THE FEEL TECHNIQUE ©

TO GET THE MOST

OUT OF LIFE

By Richard H. Siegel, Ph.D.

INTRODUCTION

I THE PSYCHE

II THE DEEP END

III THE TECHNIQUE

IV AFTERWARDS

V BETTER SLEEP & GROWTH EXERCISES

VI HEAR AND NOW / NOW AND THEN

VII THE END

Words have power.

Some words have more power than others.

Vibration has sound.

Sound goes where other properties can’t.

Intention has direction.

A plan with a goal makes a difference.

Richard H. Siegel, Ph.D.

4176 NW 6th Court
Deerfield Beach, FL 33442
954-420-0755

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INTRODUCTION

This book is about feeling better and feeling better more often.

While the first two chapters of this book describe how this method works, they contain ideas and
concepts that might be unfamiliar. Fortunately, understanding the theory about how the Feel Technique
works is much less important than simply using it. Understanding how an
engine works doesn’t help you to drive, only practice does that. Same principle here.

How to use the Feel Technique is covered in the third chapter.

This book about feeling better and getting more out of life, so how do we do that?
By developing your capacity to feel more than you do now.

To feel more, your nervous system has to be stimulated.

Your nervous system keeps you alive, providing the ability to respond and feel.
These are a few of the more important functions of what your nervous system does best.
You’re not aware of how your organs keep you alive.
Unless you have a background in medicine or physiology, you don’t know what’s going on inside you.
You are aware, though, of your feelings.
You mostly do know how you feel.

A bell works best when it’s rung.

A wheel works best when it spins.
And a lamp works best when it shines.
You work best when you feel the most.

What helps you work at your best is a nervous system that can function at full capacity.
When the nervous system functions at full capacity, it increases your ability to feel more.
To help the nervous system function at full capacity, we want to stimulate it.

Vitamins, good food, and adequate sleep maximize the nervous system’s potential.
Stimulating it, though, requires effort, such as exercise and meditation.
Exercise stimulates the nervous system through exertion.
Meditation stimulates it through repetition.

The Feel Technique is a meditation that stimulates the nervous system.

This method uses the subconscious mind to reach unconscious processes.
When we stimulate the nervous system to feel more to its capacity, you feel more.

The nervous system’s job is to help you feel.

That’s what it was designed to do:
Help you feel.

Chapter three describes how to use the Feel Technique in three different ways:
First, as a simple meditation, focusing on a sound of a word.
Second, as a body focus meditation, in order to undo tension.
And third, socially, when you’re with people.

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The Feel Technique can be used mentally, physically and socially.
Each of the three variations of the technique uses the word “feel” as a silent vibration.
Each method uses repetition as a way to activate the subconscious to influence unconscious processes.

For the purposes of this book, the practice of this technique is called FEEL.
During FEEL you silently focus on the sound of the word “feel.”

The technique is on of simply repeating “feel” again and again in your mind.
Sound, even silent, carries a vibration within the brain, where it is heard.
Thought itself is a vibration, measurable on an EKG.
Repetition makes that vibration resonate within the psyche.

When you repeat a word over and over again, after a while, the word loses its meaning.
After repeating “feel” for a while, you will go into a light naturalistic trance.
In this naturalistic trance, you’re not thinking of what the word “feel” means.
However, unconsciously, the vibration of “feel” still contains meaning and a command.

This technique uses the subconscious to transport the vibration of “feel” to the unconscious mind.
This vibration contains a request /command that is delivered to the core of self.

New research demonstrates that stress ages us by disrupting our DNA.

Stress physically gets to the tips of the DNA strands and undoes them!
Stress disrupts your DNA; however, vibration calms and stimulates it.

Though the sound is silent, the vibration is heard within the psyche.
Repetition activates the subconscious to carry the signal to the nervous system.
The vibration then stimulates the nervous system to feel more to its capacity.
When the nervous system is stimulated to feel more, naturally, you feel more.

A lot of people are interested in outer space, the moon and mars.
Others want to know more about creatures living on the ocean floor.
Not very many have an interest in a journey of their inner being.
Since you’re reading this, you must be one of them.

You must be an Inner Space Explorer!

The journey of the inner mind sounds like a dark and scary place.
And, at times, it can be.

Fortunately, knowledge overcomes fear.

