Felt Sense.

There are four primary feelings that psychotherapists focus on when they first begin helping their clients. Depending on which one of the forefathers of psychology you follow, they are fear, joy, anger and sadness, all other feelings come under one of these categories.

These primary emotions are what we experience in our bodies, the “felt sense” feelings we are born with, we share them with all other animals. The secondary emotions like amused or frustrated etc., are derivates that occur through thought.

I am pointing this out to you today because sometimes when we experience intense emotions it is helpful to just identify which one of the categories your feeling would likely come under.  This allows you to tap into your body and “felt sense” rather than going to your brain and letting your thoughts get to involved.  Now don’t get me wrong it is helpful to be able to recognise more specific complex emotions particularly when we are looking for insight regarding our behaviour, and results, I go there a lot in my coaching, but when the feelings become intense and feel a bit overwhelming it is helpful to keep it simple and go to the primary four.

Horses operate from a felt sense, that is they experience everything in their bodies, they do not have a pre frontal cortex that offers them thoughts/words a written language.  Everything is communicated via the felt sense at physical and sensory level. I notice this when my daughter rides and she seems to feel every little movement or change in both her horse and herself.

The felt sense is our primary mode of operation when we are fully present in the now. When both you and your horse are operating from this place it allows a connection that promotes communication flowing both ways.  Both you and your horse are the student and the teacher.

I’m feeling a bit whoo whoo as I share my thoughts about this with you all, but I think it is essential to be able to operate from the felt sense when we are with our horses.  It is the language that they understand.

When I am doing a lot of thought work with clients it is best done behind the scenes away from the horse, so that we can process any awareness, insight and change without distraction, so we can go beyond the felt sense.

I was practicing this concept “using felt sense” while at Equine Therapy in Invercargill recently and slowly several of the horses started to lie down and go to sleep, it was a surreal experience.  I have attached the photo I took as I finished the session. I have never had this effect on so many horses at one time.

I know it seems obvious, but it was a great reminder of just how much our own state of being impacts our horses.