A felt sense is an initially unclear bodily sense of a whole situation, used in Eugene Gendlin’s work to describe something more particular than a named emotion or isolated sensation.
You know there is something about the conversation. You can’t quite say what. The words available so far don’t fit it.
Don’t make the first label do all the work.
"I’m upset" is a beginning.
As you stay gently attentive, another sentence may become possible: "I was included in the plan, but not in the decision."
Now the discomfort has a more specific connection. You haven’t necessarily solved the problem. You have found something closer to what needs to be discussed.
I AWAKE’s practices also give bodily experience a place alongside explanation, though not every sensation or practice is a felt sense in Gendlin’s particular meaning.
A tight shoulder is a sensation. A larger, not-yet-verbal sense of what this meeting means to you may be something else.
Focusing introduces the approach developed around this process. Eugene Gendlin provides the person and philosophical context behind the term.
Gendlin’s Introduction to Focusing, available through the International Focusing Institute, explains the distinction in his own terms. It is especially helpful when felt sense has been used as though it simply meant any strong intuition.