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I have been training to be a breathwork facilitator for 5 months now and one of the biggest journeys with the breath for me has been how I’ve connected to Felt Sense. For those not in the know felt sense is essentially tuning into feelings into our body and then calming our inner chatter around those feelings and allowing the feeling to tell you what you need to know.
When I first started this practice, I found it virtually impossible. I’m a huge planner and thinker, no wait I WAS a huge thinker, now I’m an equal thinker and feeler. In the early days, when trying to tune into Felt Sense my brain would hop on in there “what are you doing? Oh, that old crap, ignore that, I know these things, ask me, ask me. That pain in your stomach that you get with irritable bowel, I know about that I can chatter, chatter , chatter about that all day long, ask me, the brain, ask me”
However, I found with more practice I could give the brain a little a nod and calmly say “thank you for that” and reconnect with my body and open the space and the quiet to let it tell me what it needed to.
I mentioned there irritable bowel, which I’ve had for many years now. Since connecting with felt sense I’ve found I can almost pre-empt when I’m likely to be heading towards an episode, ask my body what it needs (which is often rest and once was as simple as to just sit after I’d eaten to allow proper digestion) and now my episodes are less frequent and less severe.
The other thing I’ve noticed it that migraines (another thing I’ve had for years) are my body’s way of telling me I need to stop and because I never used to listen to it, I’d press on and just get this or that done first, I’d eventually be made to stop by my body by having a migraine.
Intuition – now there’s a word. I remember as a younger adult, I had amazing intuition, but over the years, being in a “thinking job” and not being able to say “well my gut feel says” I’ve quietened my intuition so much that it gave up with being ignored and just didn’t bother anymore. Now it’s back – oh my word how powerful is it. It’s like having a supercharged decision making system online, brain and body together. Now when I have a feeling about someone, I no longer push it aside with the thought that I have no evidence for that, so should ignore that feeling, I listen to it and boy has it been proven right on every occasion so far.
The same for deciding on my course in both my day job and my own business; all mainly done on intuition now. I tend to get the brain to pose the problem, using analysis and then put the problem to the breath and move into my felt sense and bang! a fabulous response appears. I have to be honest, sometimes I get a bit nervous with this approach, my old planner thinks I’m being a bit seat of the pants and leaving it all a bit late but it’s worked so far.
I highly recommend tuning into this amazing tool that we all have at our disposal, whenever it’s needed. It might take a bit of time and practice to really connect, but then most things that are worthwhile take time and practice.
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