Your Body Knows the Answer

Chapter 1

IN THE COURSE of a long letter written in 1817 to his brothers in America, the English poet John Keats described a sudden realization he had while walking home from the theater with a friend:

. . . several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.¹

This brief passage has become famous for defining the concept of negative capability. In calling it negative, Keats does not mean it is undesirable. On the contrary, this capacity is highly positive for those who possess it. Keats means negative in the sense of being empty of specific content, uncertain, unclear. He is pointing to a creative mental state of not knowing that is able to remain calm and open without an “irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

Negative capability is crucial to the creative process of artists. It is equally important in contemplative practices like meditation and finding the felt sense. True contemplation, as opposed to ordinary discursive thinking and rumination, involves what biologist and cognitive neuroscientist Francisco Varela called a “reversal of attention.” One suspends one’s habitual flow of thought and feeling so as to make room for a different way of paying attention.

To say this more simply, Mindful Focusing begins with creating a gap in our habitual patterns of physical, psychological, and mental activity. This gap is empty of specific content, yet not empty of awareness. It is simply awareness itself—open and receptive, conscious without needing any object to be conscious of. It is a state of grounded, aware presence.

The first exercise is called GAP, both because it is about creating this particular type of gap in our consciousness and because the acronym GAP can stand for the state of grounded aware presence.

Exercise 1.1 GAP: Grounded Aware Presence

You may want to start by stretching your limbs, wiggling your toes, even loosening up your whole body with a refreshing shake-out. Then, find a comfortable seated position and simply become aware of your body. Sense its position, weight, and inner space.

After a while, center your attention at your base, your seat, where your body is supported by whatever you are sitting on. Feel the weight of your whole body and how it is planted on the earth. Trusting yourself to the earth’s solidity, let your body really settle and be at ease. Appreciate the simplicity of being bodily present, here and now. Say the word grounded softly to yourself.

Next, bring your attention to the head region. Close your eyes, or lower your gaze. Concentrate your awareness on your sense of hearing. Be open and sensitive to any sound from the environment, especially the kinds of background noise that we usually don’t notice at all. You can note sounds with a simple mental label—bird singing, traffic noise, refrigerator hum—but try not to enter into a discursive thought process. At the same time, try to notice the larger quality of silence that surrounds whatever you hear from moment to moment. Sense the whole space around you, extending even beyond the walls and what you can see from where you sit. Experience the vast, panoramic quality of awareness. Say to yourself softly aware.

Now move your attention into the center of your chest, place your hand gently over your heart, and experience the quality of presence. You are simply here, alive, breathing, feeling, experiencing your basic existence. It is happening right now, at this very moment. Softly repeat the word present.

Finally, let your attention encompass your whole body and repeat to yourself, grounded aware presence. Rest there for a few seconds. Then, gently open your eyes, raise your gaze, and extend your grounded aware presence to include the environment around you.

In addition to being the preparatory step in finding the felt sense, this gap, or state of grounded aware presence, is a place we can always return to in ourselves. Think of it as a trustworthy, neutral home base you can come back to any time you feel out of balance, preoccupied, or confused. You can also do the GAP exercise while standing: start by placing your attention on your feet instead of your seat, then move to your head and heart in turn, reminding yourself with the words grounded, aware, and present.

Friendly Attending

By generating grounded aware presence, we create an open space, a kind of positive emptiness that can accommodate fresh experiences. It is like clearing your desk of accumulated papers and knickknacks so that you have a clean space for work. After this preparation is done, you can begin the actual process of finding the felt sense.

The next step is to focus our intention and attention in a particular way. This is somewhat like adjusting the resolution on a microscope so that you can bring into focus the particular area you are interested in exploring. We need to resolve our intention to an attitude of sincere empathy, a commitment to be with whatever may arise in our experience in a friendly, inquisitive way. We need to attune our attention so as to remain patiently present, open, and nonreactive with whatever does show up—whether it is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. These two together constitute friendly attending, which you will cultivate in the next exercise.

Exercise 1.2 Friendly Attending

Begin with a brief repetition of the GAP exercise. Centering attention at your seat, sense your body’s weight on the earth; say softly to yourself grounded. Centering attention at your head, sense the space around and above you, and tune in to subtle sounds in the environment; say softly to yourself aware. Centering attention in your chest, say softly to yourself present. Have a sense of your heart softening. As you do this, you can place your right hand gently on your heart, with the base of the thumb resting at the center of your chest.

Now imagine that you are walking alone in a forest. Suddenly you feel something looking at you from behind some trees. You realize that it is a fawn. It is mostly hidden in the undergrowth, but you can make out its moist eyes and erect ears. You know that if you make any sudden move, it will quickly disappear. Staying still just where you are, you soften your gaze and then your whole body. You are inviting the fawn to stay present. Perhaps after a while it will even come closer and show more of itself. You know you can’t make it do anything, but by softening how you are in yourself, you communicate that your intentions are friendly. You are simply being gently present for the fawn, without looking for anything in particular to happen. This is the state of friendly attending.