For those inclined to make the journey within, the subconscious mind is
a wonderfully rich resource of information that makes a significant
difference in day to day living.

The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and
falling back into the great subterranean pool of the subconscious from which it arises.

Sigmund Freud

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I THE PSYCHE

Information that makes a difference is knowledge.

Knowledge of self leads to empowerment and confidence.
Confidence leads to new possibilities.

Most thoughts and feelings originate within the subconscious.

Thoughts and feelings come from your inner being.
But what is your inner being?
What’s it made of?

It’s made of soul and it contains identity, programming and the innate.
The innate is the reflex within you that cannot be conditioned.
Innate is the reflex inside that cannot be compromised.
Innate is a significant part of your total core.
Innate is hard to identify because it makes up so much of who you are.

The Feel Technique brings conscious and unconscious processes closer together.
Joining conscious and unconscious processes puts you more in touch with your core.
The better the connected you are to your core, the more in control you feel.
The more in control you feel, the more powerful you are.
Feelings of power and control is the stuff self-confidence is made
of.
Self-confidence is a road that leads to all kinds of new possibilities.

However, keep in mind that on the journey to a more integrated self, emotions may come up that are
overwhelming. Since FEEL increases your capacity to feel, that can happen. So, as you start to use this
technique, you want to feel like you’re going into it feeling in control. If you feel in control, it will
make it that much easier to let go of it when exploring the feelings that come up during FEEL. One
hallmark of emotional strength is the ability to feel in control even when it might appear that you’re not.

Archimedes gave a great definition of control when he said “With the right place to stand and a very
long lever I could move the world.” The Feel Technique produces benefits that allow you to discover
places
inside where we can find new resources, new foundations, and new perspectives on how to accomplish
long sought after goals.

Circumstances can easily appear to look like the source of a problem.

Yet, if you look inside, you’ll see that your feelings have more to do with the obstacles in your life than
anything else. So what’s the best place for you to make your stand to move your world?
The best place, of course, is within you.

But where?

It’s easy to say it’s all in the mind, as most of it is.

However, when it comes to feelings, the heart is also involved.
While the Feel Technique is initiated in the mind, it then stimulates the heart.
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This method utilizes your mind, your heart, as well as your nervous system.

Since everyone has negative feelings and unwanted behaviors, that includes you.
So how can you attain control over unwanted feelings?
By developing inner strength!

Thoughts and feelings originate in the inner self.

So access to the inner self provides new points of control.
New points of control help develop inner strength.

Inner strength makes it easier for you to stand your ground.

Inner strength supplies the power for a more controlled response.
Inner strength provides the unity of emotions for greater ease of self-expression.
Inner strength affords the emotional latitude to explore how you really feel.
Inner strength allows you to more easily recognize and stop manipulations.
Inner strength allows you to hold your feelings in, but in a healthy way.

How can holding feelings back be the healthy thing to do?

Holding feelings in come from a decision that comes from one of two places:
Inner strength or fear.

When you walk away from a fight because you’re afraid, it leaves a bitter taste.
When you walk away because you choose to, you’re ok with it.
Discretion is always the better part of valor.
And you’ll never regret something you didn’t say.
However, if it is fear that keeps you from speaking up, you’ll feel angry and helpless.

Without inner strength, choices are limited.

Inner strength breeds confidence.
That confidence opens the mind to new perspectives on achieving old goals.

Inner strength and empowerment doesn’t come from a seminar or a class.

It comes from you.

It comes from emotional strength you’re in touch with.

It also comes from powers and abilities you’re not aware of.

The subconscious demonstrates a wisdom that is many steps

and perhaps even years ahead of the conscious mind.
Nathaniel Branden

Add up all the hours spent in classes and seminars.

Of all the subjects covered and ideas explored:
How much can you remember?
How many of their actual words can you write down?
An amazingly, fantastically, incredibly small fraction.

Words are forgotten.

But feelings aren’t.

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Very few answers of lasting value are obtained from lectures and speakers.
Lasting inner strength and empowerment won’t come from a lesson in class.
You have power and abilities you don’t realize you have.
Tapping into them can only lead to a fuller life.

When you feel more, inner wisdom surfaces with answers of value.
When you feel more, you respond better and more positively.
When you feel more, you have greater assurance in yourself.
When you feel more, you trust your self-expressiveness more.

