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2.3: The Art of Stumbling: How the "Felt Sense" Opens the Door to Body Intelligence

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2.3: The Art of Stumbling: How the "Felt Sense" Opens the Door to Body Intelligence

If true insight arises before words, how can we as coaches and therapists create a space for these nonverbal, holistic insights? The answer doesn’t lie in thinking harder, but in consciously shifting attention from the head into the body. The tool for this is the felt sense—a concept that opens the door to our deep body intelligence.

The Discovery of "Stumbling"

The term felt sense was coined by psychotherapist Eugene Gendlin. In a large-scale study, he set out to discover what makes the difference between successful and unsuccessful therapy sessions. After analyzing thousands of hours of recordings, he found a single reliable predictor: a moment he called “stumbling.”

In successful sessions, clients always reached a point where they hit the edge of language. They paused, searched for words, and couldn’t immediately name an inner experience—usually a bodily sensation. This “stumbling” wasn’t confusion; it was the beginning of a profound change process. Gendlin asked himself: could this healing stumbling be consciously invited?

What Exactly Is the Felt Sense?

Gendlin’s answer was deliberate work with the felt sense. He defined it as an embodied inner awareness that encompasses everything our body intelligence knows about a particular issue. It’s the “synthetic thought” of the right hemisphere—revealed not in words but as a physical feeling.

When we turn toward our body with a question or problem, we find this felt sense. At first it’s often vague and barely perceptible, but as we give it attention, it begins to unfold. Because this sensation is so rich and multifaceted, we initially lack the words—we stumble. Gendlin saw this capacity to contact the body’s inner knowing as the essential capacity for change.

The Creative Process: How to Work with the Felt Sense

Working with the felt sense is nonlinear and unpredictable. You can’t force an insight. It’s a creative process that, like every creative act, moves through distinct phases:

  • Preparation: You consciously turn toward the topic and the body.
  • Incubation: You give the feeling time and space to grow without analyzing or forcing it. Moments of silence are crucial here.
  • Insight: From that openness, an aha moment can suddenly emerge—something you couldn’t have planned.

This process isn’t a straight path but an unfolding spiral. The steps include:

  1. Consciously sense the body and locate the felt sense.
  2. Give the feeling time and space without judgment.
  3. Feel into it and resonate with it.
  4. Notice which words, images, or metaphors emerge from the sensation.
  5. Briefly reflect on what has emerged.
  6. Return to the body and notice how the felt sense feels now. Has it changed?

Through this cycle, we continually give the right hemisphere the chance to feed new information into the system—information the linguistic mind can then integrate into a new, more helpful story. Our task as coaches is to support this process, not control it. We create the conditions for clients to learn the art of stumbling and, in doing so, discover the profound answers already resting within them.

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