You can also try this exercise visualizing a rabbit, a dog or cat, or a young child, whatever suits you best. The next time you encounter a shy animal or child, try this in real life.

As we practice finding the felt sense, we will undoubtedly come up against some of our inner wild animals that are not as easy to be with as a young fawn. Some of them will appear ugly or menacing—sensations and thoughts and feelings we might prefer to reject, or at least to send back into the underbrush. But these “ugly beasts” are the very creatures that have the most to teach us. They are parts of ourselves that have been in hiding: what they want more than anything is to feel recognized and accepted by us. By practicing Friendly Attending, we allow them to show up fully. This may be the only way that places where we have been stuck for a long time can become unstuck.

Here it is worth repeating Carl Rogers’s dictum: It is a curious paradox that when I accept myself as I am, then I can change. We can add as a corollary: It is a curious paradox that when I accept things just as they are, then I can find ways to innovate and make things better.

Noticing “Something”

With the support of grounded aware presence and friendly attending, we are ready to approach the felt sense itself. It is important to note that the term felt sense is used today in many different contexts, and often rather loosely, lacking the precision intended by Eugene Gendlin when he introduced the term. This can be confusing: On the one hand, felt sense denotes something in our experience that is vague, subtle, unclear; on the other hand, it is not just any sort of vague feeling we might have. It is a particular kind of unclear experience that is found by bringing a particular quality of attention to a particular zone of bodily experience.

Grounded aware presence and friendly attending are the inner skills that give us access to this special zone. But once there, what exactly are we looking for? Given that felt senses are by definition unclear and quite invisible to most people, the best answer, starting out, is simply to say that we are looking for “something.”

Have you ever looked at a Magic Eye picture? (They are readily available on the Internet these days.) At first you can’t see anything but a jumble of computer-generated patterns and colors. But after you spend some time staring at it in a special way—which takes some experimentation to discover—a form begins to emerge, as if by magic. For a while you can’t identify what the form is, but clearly there is something there. Sometimes it disappears before you can identify it, but sometimes it comes fully into focus as a three-dimensional object. At this point you have hold of it: now it is more than just something, it is a train or a kangaroo or a pretzel.

Finding the felt sense follows a similar progression: first you patiently look in the special manner of friendly attending, then you sense an unclear “something” starting to form, and finally—if and when it occurs—that something emerges into clear focus. Of course, what emerges won’t be a kangaroo or a pretzel, but it will have specific qualities of shape, form, or texture, perhaps even color or temperature, that can be noticed and felt. Something concrete is present: you can sense it there in your body, and even though you may not know why it’s there or what it’s about, you can sense that it holds meaning.

Exercise 1.3 Noticing “Something”

Begin by simply asking yourself, “How am I?” Say whatever comes to mind: fine, OK, tired, happy, sad, excited . . .

Now ask yourself, “But how am I really?” This time ignore any words that arise quickly. Instead, holding in mind the question “How am I really?” allow there to be a gap, and simply sense inside your body with an attitude of friendly attending.

You are not answering the question from your head—that would be what you already know—but looking for a response to the question in your body. You are sensing for . . . something. You may already be noticing a particular felt sense or you may not be, but in either case there is an unclear sense of “something.”

Don’t rush. Go slowly and remember that all we can do is stay present and be a friendly witness to whatever comes—even when nothing comes. Especially at the beginning, felt senses tend to be quite shy; like the fawn in the woods, they are not used to being seen and need time to feel safe showing themselves. When you notice a felt sense, or something you think might be a felt sense, simply welcome it and be with it, not looking for anything more to happen right away. After a while, ask again, “How am I really?” and notice if the felt sense alters, becomes clearer, or disappears.

At any point in this process, you may experience a fresh insight, something unexpected or at a deeper level than you were in touch with before. These insights will come with a quality of freshness, a sense of Oh! or Aha! or Now I see. Words may come that articulate the fresh insight; at this point words can be welcomed and you can make a mental note of them, but keep it simple. Try not to go off on a long chain of thoughts about the new insight, as tempting as that might feel.

Try this exercise again, substituting different forms of the question. Instead of “How am I?” you can ask, “How am I feeling just now?” or “What does it feel like being [say your name] right now?” A slightly different question that can be very productive is “What’s most important for me right now?” This is a bit trickier because your mind is likely to jump in with a familiar answer, but if you can stay with the nonconceptual body feel that comes in response, you are likely to receive some new information.

Whether or not new insights come at this point, the main thing is that you are starting to contact the felt sense. It is important to remember that we are all different. Some people will find the felt sense right off and recognize it as a familiar place; others will need time and repeated attempts. For a while you may be unsure whether what you are noticing inside your body really is a felt sense or just a physical sensation or some kind of imaginary phenomenon. Don’t get hung up on this; just keep practicing going inside with friendly attending. Things will sort themselves out in time.

In the next two chapters you will practice three different ways of approaching the felt sense.