Decisions are based on feelings.

Getting in touch with feelings contributes to decisions of more substance.
Getting in touch with feelings provides new perspectives and new options.
Developing your ability to feel maximizes your chance of getting more out of life.

Sounds nice, but you’re going to have a problem with the Feel Technique for several reasons. First, the
logical, linear cognitive mind does not understand nor recognize what’s going on in the subconscious, so
it’s more than likely your conscious mind will dismiss most of this technique as too simplistic to be
effective.

It is simple.
It is also very deep.
As deep as your inner core.
So how do we reach the inner core?

Repetition is the key to influencing the subconscious.

The subconscious is the vehicle to unconscious processes.
The inner core is reached through subconscious and unconscious operations.

Brains aren’t designed to get results; they go in directions.

If you know how the brain works you can set your own directions.
If you don’t, then someone else will.
Richard Bandler

You may have doubts how using one word can effectively make a change in your life.
Daily use of FEEL will kick your subconscious into gear and it will respond.
You may believe this won’t work for you because you’re different than everyone else.
In some ways you are unique and different.
However, the innate processes guiding your mind and body are the same in everyone.

Using the Feel Technique daily will overcome skepticism and fear of change.

No matter how much you want a change, making that change is scary on some level.
Fear of change is almost always an obstacle for self-growth.
Change is uncomfortable, even when the results are positive and desired.
So as FEEL begins to work, you may experience some resistance to continuing.

If you experience resistance to continuing to use FEEL, push through it.

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If the ease of doing nothing or the discomfort of resistance makes you want to stop, push through it.

Push through it by doing the process daily!

Consider trying the process more than once a day.

Using it everyday gives your innate intelligence a chance to get stronger within you.
Wisdom available within the innate is not the kind of knowledge that can be taught.
The innate is a reflex you were born with, but lost touch with along the way.
The innate mind has information you’re not conscious of yet.

As with any muscle you develop, it takes time and repetition to make it strong.

Some believe that innate intelligence guides the body’s natural capacity to heal.
Innate intelligence is certainly the force behind the psyche’s ability to form reality.
Innate intelligence is part of the package we come pre-wired with.
And we all come pre-wired in some ways.

Infants are born with an innate desire to suckle.

When an infant is put on a treadmill, he can walk.
That means we’re born with the ability to walk even before we do.
Simple magic tricks hold the interest of babies longer than other presentations.
This suggests we come with an innate set of expectations of how the world should work.

You also come pre-wired emotionally.

You came into this world pre-wired to want love and need love.
When that need wasn’t met, you detached your self from yourself.
You unconsciously, automatically did this so as to reduce the emotional pain.
Emotional pain physically hurts.
Disconnection reduces that pain.

The attempt to regulate affect, to minimize unpleasant feelings and

to maximize pleasant ones, is the driving force in human motivation.
Drew Westen

There is a close connection between your built in, innate reflex and your ability to feel.
The more disconnected the less you’ll feel.
The less you feel, the less your innate can work for you.

For example, your conscience is part of your innate. When a person is detached from their emotions,
their conscience won’t be their strong point. When you’re not in touch with you feelings, the subtleties
of a gut reaction or a pang at the back of the heart won’t be felt very much. The independent little voice
inside becomes more distant the more it’s neglected. Your conscience can’t be silenced, but it can be
muffled by compromise and justification.

When access to self is cut off, the intelligence of intuition is less available.

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The innate is part of the nervous system and contains intelligence and information the conscious mind
does not have. The innate contains a depth that is hard to conceive of. The innate knows alternatives
and options the conscious mind isn’t aware of.

The innate is a hidden resource, rich in qualities that can help you get more out of life.

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws.

There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the
appearance.
Albert
Einstein

Intuition is a product of the innate.

When Einstein was asked where he got his ideas from, he attributed it to his intuition.
He attributed his insights to intuition and ability to see the order lying behind things.
It’s no coincidence that Einstein was a man whose feelings ran deep.
His depth and intensity of feeling made him a man very much in touch with his innate.
It was his innate intelligence that led him to understand the order of the universe.
As you get more in touch with your feelings, you’ll better understand the order of yours.

Intuition reveals information you don’t realize you have.

Intuition contains insights you don’t consciously possess.
When a revelation comes out of the blue, what urges that information to the surface?
The automatic processes of the psyche as guided by the innate!

