Do you have unprocessed trauma? How can you process trauma without becoming overwhelmed by it?
In Waking the Tiger, Peter Levine introduces a powerful approach to healing trauma through body awareness. His method centers on developing what he calls the “felt sense”—your body’s physical responses to memories and experiences.
Keep reading to discover how Peter Levine’s felt sense technique can help you navigate traumatic memories while staying grounded in the present moment.
Peter Levine’s Felt Sense Technique
According to Peter Levine, felt sense is something you can and should develop to process your trauma constructively. He warns that, when you allow your traumatic memories and energy to come to the surface, you risk getting swept up in overwhelming emotions or intense flashbacks to the traumatic event. It can be counterproductive if you reexperience the traumatic incident without activating your body’s natural healing response.
According to Levine, the primary tool you’ll use to avoid this pitfall when processing your trauma is your felt sense. This is your awareness of the physical sensations you feel throughout your body when thinking about a specific occurrence or person. By focusing on your felt sense, you can channel and engage with traumatic memories in a less overwhelming form. Your physical sensations act as a grounding focal point you can use to calm down when your experience gets intense.
(Shortform note: The term “felt sense” was coined by psychologist Eugene Gendlin, who used it in his 1966 paper “The Discovery of Felt Meaning.” It’s a key part of “Focusing,” a unique process of self-reflection that Gendlin developed. Like Somatic Experiencing, Focusing involves observing the felt sense, but it’s intended for anyone who wants to gain clarity in their life—not just for trauma survivors.)
| Developing Felt Sense Builds Emotional Resilience In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk offers an additional explanation for why deepening the felt sense helps people heal from trauma. As trauma survivors pay closer attention to the moment-to-moment experience of their bodily sensations, it becomes clear that these feelings are constantly changing. This realization takes away some of the power these feelings normally have. Instead of reflexively taking action to avoid or suppress these feelings, trauma survivors see them as temporary sensations that they’re capable of enduring. For this reason, yoga can be a powerful tool to heal from trauma. By mindfully holding their body in different yoga poses, trauma survivors can strengthen their felt sense and become less easily overwhelmed by powerful sensations. |
How to Train Your Felt Sense
Levine explains that many people—especially trauma survivors—lack a felt sense at any given moment. If you intentionally build this awareness, you can more easily access your felt sense when you need it, strengthening your ability to process trauma. Levine offers an exercise to help you do this.
First, get into a comfortable position, and try to maintain awareness of all the physical sensations you’re feeling. Notice the points of contact between your body and whatever surface is supporting you, and recognize how this pressure feels. Next, pay attention to the sensation of your clothes on various parts of your skin. Gradually, shift your focus inside your body: Are there any sensations there?
Stay with these sensations for a few minutes and watch how they change. Sensations might intensify, diminish, transform, or vanish. Simply notice this activity without judgment or interpretation.
| A Body Scan Meditation for Mindfulness Whereas Levine recommends developing your felt sense as a tool specifically for processing traumatic energy, other experts recommend cultivating the similar quality of mindfulness for more general improvements to your quality of life. Mindfulness is the consistent awareness and acceptance of the experience of the present moment. This makes it broader than the felt sense, which is the impression you get from a specific occurrence or person. Experts contend that cultivating mindfulness can help alleviate stress and anxiety. Additionally, by helping you peacefully accept and release troubling thoughts, mindfulness can help cure insomnia and other sleep issues. To cultivate mindfulness, experts recommend a body scan meditation that’s similar, yet not identical to Peter Levine’s felt sense exercise. To perform a body scan meditation, find a comfortable position—either lying down or sitting. Instead of immediately scanning your body (as in Levine’s exercise), focus your attention by observing your breath. This will help you conduct your body scan with slightly more intentional direction than Levine’s open awareness practice. Next, move your attention through different parts of your body. Observe the sensations you feel in each area, acknowledging any pain or discomfort without judgment. If your thoughts begin to wander, gently redirect your attention back to the body part you were focusing on. Continue until you’ve focused your attention on every single body part individually. Finally, try to maintain awareness of your entire body all at once before slowly returning your attention to your surroundings. |
Exercise: Train Your Felt Sense
One exercise Levine recommends to develop your felt sense involves studying evocative images and observing their effect on you. You’ll practice this in this exercise. Hopefully, you’ll become more attuned to your felt sense—and as Levine explains, a stronger felt sense can help you process trauma.
Prepare to examine the following photographs by focusing your awareness. Notice whatever sensations are present in your arms and legs, especially how it feels in the areas that touch your chair or the floor. Expand your awareness to include sensations on any part of your skin. What do you feel? (For instance, you might feel the warm pressure of a cozy pair of socks and a lightness in your chest.)
Study the image above. Describe the emotions it makes you feel (if any). Then, describe the specific bodily sensations that comprise these emotions, along with any other sensations you feel. Continue observing your felt sense for a few minutes before moving on.
Study the image above. Describe the emotions it makes you feel (if any). Then, describe the specific bodily sensations that comprise these emotions, along with any other sensations you feel. Continue observing your felt sense for a few minutes before moving on.
Study the image above. Describe the emotions (if any) it makes you feel. Then, describe the specific bodily sensations that comprise these emotions, along with any other sensations you feel.
