The Felt Intelligence Process
Protocol

1. Find a quiet place and sit somewhere comfortable. Try and sit with a reasonably straight back (but not so much that it puts you under strain). Take a moment to relax. Drop your shoulders. Close your eyes. Bring your attention to within your body.

 

Feel the chair beneath you, supporting you. Feel your back against your chair. Notice the connection point where your feet touch the ground. Observe your breathing and how your body moves with each in and out breath. 

 

Pay attention to what you can sense within your body. If nothing is obvious to you, bring your attention to your throat first, then your chest and then your stomach. Ask yourself the question you want the answer to (say it out loud), for example: "What’s holding me back right now and how does it feel?" 

 

Don’t let your intellect jump in with an answer, if it does just ignore it. You are looking for what you can feel, something new, a fresh understanding.

 

Let the answer arise slowly and effortlessly within you (as a felt experience). When you feel the response don’t go into it just observe it, as if from a distance, creating a little space between you and the feeling that has arisen within you.

 

Then ask: “What else, if anything, do I feel connected to this?”. Again, wait for a felt response. You may feel one thing or several.

 

2. If more than one feeling comes up, select the one you want to focus on. Do not go 'inside it', stand back from it. Pay attention to what you can feel in your body and get a feeling of what the whole sense of what you can feel is like. If it is unclear then let yourself feel the unclearness of it.

 

3. Describe to yourself (say it out loud) the characteristics of what you can feel. Does it have a shape, texture, or colour? If so name it. Is it heavy or light? This will stabilize the feeling.

 

4. Let a word, phrase or image come up from what you can feel that captures its quality(ies). It might be a quality word like 'tight', 'sticky', 'scary', or 'heavy', or it could be a phrase or image. Stay with and observe the quality of what you can feel until something fits just right. 

 

5. When you have got the correct description the feeling will shift. If it doesn’t try a slightly different wording that is closer to the perfect translation.

 

Go to-and-fro between what you feel and the word(s) (phrase, or image) that you came up with until you get it right. Check how they resonate with each other. See if you notice a change in what you can feel that confirms your label and the feeling fits.

 

6. Let what you can feel and the word or picture change until they feel just right in capturing the quality of the felt sense. 

 

7. Next, if you wish to, you can start exploring the story behind what you feel, why you feel it, and the logic it’s built on (at the source of which there is usually a specific memory) ask yourself another question, for example: "Why is this holding me back?" (or “What supports this?” – see the list of further examples set out below).

 

8. Make sure the answer is felt, freshly and vividly. When you clearly sense it, describe its qualities (as for 3 above).

 

You can keep asking follow-up questions until you’ve usefully understood the full logic of what you’re feeling. Keep repeating the protocol set out here.

 

Receive whatever comes in a friendly way. Stay with it for a while, don’t rush the process. The shift happens on its own and cannot be controlled.

 

9. If you come across something negative or blocking which needs to be cleared, it helps to find the moment you formed the belief that underpins it. You can find this out by simply asking “What was the first time I experience this [name it] and how did it feel?’ Allow the feeling to arise and any memory attached to it.

 

Variations to the questions we can ask of what we feel:

 

"What’s beneath this?”

"What’s the worst thing about this?”

"What’s the payoff to me?”

"What’s at the core of this?"

As an example, let’s say you feel ‘pride’, but you know it’s not exactly pride but ‘a sort of pride’ you could ask “What is this sort of pride?”

"What does this feeling need?"

"What would it take to feel [better/empowered/resolved]?"

Let us say you are feeling anxious about a decision. Ask “What is it about this decision that makes me feel anxious?”