Initially, getting in more touch with your innate mind may be interesting and exciting.
However, it may also be uncomfortable and you might feel resistance to continuing.
Pushing through this discomfort yields the potential of feeling more.
Pushing through opens up the capacity of knowing more.
Knowing more offers possibilities not available before.

The heart always sees before the head can.

Thomas Carlyle

You have qualities and abilities you don’t know you have.
When strengths or skills are long forgotten about, it feels like those abilities are lost.
Getting in touch with feelings means getting in touch with lost characteristics of self.
Discovering qualities and characteristics thought to be lost is a wonderful experience.

Yet, how can you ever discover that which you’re not aware of to begin with?
How can you know what you don’t know?
How can you know that you’re not fully awake if you’re not fully awake?
This is not a play on words, but a call to consciousness because you’ve fallen asleep!

‘Fallen asleep’ in that you live more in an automatic, automated mode than not.
Going through the motions needed to take care of life, but not the needs of life.
Asleep is a state of unconsciousness, missing the aliveness of the here and now.

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Routines are necessary, but they deaden spontaneity. Also, as independent and unique as you are, you
can’t help but reflect your surroundings to some extent. If you live on a farm, squash will enter your
dreams or your conversation. When you live in society as most of us do, consciousness is unconsciously
shaped by its influence.

Living in an automated world, you live within an automated milieu.

Living in automated world automates your thinking and your behavior, just to live in it.

The Feel Technique promotes feeling and reverses the effects of unconsciousness.
The technique helps you to feel feelings you haven’t been in touch with.
It expands your capacity to feel emotions with greater intensity.
Feeling more feelings and feeling them more deeply strengthens the connection to self.
As well as the connection to life!

Connecting with your self promotes an emotional atmosphere of safety within.

Feeling safe inside increases the comfort level of living within your own skin.
Feeling comfortable inside your own skin cannot be overrated.

Conscious effort can’t reach innate and unconscious processes.

The core of self is unreachable by the conscious mind.
Yet, the action of repeating a sound carries the vibration to the deepest parts of self.
The vibration reaches the core, resonates with the innate, and links you to that core.

Connecting with your core brings hidden attributes of self to the surface.
These unseen parts of self contain strengths that are useful in meeting sought after goals.
Archimedes once said that a long lever and the right spot could move the world.

A powerful word or a new idea could move yours.

There are many words that can be considered more powerful than others.
Why would the sound of the word “feel” have any special capacity or property to it?
Wouldn’t any word be just as effective if it’s used with repetition?

No; and here’s the reason why.

Let’s say you’re going to visit the White House tomorrow.
If your name is in the President’s appointment book, you’ll “get in” to see him.
If your name isn’t in his book, the best you can hope for is a tour.

There would be only one reason you wouldn’t “get in” to see the President: Your name is not in his
calendar. If you arrive and your name is in his appointment book, however, you would be welcome to a
place of power and influence few gain access to.

It’s the same thing with your nervous system. “Calm down, relax, sleep” are all good suggestions, but
they don’t “get in” to the central executive command of your mind and the nervous system. Suggestions
and affirmations can be positive and consistent with your needs, yet their effect within the psyche is
limited and usually temporary.

However, the word “feel” does get in. And it goes to the core of you because feeling is what your
nervous system is all about. Positive affirmations don’t last because they don’t “get in” to the
unconscious processes of your mind’s core, control center.
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Instructions to the nervous system don’t get in.
The nervous system doesn’t take orders.
Sometimes, however, it does take requests.
Especially when they’re repeated.

An internal energy transmission system within the human body operates at all times.
The energy transmission system within the body is also called your life-force.
Energy is distributed and redistributed as needed within the body as an energy flow.
FEEL promotes an alignment of this energy flow within the body.

The Feel Technique is powerful for three reasons.

First, we are using vibration as an agent of change.
Second, we are employing a vibration that contains meaning.
And third, we’re using repetition.

Let’s explore each of these reasons briefly:

The first reason is that vibrations are effective agents of change.

Vibrations have an effect on a physical level that’s visible as well as not visible to the eye.

Vibrations move through the air.

You can feel the vibration in front of a speaker playing music.
Vibrations can carry unheard sound waves in the air, which you can hear on the radio.

