Why the ‘Inner Felt Sense’ helps us feel better…

It seems like not that long ago, as I was feeling my way through the dark in the middle of the night, to find some pain killers for yet another migraine, that I thought to myself “omg, I am not a well person!”. Earning the title “Health Freak” amongst my loved ones once upon a time, I was pretty devastated to acknowledge this to myself. I have lived with migraines and chronic pain now, for more than a decade. Looking back, life just carried on (with young children, a home to create, a career to develop) and I simply stopped noticing how unwell I actually felt.

I earned that title of Health Freak in the decade before. I was on a mission from a very young age, to ‘get healthy’. I’m not one to do things in halves, so I dove right in and began ordering my body about, in the quest to undo all my shortcomings and achieve perfection. Everyone could see it. No one thought much of it. I was in full command mode. Fit it. Fix me. But once ‘real life’ hit me… I began to unravel.

It seemed that ordering my body about no longer worked. Analysing the pros and cons got me nowhere. Applying my perfectionist standards was unconsciously driving my body into a constant state of chronic stress. Somehow amidst all of this mess, I found myself on the path of Art Therapy. I was soon to discover my “inner felt sense”… I couldn’t be polarized any further from how I had been living! And I thank the stars for that.

The inner felt sense is your body’s inner compass, your inner wisdom and deep knowing. It is the inner space within you, that can be accessed when meditating, spending time in nature, being immersed in creativity and flow… it is the place where we find intimate connection to a uniquely individual inner awareness. When we make contact with this place, we make contact with our inner truth. The more time we spend in contact with our truth, the more we will begin to live by it. This of course, increases our sense of contentment.

In expressive art therapy or embodiment practices, we are able to deepen our relationship with our inner world. From within this place, we can then express this felt experience in visual form as imagery or through the body as movement or sound. As we begin to express this emotional material stored in our body, the less tension we hold – tension expresses as discomfort, discontentment and even symptoms or pain.

It has taken me that full decade to pull all the threads together, to see the picture clearly. I understand now why my body felt so unwell. My body was communicating with me and I didn’t understand her language. It wasn’t until I began to learn to listen through the practice of contacting my inner felt sense, that I slowly began to release the tension held in my body. Movement (through the embodiment practice) helped me to feel what was there and imagery (through expressive art therapy) helped me to express and translate it.

There are not a lot of opportunities in this world to drop into our inner space to really feel what is there. The vast majority of us are holding trauma from our past and we layer over this with busy lives and more stress. Our bodies hold so much, but we barely get to notice what they are saying to us. This is a collective problem and not one of our individual doing. We have been raised to admire busy schedules, to “soldier on” and to push for more productivity. We have been taught to exist in our heads and ignore our bodies.

Is it any wonder that so many of us chronically don’t feel good? If you can relate to any of this, perhaps it is time to begin to discover what it is that your body is trying to tell you. Expressive art therapy or embodiment are two practices that you can learn to do at home, to start learning your body’s language. You don’t need to be ‘good at art’ or be ‘into’ dancing either! Head over to my website www.cazrieniets.com.au to pick up a free at-home activity and begin your journey into your inner world!

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