"Felt Sense" and "felt Shift"
Much of what a person knows has never been consciously thought or verbalized. Felt sense is the name Gendlin gave to the unclear, pre-verbal sense of 'something', as that something is experienced in the body. It is not the same as an emotion. This bodily felt 'something' may be an awareness of a situation or an old hurt, or of something that is 'coming' — perhaps an idea, or the next line of a poem, or the right line to draw next in completing a drawing. Crucial to the concept, as defined by Gendlin, is that it is unclear and vague; and it is always more than any attempt to express it verbally.
The Focusing process makes a felt sense more tangible and easier to work with. In order to help the felt sense form, the focuser may try out words that might express it. These words can be tested against the felt sense: the felt sense will not resonate with a word or phrase that does not adequately 'say' it. When the felt sense does form, it is always tangible, something the focuser can feel in his/her body and to which s/he will have an emotional reaction.
Gendlin observed clients, writers, and people in ordinary life ("Focusers") turning their attention to this not-yet-articulated knowing. As a felt sense formed, there would be long pauses together with sounds like 'uh....' Once the person had accurately identified this felt sense, new words would come, and new insights into the situation. There would be a sense of felt movement (a "felt shift"), and the person would begin to be able to move beyond the "stuck" place, having fresh insights, and also sometimes indications of steps to take.
Read more about this topic: Focusing
Famous quotes containing the words felt, sense and/or shift:
“Have you seen but a bright lily grow
Before rude hands have touch’d it?
Have you mark’d but the fall of the snow
Before the soil hath smutch’d it?
Have you felt the wool of the beaver,
Or swan’s down ever?
Or have smelt of the bud of the brier,
Or the nard in the fire?
Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
O so white, O so soft, O so sweet is she!”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“Language fails not because thought fails, but because no verbal symbols can do justice to the fullness and richness of thought. If we are to continue talking about “data” in any other sense than as reflective distinctions, the original datum is always such a qualitative whole.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“The frantic search of five-year-olds for friends can thus be seen to forecast the beginnings of a basic shift in the parent-child relationship, a shift which will occur gradually over many long years, and in which a child needs not only the support of child allies engaged in the same struggle but also the understanding of his parents.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)