Savoring Our Media + Art Favorites: A Felt Sense Spiritual Practice

“This is your body, your greatest gift,
pregnant with wisdom you do not hear,
grief you thought was forgotten,
and joy you have never known.”
- Marion Woodman

This practice is about what we sense/know in our bodies & souls that may not be immediately available to the rational mind. It’s about relaxing into wisdom.

My Aunt Liz’s favorite Maya Angelou quote:

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

I think Angelou is referring to our “felt sense” rather than “feelings/emotions.” Artists offer us evocative portals into what we already know, deep inside.

Start Where You Feel Alive

Sometimes my clients ask me for spiritual practices. They (beautifully) want to intentionally seek God. My response is usually to ask:

Where are you already experiencing aliveness? Here’s a fun practice to help us tune into what’s already drawing us, present to and curious about what it’s stirring in us.

• What songs, TV shows, movies, books, podcasts, articles, photographs, or other visual art, etc. moved me this year?

• What stopped me in my tracks? Took my breath away?

• What accompanied me on my hardest days?

• What delighted me?

  What made me feel seen?

• What gave words/images to my experience?

I find these MOST interesting and revelatory when they are completely out of my norm. When a song seems very different than what I usually gravitate toward, but there is a strong draw.

What Is A Felt Sense?

This 4-minute video explains the concept of FELT SENSE and how we open to it. Our felt sense is not a “feeling” in the traditional sense of the word.

Viewing this video will give you context for the rest of these instructions.

Instructions

NOTICE & NAME
1) Choose one item of media/art from the list above. Check with your body to see whether it is okay to spend some time with this. When our body is resistant or fearful it is important to respect that response. It is okay to say no to exploring further if your body doesn’t want to enter in.

2) Listen (view/read) again with your full attention. Are there any body sensations that you notice? (e.g. warmth in your chest, goosebumps, tightness in your throat)? What name would you give your felt sense of this art?

3) Listen (view/read) again with the first name you gave it. Does this still feel right, or is there something deeper/truer? Repeat as often as you’d like. When you land on the felt sense, you may notice a shift, a feeling of resonance. Consider thanking your body for what it offered you.

EXPRESS & EXPLORE
4) Is there an opening here you’d like to explore with a friend or do some writing about? 

5) What wisdom within you has this media/art helped you access?

I’ll Go First…Examples From My Practice

I chose two songs and an obituary to hold in my awareness, one at a time.

Selena Gomez
"Lose You to Love Me”

This song falls into the category I mentioned above - a complete outlier for me in genre, artist, and overall vibe. Yet, I could not stop listening to it. It took me to a very particular felt sense. Selena helped me access something important.

When I read through the comments on Youtube, I realized I’m not alone in this. Selena is touching on something that is widely resonant. One of my favorites comments said, “Even after three years of listening to it, this song hits the bottom of my heart.”

When I listen to this song, it floods my senses. I experience the deep, slow beat in my heart like an ache. There is a warm, tingly feeling that goes up the back of my neck. The lyrics are resonant, but I’m not initially sure why. The cadence of the song invites me to stay in my senses a beat longer than I feel comfortable with. Listening to this song at full volume, and singing along, is cathartic for me.

My Felt Senses

• The felt sense of untangling from systems and relationships that called themselves loving, but hurt me.

• The felt sense of touching into the most tender parts of my pain and allowing it to be alchemized into wisdom, over time. This also might be called the process of healing from trauma. Breaking free from these systems and relationships has been an incredibly sticky, painstaking process, and I’m not done.
  
  Healing from trauma takes time and energy, sometimes by way of thoughts and feelings that seem wrong. To hold onto the thread of myself required fierce compassion along the way, and sometimes took some very oppositional energy.

  Having journeyed to my depths, there’s a new lightness I experience now, but it’s a lightness that’s grounded in bass notes of truth, pain, and love.

  The oppositional energy required to engage in this process is becoming more available to me now to direct toward creative expression, love, and solidarity with and compassion for others.

  Because this work is not a “once and done,” and knowing this anthem emboldens me to walk in agency, I will revisit it when I need an evocative reminder.

Becca Jordan
"Memory”

The first time I heard this song, it took my breath away.

“Your love is like a word on the tip of my tongue. I’ve heard it a thousand times, but now it won't come.

Your love is like a house I walked in before. It all looks so familiar but I don’t feel at home here anymore.”

My Felt Senses

• The felt sense of having a mirror held up to my soul, giving words to something disorienting to me that I haven’t had words for.

• The felt sense of intimate connection with Spirit, of being overtaken by Love. There’s a calming and a quickening. Longing and communion. Warmth in my heart and a fuller range of breath in my chest. This song promotes calm in my nervous system.

An obituary in my local newspaper for a woman named Karen

It’s an unexpected delight to live in a small community with a local newspaper. I read the obituaries weekly, and it’s not uncommon for me to be moved to tears or laughter. I can’t find a digital link for this one, but I’ll include a few excerpts:

“Although it was hard to believe for those who knew her later in life, Karen graduated from a Catholic girls high school.”

“While in college, she was on the radio doing weather and worked at the ticket counter for United Airlines where she collected an award for her help catching a mobster attempting to board a plane.”

“Karen’s laugh was infectious. She was famous for her “Karentinis,” which she enjoyed regularly with her cigarettes. She subscribed to the credo of Molly Ivins, ‘Keep fighting for freedom and justice beloveds; but don’t forget to have fun doing it.’”

“She imbued her spirit on her three children and a cadre of relatives and close friends. We all miss her dearly.”

In my first try at naming my felt sense, what came up was amused/tickled. In sitting with those words for a little bit longer, there was a deepening. My felt sense is relishing the quirky essence of my loved ones. It also arouses my desire to be remembered with such delightful, amusing specificity — not a tribute to me being “larger than life” or leaving a “legacy,” but something more like:

Here’s to our mom. She never met an idiom she didn’t accidentally put her own spin on. Here are some of our favorites:

“Oh no! I’m never going to live this up!”

“Well, you know, hindsight is always 50/50!”

I also want a signature cocktail named after me!

Important Practice Notes

I’ve been practicing tuning into my felt senses for several years. It has become more natural for me over time. Your answers may not sound like mine. And nothing may arrive at first.

Showing up with curiosity IS the practice, even if nothing arrives.

You may get one word or a short phrase. When you land on it, it often feels like a shift.

Sometimes a practice offers us a new lens for awareness. Perhaps one day, you’ll be singing in the car and a felt sense will emerge, right in the middle of your everyday life.

There are so many practices to support us in connecting with wisdom. Not every practice will be right or accessible for every person. Beyond that, a practice that works well on one day may not feel quite right on another day. So much love and grace for your agency, your preferences, and your capacity in each moment.

Gratitude and Resources

Finally, this practice came to me upon waking one morning. That said, I’d like to give credit to four sources, whose influence I see in it. Lucy Abbott Tucker shared the concepts of focusing and felt sense in her supervision course through SDI. From there, I read Eugene Gendlin’s book, “Focusing,” and discovered the YouTube video I linked above, created by Ann Weiser Cornell. I apprenticed with Dr. Shannon Michael Pater, and his influence is visible in my work.

Would you like some company or gentle guidance as you listen for wisdom and explore new ways of engaging with your soul? Kirsten offers spacious accompaniment and trauma-informed spiritual direction. I’d love to hear what’s stirring in you and meet with you for a free exploration session.