Eugene Gendlin was a philosopher and psychotherapist who developed Focusing, an approach to attending to a bodily felt sense that isn’t yet fully expressed in words.
His interest wasn’t simply in finding a more impressive explanation. It was in how someone moves from an unclear, lived sense of a situation towards words or a response that actually fits.
You know the sentence isn’t quite right.
You say, "I’m worried about the meeting."
True, perhaps. But incomplete.
You stay with the feeling and realise: "I’m worried that I’ll agree again before I’ve had time to think."
The second sentence has something the first didn’t. The situation becomes more particular. You can feel the difference as well as understand it.
Gendlin’s work offers an important background to the term felt sense. The I AWAKE books have their own authored practices, but share an interest in giving bodily experience time to become more precise rather than rushing past it with an available label.
The entry on Focusing introduces the practice itself. Body awareness explains the broader act of noticing sensation, which isn’t identical to Gendlin’s approach.
The International Focusing Institute’s biography of Eugene Gendlin introduces Gendlin’s life and work. It is the place to begin when you want the person and intellectual history behind a term often used quite loosely.
Gendlin’s own Introduction to Focusing takes you closer to what he meant by a bodily felt sense and the process of working with it.