The New Therapy
INNER BODYWORK

Basic Concepts & Distinctions

1. The Physical Body and the Felt Body

 We are used to thinking of the body as something purely biological, a physical body- object. In doing so we ignore the subjective, inwardly felt body. This Felt Body is not simply the Physical Body as we experience it from within. On the contrary, the Physical Body is the Felt Body as we perceive it from without - its physical embodiment.

2. Feelings and Feeling

 Feelings are something we ‘have’. Feeling is something we do. Yet we are used to thinking of Feeling as something we do only with our Physical Body - as when we touch and thereby feel the body of an object or person – whereas we identify Feelings with emotions, seeing them as a part of our soul or psyche. Yet Feeling is just as much something we do with our souls as with our bodies. It is not with our Physical Body that we feel the atmosphere of a place or the mood of a person, and yet we feel it in a tangible bodily way. That is because what we call ‘the soul’ is our own subjectively felt body. Our Felt Body is also a Feeling Body. We do not need to touch others with our Physical Body in order to feel them with that body – to touch with them with our own Feeling Awareness. This is a Field Awareness that extends beyond the fleshly boundaries of our Physical Body to permeate and embrace the entire space around us - and every body within it.

3. Focal Awareness and Field Awareness

 There may be all sorts of localisable signs which tell us how a game is going on a cricket or football field, but our feeling of how the game is going is nothing we can localise in ourselves or on the playing field. Instead it a non-local or field awareness. In general, Feeling is a form of knowing – it tell us how we are faring. Yet whereas we are used to treating Feelings as objects of knowledge or cognition, our whole scientific culture is founded on a refusal to affirm that Feeling itself is an independent mode of cognition – a type of Field Awareness and Field Cognition that is prior to any form of focused sensory and intellectual cognition – to Focal Awareness and Focal Cognition. Even in psychotherapy, ‘empathy’ remains a philosophical and psychological mystery, because the focus is on feelings  as mental objects of cognition – some ‘thing’ intellectually analysed or explained, verbally explored or expressed. Feeling itself – understood as a direct mode of cognition - is seen as some sort of mysterious ‘unconscious’ process. Indeed the whole concept of an ‘unconscious’ arose because in our culture ‘consciousness’ itself is identified with Focal Awareness – awareness of a localised ‘object’ of consciousness on the part of localised ‘subject’ of consciousness. As a result, everything to do with Field Awareness and Field Awareness is relegated to ‘the unconscious’. And yet Field Awareness is nothing ‘unconscious’. Animals are acutely and consciously sensitive to their entire environmental field. When a deer straightens its neck and pricks up its ears it is not to focus its hearing on some rustling sound in the bushes that may be warning it of the presence of a predator. It is no longer even hearing any sound with a definite localisable source. Instead it is ‘hearkening’ to the field around it - the all-round silence within which further sounds may manifest and give signs of movement. The deer is not listening with its pricked up ear. Instead it is becoming ‘all ear’ - listening and sensing with its entire body. In this way it transforms its own Focal Awareness into Field Awareness – a form of whole-body sensing independent of each and all of its localised bodily senses and sense organs. For Field Awareness and Cognition is a function not of the Physical Body but of the Felt Body – our Feeling Body.

4. Emotional Feelings and Feeling Tones

 We focus our intellect and our senses with our minds. We focus on ‘feelings’ with  our minds. But we feel with our bodies. Emotional feelings are something we may sense in a localised parts or regions of our bodies. For example we may sense a feeling of anger rising from our belly or chest to our head. What we call ‘moods’ on the other hand, are not localised emotional feelings that we sense in different parts of our body. Instead they pervade and permeate our Felt Body as a whole. In this way they also lend a distinct tone and colouration to our entire experience of ourselves, other people and the world around us. Emotional Feelings are something we are aware of. In essence however, they what their name implies - motions of awareness coming to a head, rising to the surface, or lifting us up or taking us ‘down’ and ‘into’ ourselves. Moods on the other hand, are essentially Feeling Tones - tonalities of awareness which colour the entire way we feel ourselves and the world as a whole. 

It is the failure to distinguish Emotional Feelings from Feeling Tones that has made the most sophisticated minds incapable of understanding the nature and power of music - how it is that it can ‘affect’ our emotions so strongly. The reason is simple – musical tones, like vocal tones are the audible expression of Feeling Tones. We can appreciate the ‘emotional’ dimension of musical and vocal tones only if we are first of all attuned to and in resonance with the Feeling Tones they give expression to. But whereas Emotional Feelings can make us feel isolated from others, Feeling Tones are the very wavelengths of awareness linking us in resonant attunement with others – and with ourselves.

If we are not in bodily resonance with our own Feeling Tones our voices sound hollow and our words empty. If we are not in resonance with the Feeling Tones of others we cannot feel what they are saying through the tone of their words, and body language, voice and behaviour - and nor can we attune to the uniquely individual or ‘tone colour’ of their Emotional Feelings. We can do so only with our Felt Body, for that body is our psychical ‘organism’ in the root sense – the musical instrument (Greek organon ) with which we attune to and embody Feeling Tones - translating them into cell and organ tone, muscle and voice tone, the tone of our looks and of our language, of our gaze and of our gestures.  And just as vocal tones serve as audible ‘carrier waves’ of our words and their messages, so do Feeling Tones serve as silent carrier waves of wordless messages – messages that ride on subtle modulations of Feeling Tone in the same way that words ride on modulations of voice tone. 

The very term ‘Feeling Tones’ has a double intonation central to our understanding of Feelings and Feeling – implying both a Feeling that has the innate character of a Tone and a Tone that, like musical tones, is something that must be Felt and not just heard to be truly understood. Without the notion of Feeling Tones we can make sense of neither music nor the human being, neither Feeling nor Feelings, neither the Felt Body nor the Physical Body – for Feeling Tone is the very bridge between them.