All matter is made up of energy and all energy is vibrating.

There are some forms of energy that you can see, hear or measure.
And there are some forms of energy that aren’t readily apparent.

Vibrations can have physiological effects, as well.

Music creates moods with definite physiological effects.
Music produces an increased in physical energy, stimulating the flow of endorphins.
An increased flow of endorphins enhances well-being and positive mental thoughts.
An increase in endorphins also helps the body to block the perception of physical pain.

As a meditation, FEEL improves memory, clarity of thought, and creativity.

As an inner command, FEEL stimulates the nervous system to work more to capacity.
As a vibration, it connects you to the rumblings of self and the hum of the universe.

Sound has vibration and vibration has power. The extent of that power was discovered recently by
scientists who found a direct link between men exposed to high noise levels for a long time and an
increased risk of heart attacks. (Willich)

Annoyance wasn’t a factor, but volume was.

Vibrations are powerful.

As a vibration, music has the power to lift your spirits.
As a vibration, sound can shatter glass.
As a vibration, all existence sings.

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I am convinced that there are universal currents of Divine Thought vibrating the ether everywhere, and
that anyone who can feel these vibrations is inspired.
Richard Wagner

The second reason the Feel Technique is effective is the vibration used carries meaning.
The meaning of the word is lost in the redundancy of repetition.
Yet the meaning is still delivered to unconscious processes on a vibrational level.

The third important explanation for its effectiveness is the use of repetition.
It’s well known that repetition has a strong influence on the subconscious mind.
The repetition of feel uses the subconscious to carry the vibration of “feel” to your core.
The psyche can change when given the opportunity, through repetition and concentration.

The Feel Technique has power, impact and influence within the psyche and the body.
It uses the right word, delivered in the right way, to the right place.

The goal of using FEEL is unity of self.

However, harmony is reached by first feeling disharmony.
There is an emotional disharmony in each of us, to one extent or another.
We live with this internal tension all the time, so we’re mostly not aware of it.
These disconnections within the psyche keep you from feeling whole.
So any attempt to experience wholeness will likely bring up these divisions within you.

You can expect to feel blocked along the way.

FEEL puts you in touch with blocked feelings.
Blockages are experienced as inner tension or vague feelings of negativity.

You can expect some resistance towards feeling unwanted feelings and negative blocks.
Your initial experience of any disconnected-ness will not be a comfortable one.
By nature, we don’t like to feel uncomfortable and will go out of our way to avoid it.
FEEL can help you through the blocks as well as resistance, if you’re willing and able.

Without your full consent, you’ve been trained and programmed to resist feeling more.
Your mind has been the target of teachers and society with the ‘shoulds’ of socialization.

All the minutes and hours and days of all the years spent in school were spent in the effort to train your
mind and ‘civilize’ you. Little to none of it was spent exploring or checking the emotional condition of
your heart. Not to mention the needs neglected by your family. In sum, you learned that growing up
meant putting your feelings aside.

What usually happens in the educational process is that the faculties are dulled, over-loaded, stuffed and
paralyzed so that by the time most people mature, they have lost their innate capabilities.
R. Buckminster Fuller

In the process of socialization, some innate capabilities have been sacrificed.

Your head has been given dominion over the realm.
One thing we know about power is that it’s never willingly abdicated.
Using FEEL can produce resistance from your head about who’s in charge:
The head or the heart.

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If asked to point to yourself, you’ll point to the middle of your chest.
If asked to point to your ‘control center,’ you will likely point to your head.

This is the normal, if not unnatural balance between the mind and the heart.
Normal, because we are all like that.
Unnatural, because that’s not a good thing.

I once read that there is “no such thing as an emotional mistake.”

Even though my head knew that it wasn’t true, my heart knew that it was.

Early in life, the heart learns to hand over the reigns of control to the mind.
Parents encourage it, school teaches it.
But one thing empowers the mind to take over more than anything else.
When the heart shuts down.

When something awful happens or is about to happen, within the blink of an eye, the heart can negotiate
with the mind to immediately stop feeling. It’s not something you’re aware within the moment it
happens, but that process happens to all of us at some time.

I’ve heard “We only use 10% of our brains, but we also only use 10% of our hearts.”
When I heard this, I immediately knew it was true.
How could I tell?
I could feel it!

