How We Feel

Humans are master thinkers. We’re quite good at logic, considering variables, imagining in beautiful and grandiose ways, and intellectualizing. These things really help us to get things done. Thinking helps us to be effective, figure out complex problems, build cell phones, robots, and AI, organize and categorize. But if we aren’t careful, thinking can be divisive and rigid, and keep us stuck on narratives that aren’t helpful. As great as it is in many ways, if we aren’t careful, thinking can take us away from our humanness and our ability to feel.

These days I find it interesting that a lot of people use words like feel, sense, and embody, but there's still a ton of thinking going on and not all that much feeling. We’re getting closer but still pretty out of touch. We think and overthink of all of the possibilities. We imagine what we think someone else wants us to do. We worry about what everyone else will think and wonder what is the “right” decision. Thinking takes us out of ourselves and stresses our nervous system. Feeling can lead us to true knowing and real wholeness and fulfillment.

We hear things like this a lot: “I have a sense.” “It ‘feels’ like.” “Trust your gut”. “Being a sensitive person.” We’re told to pay attention to our feelings and emotions but sometimes they make us spiral out of control in our minds. We can get stuck in patterns and narratives can be confusing and dysfunctional. Unfortunately sometimes when we're trying to figure something out or make a decision, we leave out the most important part which is how we really feel about something, deep within our being, and this is where the magic happens. 

Once when I was struggling with a very difficult decision, a good friend said “Do what brings you peace”. As soon as he said that, I felt a huge sigh of relief. Because I already knew deep inside me what I needed to do but it was the thinking and overthinking that was keeping me stuck. So in this case it was a feeling, a deep inner knowing that gave me clarity vs the thinking that was keeping me spinning and my wheels turning but getting nowhere.

Our human brains are amazing. We’re the most “advanced” beings and have come so far in science and technology but unfortunately despite our advances we’re disconnected, dissociated, and detached from our amazing human capacity to sense, feel and know. And if we do, we often ignore it.

Think of all of the movies and series we love because they help us to feel. It's our feelings that make us human. But if we aren’t careful these kinds of things take us out of ourselves and out of our body and we can get stuck in a dysfunctional state. Our body is the vessel of our being. Our body is designed to calm and heal itself when we connect to it. Our body houses the neurotransmitters and memories that relate to our emotions. Our body is where those gut feelings originate. And it's also an incredible place to commune with divinity.

Feelings are wired into us as humans and unfortunately with so much advancement in tech and performing the way we’re expected, we’ve sort of distanced ourselves from our ability to use our senses fully. You’ve heard of the sixth sense? Well in my experience there are way more than that. But the take home in this concept is that we as human beings have so much more capacity to sense than sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. 

So often we mix up ideas with emotions. Our thoughts and complex minds and complicated childhood and life experiences can keep us stuck in patterns that don’t feel good. But when we learn to use our body to connect with positive sensations, something that seems miraculous happens, and our body quickly shifts into healing mode. As we start to wake up our interoceptive awareness, our nervous system gets the opportunity to work to its fullest capacity in a positive way. And we start to FEEL and feel good. Feeling also includes our emotions, and don’t get me wrong, our emotions can be really helpful, but our capacity to feel includes much more than emotions. When we learn to ground ourselves in our body and the goodness within us, we plug into an awareness that can allow for profound emotional healing, more conscious decision making, and more clarity in our everyday living.

But we need to wake up and reconnect and recalibrate our wiring that has been neglected and dormant. Our ancestors and native cultures were much more connected to everything. They had less to distract them and pull their attention out of their wholeness. Their senses were tuned to nature, to spirit, and to their humanness. They lived and breathed their interconnectedness and paid much more attention to it. Living inside, connected to electrical signals going through everything, and rarely appreciating the natural world has made us a bit numb to our capacity to fully use our senses, our human super powers. They’re right there waiting for us to use them and wake up pretty quickly when we do.

To embrace that interconnectedness and make the most of our human nervous system, it helps to remember that our nervous system goes from head to toe and deep into all of our organs. If we only think, we cut ourselves off from all of this hardware that is designed to do amazing things. If we only think, it can result in dysfunction. It actually stresses our nervous system and can result in muscle tension, elevated cortisol, and anxiety. But when we connect our mind to our body and allow ourselves to feel, things shift immediately. When we keep doing it, amazing things happen, and our human design gets to really live into its true capacity.

The way to start to do it is to drop down into your body. I typically find it easiest to start in your abdomen, feet, or legs. Bring your attention out of your head and into your body and simply put your attention into the lower half of your body and try to keep it there. Now sense a softness in your body, such as water or spaciousness. You might sense the 70% of your body that is composed of water. You might have a sense of atoms or cells within you. It might feel like movement, stillness, a certain color or consistency or temperature. Really allow yourself to get in there and keep your attention there. Feel the feeling. What is that good sensation for you? Really “flesh it out” and feel it in your body, just like you feel when the waves are lapping over your toes, the sun is shining down on you, or a warm breeze touches your skin. Keep feeling it as you read this. Does it feel good? Can you feel how your muscles have relaxed and your breathing has slowed? Now choose three “cue” words that describe the sensation that you feel in your body that feels good. This creates a "feeling memory” that you can use to help yourself quickly get back into this place that feels good. As one of my course participants likes to put it “Feel the goodness”.

If this isn’t easy for you, it might mean that you need this work more than you realize and that this work could be really helpful for you but that you might need some more help getting there. And for the record, for those who find it most difficult, it takes a bit more practice at first, but the benefits of tapping into what your human capacity has to offer you are even greater.

Our brain and nervous system is incredibly complex but connecting to our ability to feel good is simple. But I didn’t say it was easy and that’s because most of us have been trained to think not feel. The wiring is in there and learning to feel and sense these good things just takes a bit of practice. For most people once they start to make the connections, it gets easier pretty quickly. And the more they do it the better it works and the better they feel.

It's actually through allowing ourselves to truly feel…that we really get to make the most of our humanness. If you believe that humans are composed of mind, body, and spirit, it makes sense that these things are interconnected and that when we use our mind to have awareness in our body, we literally become embodied. Through embodied awareness we get to the present moment and awareness happens through our ability to sense and feel the wholeness of our being within all of creation. When our attention is within the wholeness of our body, we have much more access to all that we are, mind, body and spirit. It's through our perceptual awareness and sensory experiences that we live fully into our humanness in an integrated way. 

Hopefully you’re still dropping in and sensing within your body as you read this. It should feel good to connect your mind to your body to feel. There is wisdom within you, an inner sense, that we can tap into when we drop in and feel. Allowing ourselves to make these connections in a simple way can have a profound impact on our ability to heal, to transform, and really be who we’re here to be. Can you feel it?