Feelings

– The Navigation System You Are Born With

What does it mean to be a fully alive, feeling human being? What would it take to learn to use feelings as valuable sources of information and wisdom to help NAVIGATE and enrich this vast, beautiful life?

Learning to navigate life with feelings requires authentic initiation AND is totally possible for everyone.

Mapping The Feeling Body

Every human has a physical body. Like the geographic landscape, the structure is laid out in maps and can be successfully navigated through the accurate interpretation of maps that most closely reflect the reality of the terrain.

I was given the “maps” of the physical body when I was studying Nursing, these were bound up in my trusty ‘Anatomy and Physiology” textbook and gave me the ability to know where to find the gallbladder and where the cerebral hemispheres are and how to know the difference between a phalange and scapular.
 
What I was not taught, is that every human also has a ‘Feeling’ body. Just like the physical body, this body is essential to being a fully alive, functioning human. Also like the physical body, the feeling body has the potential to fully mature, this can only be done by learning to consciously feel feelings.
 

"I got some feelings up my sleeve
I got a compass in my arm
I got a needle in my heart
It's gonna tell us where we are"
- Amanda Palmer

 
There is a map which brings clarity to the emotional terrain of humans – this is for ease of navigation; this distinction brings enormous possibility and richness to the human experience. The map divides the feeling experience of humans into just four basic feelings, these are ANGER, SADNESS, FEAR and JOY with all the other experiences of feeling being a combination of 2 or more of these feelings.

The Disappearance of Villaging & The Culture of ‘Don’t Feel’

I notice there is a widely held “cultural amnesia” around the feeling body. It is either totally ignored, or it is shunned, tucked “safely” out of view, never to be spoken about, except perhaps when “she is on her period” or after couple of drinks, or when “disaster strikes” and this body, likely comes “screaming to life” in a sudden outburst of feeling.
 
This is because most of the human population do not consciously learn to feel, thus we collectively run around with feeling bodies still stuck in childhood or infancy. It takes a whole, layered village to initiate a human into their feeling body. It is this textured, layered, deep village way that is eroding at about the same rate of the topsoil from the land we live – this rate is frighteningly fast, by the way.
 

Initiation and Experimentation

Infant or childlike feeling bodies express themselves in ways that create messes, that are sudden, unconscious, irresponsible and sometimes dangerous. A feeling body that has been initiated into adulthood, however, holds enormous clarity, the capacity to respond, create and can feel each feeling all the way from 0-100% in a totally conscious and responsible way. This creates radically new results.
 
I invite you to experiment next time you feel something, ask yourself:
1 – which feeling is this?
2 – Is it a mixture?
3 – What are the sensations of this in my body?
4 – What wisdom/information does this feeling have for me?

Explore Further

The book ‘Emotional Empowerment’ by Patrizia Patz is a brilliant, clear resource on learning about feeling, I highly recommend it.
 
The Film: A Beautiful Day In the Neighbourhood (2019) lays out the simplicity and power of feeling one’s feelings, as they are and allowing this to pull us closer towards one another.
A note from me : I found Tom Hank’s character slightly creepy at first glance – If this comes up for you too, I encourage you to stay with this film and let its subtle magic unfold.

Contact me for a 1:1 Mapping space - What is the terrain of Your unique Feeling Body?