DEFENSE MECHANISMS

You want to feel good. In fact, feeling good is at the top of your list. Whether it’s a pastime, hobby, a
movie, coffee break, meeting a friend, or having dinner out, there are any number of things you’ll do
during the day to feel better.

To feel better than what?

Than the moment before.

We do things to feel better because, to varying degrees, we are driven by the pleasure principle.
Sometimes feeling better is a part of our natural cycle, such as when we withdraw from the world to
refresh, recover or just have fun.

However, there is one thing you do to feel better that you’re not aware of.
It’s unconscious because you do it often and you do it automatically.
That is, you stop feeling.

One way to make sure you feel good is to make sure you don’t feel bad.

When feelings are hurt or threatened, the heart shuts itself off, which shuts you down.
To protect itself, the psyche forms a defense mechanism to help the heart stop feeling.
Most defense mechanisms are a reaction to emotional pain the heart cannot bear to feel.

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Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.
Carl Jung

The effort to stop feeling condemns the heart to a perpetual struggle with the pain.
In the effort to stop feeling, you lose the direct connection to the core of self and being.
In an effort to stop feeling, the loss of connection becomes a loss of control.

Ironically, that loss of control then appears to come from external sources.
The world’s a tough place and parts of it are out of control.
For those who lack inner control, the obligations of the world can be too demanding.
It easily appears that unmet goals are due to circumstances or external restraint.
It’s really often from a lack of control from within.

A lack of control comes from the inability to get past unseen emotional pain.

Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you cannot bear the
pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond the pain.
Kahlil Gibran

In the effort to avoid emotional pain, we stop feeling.

Defense mechanisms are defined as psychological forces that prevent undesirable impulses from
entering consciousness. Defense mechanisms are ways the heart can pretend to not feel. For example,
when you’re rejected, neglected, betrayed, or abused, rationalization and denial soften the blow so it
doesn’t hurt as much. To lesson or tone down the pain, the psyche helps the heart convince itself that it
doesn’t matter.

Here’s a good example: Years ago in high school I had a study partner I would visit every so often at his
home. Steve had an aquarium with a large collection of exotic fish and tropical marine life. It took a
while for me to realize it, but one day something caught my attention that I had seen every time I’d been
there, but never really noticed.

There was a large turtle sitting on a six-foot plastic oval platform. The platform was also large and
looked like a miniature racetrack. What struck me at that moment was the realization that whenever I
had visited, that turtle never, ever moved. Never! From the time I arrived there to the time I left, the
turtle just sat there, motionless.

When I realized this turtle never moved, I asked him why and he said, “You want to see it move?
Watch this!” Within a moment he grabbed one of the fish from one of the tanks and threw it onto the
oval plastic racetrack. As quickly and as fast as the fish hit the deck, so did that turtle! In a flash, it
raced over and scooped up and swallowed the fish, moving at a speed I would have bet money on that
reptile never reaching.

And if that wasn’t amazing enough, what happened next was even more interesting. The turtle, which I
had never even seen move, was now moving at mach turtle speed. It was in search of more fish and it
wasn’t stopping! For the rest of my time there that day, I watched that turtle race around that deck,
looking for another meal. I didn’t get the whole picture until I left, when Steve walked me to the door.

As I walked out the door, he called out to me saying, “I never feed the turtle.”

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There’s a reason for bringing up the story about this poor creature.
In some ways you are like that turtle.
When your needs aren’t met, you shut down and become unresponsive.
Wanting a fish that’s not available hurts.
So you stop feeling your needs by feeling less.

Allowing the want is uncomfortable, yet it germinates the seed of motivation.

Motivation moves us from dependency to self-reliance.
And that’s where the fish are.

When feelings are disowned, they manifest in other ways, such as projection. Projection is the defense
where disallowed feelings seem to come from someone else. Others may appear sneaky, even as you’re
not in touch with your own dishonesty.

People can appear seductive, though you’re not aware of your own hungry looks.
Others seem angry, even as you reject that quality in yourself.

When feelings are easily disowned, it’s an indication of disconnection and hiding from yourself. One
favorite place to hide from feelings and the real you is in the head. Hiding inside your intellect with
defense mechanisms such as denial, suppression, or projection, you get to ignore how you really feel.
As defense mechanisms shield the psyche from emotional scarring, they help you to hide from yourself.
Hiding in your head can include obsessing about answers and explanations that seem important but
mostly serve to distract you from how you really feel.

