if my inner critic is silent, it's a sign I'm present and grounded
That's interesting. If I can't hear the inner critic, sometimes it's actually a sign that I'm completely out of touch with both my inner world and the outer world, and soaring in some kind of ivory tower where I start feeling a bit invincible and overly confident. It actually looks a bit like a manic state.
if I can actually feel all my limbs when I check in (instead of knowing they're there but not feeling connected) I'm probably grounded.
...and this is different for me, too. There's often so much energy in certain areas of my body that I can't
forget they're there.
If I'm really deep inside my head, I can forget about my whole body. Sometimes when I'm successfully interacting with the outer world, I don't feel hunger or exhaustion or pain but I'm well coordinated and can work quickly and efficiently. But things like breathing techniques to relax, or feeling my feet on the floor to try to get grounded...those things send deep, explosive anxiety coursing through my body.
She is talking about the "felt" sense and helping me notice it.
My T has mentioned this term, too, but I didn't realize it was a "real" term until I read your post. Similar to the word
focusing...I just used it in a layman's context, in whatever way it held meaning to me. But a quick google search after reading your post, and I see that "focusing" is actually a psycho-therapeutic technique, of which "felt sense" is a part.
So, felt sense seems to me to basically be intuitive thinking and exploration. For example: "I know such-and-such is true, but I don't yet know why. So I'll sit with this, and explore it, and test out ideas against it, until I find words that resonate with this thing that I know to be true. And then as the words come together, the picture emerges more clearly." Does that sound about right?
Such a challenge to be present in the moment.
Yes. Agreed. This is the primary focus of the equine therapy I've been doing.
The equine T pointed out last week that I rely on my
predictions of people's behavior rather than being present to what they
actually do. And this makes sense, given that my whole childhood was spent learning how to predict behavior so that I could protect myself. But now I need to learn to be present with what is actually happening in the moment, like a horse is. Even though a horse is pretty predictable most of the time, it's not
always predictable. What's more, the
experience of going through the motions with the horse, even if they're predictable, provides layers of insight that can't be obtained from the prediction alone.
Suffice to say, I have no idea yet on how to do this. But here's an image I have in my mind that sometimes helps me. It's not so much the
picture as it is the
movement of energy in the picture. So...see if this makes sense.
Imagine your car is sitting on the side of the road and it won't start. You need to push the car into a parking lot a few yards away. In your mind, picture the car on the side of the road. You're standing behind the car, off to the side, as you wait for traffic to pass. Now the road is clear, and you're ready to start pushing. What movement do you make right at this instant? You position your body directly behind the car, place your hands firmly on the back of it, and direct your energy into the car's surface directly in front of you. See if you can sense that movement within your body. You're
facing directly into the surface
right in front of you with the
intent to act upon it.
It's this level of focus and intent directed into the
moment immediately in front of you that brings you into the present instant. For me anyway, it gives "being present in the moment" a more concrete feel, something I can actually
focus on rather than it being some abstract concept that isn't really grounded in experienced reality. It becomes active
movement of energy (although it might be that nothing
changes yet), rather than passive reception of
being.
