Understanding the felt sense

What is the felt sense?

Underlying every lived experience and emotional reaction is the felt sense. It is the felt quality by which the totality of a lived experience is sensed. The felt sense holds the whole story and the solution. It is the container for all the intricate, subtle, and complex layers that make an experience.

The felt sense can be experienced as one note or the entire song. When one individual part is experienced, the whole can be experienced, revealing intricate information about each lived experience for healing and transformation.

Trauma and the felt sense

Learning to know yourself through the felt sense is the first step towards healing trauma and early childhood wounding. Part of the dynamic of trauma is that it cuts you off from your internal experience as a way of protecting you from sensations and emotions that could be overwhelming to the whole system. It takes time to build enough trust within the system to allow a little internal experience to come through.

The part of the brain important to trauma can only be accessed consciously through sensations. Additionally, preverbal memories from early childhood can also only be accessed through the felt sense. The felt sense is the language of the reptilian brain. When the reptilian brain speaks (through the felt sense) it is essential to listen because it is this part of the brain that is responsible for survival and regulating vital functions of the body.

You want to go slow, cultivate trust, and learn how to pay attention to the sensations that underly your emotional reactions. This is a key to healing trauma and working with implicit (unconscious memories).