Defense mechanisms defend the psyche from emotional pain.

Part of that defense is the forming of emotional armor to ease or quiet the pain.
Emotional armor is a tightness in the muscles that is so constant, you’re not aware of it.
The emotional nature and real physicality of this armor limits input from the heart.
Since most quality solutions include input from the heart, this becomes a problem.

Good decisions require quality answers and feedback from your inner
guidance system. Information needed for a good decision won’t surface
easily when the heart is shut off.

Defense mechanisms protect us from the conscious awareness of thoughts

and feelings that are too uncomfortable to feel. For the heart,
defense mechanisms aid the heart in the denial of its own feelings.
For the mind, it’s a way of not knowing what you know.

Defense mechanisms help protect us. Sometimes, it is best to put off letting yourself know how you
really feel until a later date. Defenses can also protect the psyche from being overloaded and blowing a
fuse. An unfortunate byproduct though, is that these mechanisms shut your heart down, thus limiting
your capacity to feel.

In the course of growing up we all lose parts of self. The trade-offs and compromises we make are part
of the socialization that comes with the territory of being part of a society. But some things take bigger
chunks out of us than others. It can happen suddenly, as with trauma. Or it can take place over time,
such as the continual shaming of feelings until they are safely tucked away.

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To a large degree, these mechanisms of self-protection originate in the unconscious. Meaning you don’t
realize you’re losing a part of yourself at the moment it’s happening. You’re not aware of the
machinery inside of you conspiring to shut you down.

Defense mechanisms operate outside of conscious awareness.

Conscious attempts to control the denials of the heart are difficult if not impossible.
Conscious efforts to control the opening or closing of a heart hardly ever work.
The heart cannot be controlled, much as we try.
It can’t be controlled, but it can be shut down.

Trauma and shame can cause the self to fragment and hide very deep within.
The body helps you hide your real feelings with constant inner tension.
Ever notice how easily feelings can be swallowed without much effort?
Your physiology developed a way to automatically hold your words and feelings in.
Muscular tension within your physiology helps to hold feelings down.
Words are held in to keep you from getting into trouble.

When feelings are held back, they have no place to go but down.
Feelings that are held in or repressed end up in the stomach.
The body unconsciously tightens up to keep the words there.
Tightness in the muscles of your gut makes it harder to feel your “gut sense.”

If swallowing your feelings becomes a habit, there may be health issues to consider. One clinical study
confirmed that those who repressed their emotions had higher mortality rates among those with stomach
cancer. (Spiegel)

Defense mechanisms help the heart protect itself from pain. The heart conspires with the mind to
pretend you don’t want or feel something that you really do. When a need is often denied or deferred, it
becomes repressed. Once needs are repressed, you’ll fool yourself about what you really want. Once
you’re repressed, you won’t speak up or reach out the way you might like.

Everyone has regrets about times we should have reacted differently or reached out to someone and
didn’t. There will always be times you wished you had said how you really felt. If your feelings had
been stronger, maybe you would have said or done something differently. Stronger feelings do increase
the likelihood of speaking out.

But speaking out doesn’t necessarily guarantee satisfaction. Any decision from the heart can be just as
regrettable as one from the head, maybe even more. It’s just that when you add it all up, the most
regrettable decisions seem to be those that were made without the heart’s consent.

The past can’t change, but the future does.

DISSOCIATION

This next section is hard to understand. Fortunately, you don’t have to understand this information in
this section for the Feel Technique to work.

The most common and yet least known of the defense mechanisms is dissociation.
When something terrible happens, dissociation can cause you to separate from yourself.
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In the moment before, or during an awful event, part of the psyche detaches from itself.
In that moment of detachment, a part of self unconsciously goes somewhere else.
It’s not astral projection, but a way of avoiding the next awful moment.

For example, a woman who was molested said: “He ran after me, and then he caught me, and then he
threw me to the ground. But I can’t remember what happened next because I just went up to the ceiling
during the whole mess.”

Another example is a man who thought he was going to die in a plane crash. Though the plane didn’t
crash, it looked like it was going to in those moments the plane took a nosedive. In those few minutes,
he thought he was going to die very shortly. When asked if he had lived through that plane ride, he
thought carefully for a moment and then softly said “No.” He felt like he hadn’t lived through it because
his psyche froze in the moment before (the expected) death, in order to avoid it.

