A new technique opens the door to the feeling mind.

by Joe Shirley

Fifteen years ago I stumbled onto a technique that opened feeling to rigorous observation. I call the technique somatosensory insight. In brief, somatosensory insight uses specific questions which direct attention to the actual, inner experience of feeling.

The questions invite the highly-developed somatosensory imagery centers of the brain to engage with the more rudimentary feeling centers. They elicit detailed representational imagery capturing the actual, inner experience of a specific feeling state:

• The location, size, and shape in the space in and around the body.

• The resemblance of the feeling sensation to material or immaterial substances, including solid, liquid, gas, light, or energy.

• The perceived temperature of the feeling substance.

• The color and other visual attributes the feeling substance would have if it were visible.

• The patterns of movement or force exhibited by the feeling substance.

• The inner sound, voice, or other auditory attributes which accompany the inner experience of the feeling.

Over the fifteen years since I first developed the somatosensory insight technique, I have mapped many thousands of feeling states in myself and others. You can imagine my astonishment and excitement as I began to apply this technique. It was like Leowenhook peering through his microscope at his first droplets of pond water. Or Galileo spotting the rings of Saturn for the first time. Or Marie Curie seeing the faint outline of bones in her first x-ray images. This new tool allowed me to see structures which were never before visible, which noone else had ever seen.

The slideshow above depicts a random selection of drawings of these images. Each drawing depicts a unique feeling experience. The images clearly show differences in location and visual appearance, but leave the similarly diverse qualities of substance, temperature, movement and sound up to your imagination. Look here for more complete examples.

The feeling mind is sophisticated. Intelligent. It has a discernable architecture and operates according to elegant rules. It is distinct from, yet intimately integrated with, the thinking mind. In fact, the feeling mind seems to provide the raw foundation for all conscious and unconscious experience including thought, belief, and behavior. It turns out that feeling is more fundamental than thought.

It has taken many years, many thousands of excursions into my own and others' feeling states. But I can say now with confidence that the feeling mind is worthy of its own branch of the cognitive sciences. Not only that, but I believe that understanding the feeling mind opens great possibility for progress toward a peaceful world free of the unnecessary perpetuation of human suffering.

If you find this work interesting, inspiring, or provocative, please reach out and contact me. If you know someone else who would be interested, please send them a link to this website. I want to engage in conversation with thought leaders, researchers, and seekers all around the world. Let's work together to combine these new discoveries with your strengths to make our world a better place.

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