Understanding "Felt Sense", Your Body's Inner Wisdom

When we talk about healing from trauma or managing chronic anxiety, many traditional approaches focus primarily on the mind, making sense of our experiences through words, thoughts, and cognitive processes.

But, our bodies hold profound wisdom and information about our emotional states that often go unnoticed. This is where the concept of the felt sense comes into play. A subtle, bodily awareness that can guide us in processing and healing difficult emotions.

What is the Felt Sense?

The felt sense is an internal, bodily feeling that is often vague and hard to describe but deeply connected to our emotional experience. Coined by psychotherapist Eugene Gendlin, the felt sense refers to a holistic sensation within the body that carries information about a particular problem, emotion or inner conflict.

Imagine sitting quietly and sensing a knotted tension in your stomach when recalling a stressful event, or a heavy pressure in your chest associated with grief. This physical, embodied experience is the felt sense. It’s neither just a thought nor a straightforward emotion, but an integrated bodily signal that holds meaningful information.

My view is that it is our memory linked through the limbic system to our interoception, our body’s way of signalling our emotional state to the brain. When we recall something painful, stimulating, or that held important meaning to us at the time, it will kick off the echo of that interoceptive cue of our affect (emotional) state.

Why Does the Felt Sense Matter?

Our nervous system acts as the bridge between mind and body, constantly sending and receiving information between body and brain. When trauma or anxiety disrupts the nervous system, emotional experiences can become trapped or disjointed, making it difficult to articulate or resolve them through cognitive means alone.

The felt sense offers a direct pathway to these underlying experiences. I like to call it following the thread and it is this that we use when I guide you through an IFS session. By tuning into this profoundly held bodily intelligence, you can:

• Access hard-to-reach emotions and memories

• Gain clarity on your emotional landscape

• Release physical and emotional tension stored in the body

• Develop self-compassion and embodied awareness

Tuning Into the Felt Sense

Somatic therapy is an approach that explicitly emphasises the mind-body connection. Instead of solely discussing thoughts and feelings, somatic therapy purposefully engages the body to facilitate healing.

Here’s how somatic therapy supports tuning into your felt sense:

1. Heightening Bodily Awareness

Through gentle guidance and mindfulness, I help you notice subtle bodily sensations connected to your emotional states as we explore memories, do parts work, or look at core wounds. This might include breath changes, muscle tightness, or temperature shifts as well as sensations that come up in the body.

2. Creating a Safe Internal Space

Feelings linked to trauma can be overwhelming. I work with you to build nervous system regulation skills, helping you feel grounded and safe enough to explore difficult sensations. Titration is particularly helpful to avoid emotional flooding. As well as speaking to our parts to ask them to go slowly when sharing their somatically held experiences.

3. Using Movement and Touch

The body will want to move in certain ways when trauma is triggered. Allowing that movement to happen is soothing. I encourage you to place the hand where you are feeling a sensation in the body as this aids somatic awareness and is soothing to the nerves there.

4. Integrating Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy

At Somatic Harmony Healing, I blend somatic work with Internal Family Systems therapy, which helps you talk with different parts of yourself while remaining connected to your body’s felt sense, bringing deep emotional healing.

Healing Through The Body

By focusing on the felt sense, you are empowered to move beyond just talking about your experiences to truly feeling and transforming them. This helps you get better at feeling, and being more comfortable with sitting with a feeling rather than pushing them down or away. This can unlock incredible insight, soothe trauma responses, and nurture greater compassion.

When we learn to listen to our bodies, we open a new door to holistic healing. Acknowledging that our minds and bodies are inseparably linked in our journey towards wellbeing.

If you’re struggling with anxiety, trauma, or simply want to deepen your connection with yourself, exploring somatic therapy can be a gentle and effective step towards healing. Your body knows more than you realise. Allow your felt sense to guide you to greater peace and wholeness.

If you’d like to explore doing one to one somatic healing with me, book a free 30 minute consultation using the button below.