The Body as the House of the Soul

Caring for the Soul in Counselling:
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The Body as the House of the Soul

“Opening to the felt sense … is vitalizing, expansive, and illuminating, transforming the most painful aspects of life into a process of soul-making.”
 - Holifield​

Our soul is here on earth, feeling the warmth of the sun on our skin, the hug of a loved one, the serenity of a quiet moment, the quickened heart rate of anxiety, the ache of loss. The body houses the soul—but is also intertwined with the soul, as much as our experience of being alive is entwined with the experience of having a body (Swinton, 2020).
 
This means the body can help us experience the soul.
 
The Felt-Sense
 
One of the ways we might experience the soul is through attuning to our “felt sense” (Leijssen, 2008; Holified; 2020). The felt sense is a non-verbal dimension of our experience. It uses the body, because the body feels, the body senses. At the same time, the felt sense is also the domain of the ineffable, the numinous, the sacred, the supernatural, because it is an innate capacity for discernment that that does not involve processes of logic or rational thinking (Holifield, 2020). The felt-sense connects body and soul—this sensing part of us relies on sensation and beyond-logical wisdom to discern choices, paths, meanings.

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