"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:
“Both of us felt more anxiety about the South—about the colored people especially—than about anything else sinister in the result. My hope of a sound currency will somehow be realized; civil service reform will be delayed; but the great injury is in the South. There the Amendments will be nullified, disorder will continue, prosperity to both whites and colored people will be pushed off for years.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“It is always singular, but encouraging, to meet with common sense in very old books, as the Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma; a playful wisdom which has eyes behind as well as before, and oversees itself. It asserts their health and independence of the experience of later times. This pledge of sanity cannot be spared in a book, that it sometimes pleasantly reflect upon itself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They shift coffee-houses and chocolate-houses from hour to hour, to get over the insupportable labour of doing nothing.”
—Richard Steele (1672–1729)