Much of human experience is implicit rather than explicit. This training develops the skills to be more mindful of the implicit and creatively work with it.
The core of our approach is how we pay attention to the felt sense and work with it. The clinical work we do with the felt sense is grounded in a philosophy of life as interaction that is consistent with the emerging models coming from neuroscience. That is, much of our responses to our environment are bottom-up rather than top-down, implicit rather than explicit.
In a traditional top-down model, it takes cognitive understanding and willpower to define our responses to situations. In a bottom-up model, much of our responding takes place below awareness through implicit bodily processes.
As these implicit processes are beyond the reach of explicit cognition, we can only get in touch with them through felt sensing. Turning our awareness toward bodily experience allows us to become aware of how our organism spontaneously re-organizes to respond to situations. That is our bottom-up, bodily way of knowing who we are and what we do.
This experiential exploration helps identify these places in us that need attention. By bringing attention to them they can change.
Thus, felt sensing is how we gain access to our leading edge: what we do not yet know but is occurring below awareness. Listening to the felt sense allows these bottom-up processes to get unstuck and carry forward. That is, we literally experience shifts in our body. These shifts point us in the direction of healing.
Felt sensing is a natural ability that we all have. For many of us, it takes a special kind of attention to find it as we have been over-reliant on explicit cognition. It takes slowing down, looking inward, taking the time to set aside our preconceived notions and make room for the new to emerge. Working with the felt sense in therapy helps our clients heal the specific problems they came to us for. It also develops their capacity to face future challenges and enriches their experience of life.