sensation and Feeling Descriptions
- Pressure: balanced, uneven, supportive, crushed, numb
- Air Flow: soft as a feather, misty, cool, warm, from the right, from the left, restless, intense, stormy
- Tension: firm, dense, warm, distant, high tension, protective, constricted, angry, sad
- Pain: light, sharp, stinging, tingling, prickly, tickling, numb
- Itch: mild itch, irritating itch, location-specific Body Part: head, shoulders, heart, solar plexus, belly, legs, feet
- Temperature: warm, fireplace, oven, sunlight, freshly baked bread Cold: shadow, cool, damp, icy, frozen, snow
- Size: small: grain of sand, ant, child, leaf on a tree Large: adult, tree, giant, tower
- Shape: point, flat, circle, bowl, square fortress, mountain-like
- Weight: light: feather, cloud, bird, butterfly Heavy: burdened shoulders, heavy stomach, leaden legs
- Movement: circular, linear, upward, downward
- Speed: slow, fast, stagnant, grounded, restless
- Element: air, fire, earth, water, ether
- Color: green, blue, brown, black, white, dark, light shades
- Emotion: happy, sad, melancholy, angry, indifferent, lonely, in love
- Sound: soft, loud, musical, noisy, buzzing, singing, chaotic, harmonious
- Scent: sweet, sour, salty, pleasant, unpleasant, floral, fish