Having learned about the felt sense (e.g. two people), we can start to recognise that the felt sense is like a form of “body wisdom” - it knows things, it often has things it wants to tell us.
Yet sometimes, we can’t hear it - we feel the feeling, but don’t understand what it is trying to tell us. This exercise is directed to this situation.
First let’s imagine a scenario, as it will help set the scene. Imagine we’re an important person, and we have a big office, with a nice desk, and a seat for visitors in front of the desk. One day, we walk into our office and find someone sitting in that seat. What kind of conversation might we have? Maybe it might go something like this:
- Hello.
- Welcome.
- What brings you here?
- What can I do for you?
- I can do XY and Z for you.
- Thank you for coming.
- I hope we meet again.
- Goodbye.
If this is a reasonable flow to use in relation to a visitor, it can also work for our felt sense. Here, we may need to target our felt sense gently - it may be more used to us ignoring it, so we want to build raport and trust. Each of these stages is a little more engaged than the previous.
So we close our eyes, then follow this same sequence:
- We say “hello” to the felt sense here we are just acknowledging its existence, and no more.
- We say “welcome” to the felt sense here we are giving it permission to be here - it is allowed to be here.
- We ask “what brings you here?” here we are asking it if it wants to share anything. We ask the question, we quitely sit and wait.
- We ask “what can I do for you?” here we make ourselves vulnerable. We accept that we might need to do something, and take a risk and ask.
- We say “I can do XY and Z for you” here we make a commitment, if we have heard something we can do, we agree to it to do it. This, perhaps, is even more vulnerable.
- We say “Thank you for coming” we offer appreciation. This sets up for an ongoing relationship with this part of ourselves
- We say “I hope we meet again” same - we establish a basis for an ongoing relationship
- We say “Goodbye” We offer a parting respect.
We might find, with some felt senses, that we don’t need to pursue all stages here. It may be just by saying “hello” we instantly know what it is there for. In which case we might just thank it, and move on.