Rather than face certain death, part of self freezes in that moment.
Then it splits and goes somewhere else to avoid what’s about to happen.
Dissociation allows the mind to go somewhere else during the expected, awful event.

During a traumatic event, your body is stuck where it is at that moment.

Though you’re stuck in that situation, it doesn’t stop the psyche from going elsewhere.

Once a part of self splits, it doesn’t usually return on its own.

When the self disconnects from self, the fragment goes somewhere else.
The psyche can go up to the ceiling, out the window, or deep within.
When a child dissociates, he or she can also go behind or under the furniture.
When a child dissociates, they can go into the crack of a wall or the wallpaper.

In time, the awful event fades from memory.

Time heals all wounds, even if superficially.
You pick yourself up by your bootstraps and move on with your life.
You try to put the memory of the event behind because that’s all you can do.
A piece of self is left behind either before or during the trauma (or abuse or neglect).
But there’s nothing you can do to get it back, so you try to be the best adult you can.

It is the nature of reality that time keeps moving forward, even when we don’t.
So, even as you are in the here and now, parts of self are stuck in the past.
Some memories are particularly strong because that’s where we’re the most stuck.
The memory still has a charge to it because you are frozen somewhere in that memory.
Or frozen just before the event in order to avoid the whole thing from ever happening.

The Chronology of Dissociation:

An awful event.
Intolerably bad feelings.
Heart stops feeling.
The self fragments.
A hole appears.

The process of losing a part of self leaves an emotional hole in the psyche.
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Deep in the mind, the hole is real and produces persistent uncomfortable feelings.
Negative feelings are felt emotionally or physically and can be vague or specific.
Vague, in that you can’t put your finger on exactly what’s wrong.
Or specific in that you know what the negative feeling is.

Negative feelings can come from emotional holes or from circumstances.

Negative feelings that come from circumstances pass in time.
Negative feelings that come from emotional holes don’t.
Negative feelings that come from emotional holes never really go away.
They are just masked, repressed, medicated or tolerated.

You can’t see beyond yourself any more than anyone can.
You have to accept your version of reality because there is no sane alternative.
If negative feelings become pervasive in your experience, then that is your reality.
Reality is often just a reflection of your emotional state.

Man’s mind is a mirror of the universe that mirrors man’s mind.

Joseph Chilton Pearce

Your nervous system houses your capacity to feel.

Your body and nervous system is the home YOU live in.
The condition of your nervous system paints your view of the world.

No one can see beyond their own understanding and reality of the world.
What you can develop beyond your current capacity, though, is your ability to feel.
You can feel more than you’re feeling now
You can feel more alive than you generally feel.

Why feel more?

An increased capacity to feel more of self leads to unity and wholeness.

Wholeness of self produces quietness of mind and spirit.
Quietness of mind and spirit allows you to use your own eyes.
A quiet mind allows you to see a bit more than your self.
The quiet mind allows you to see a bit more outside of you.

What’s in the way of that quietness and unity of self is dissociation. Dissociation freezes chunks of self
in the past, even as time moves on. This is an unconscious process, so you never fully realize this is all
going on, whether it happens suddenly or even gradually, over time. What you are aware of, though, is
an unquiet, restless mind and persistent uncomfortable feelings.

While you’re unaware of any loss of self, the inner mind knows of the loss.
The inner, unconscious mind works overtime to cover the deficit.
This constant compensation keeps the mind busy trying to stay one step ahead.

If you had the wholeness you were born with, it wouldn’t be so hard to figure things out.
If you had the wholeness you were born with, it would be easier to get things done.
If you had the wholeness you were born with, you would have confidence few possess.

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Dissociation is the unconscious act of the self disconnecting from the self.
Dissociation leaves holes in the soul that cause feelings of emptiness and pain.
You can fill these holes with stimulation from sex, food, alcohol or gambling.
This kind of stimulation bypasses the heart as its source.
Stimulation that bypasses the heart as its source leaves a bigger hole.

Addiction to sensation and stimulation helps to avoid pain and emptiness.

It also keeps you from knowing yourself, your soul, and your higher power.

Dissociation is a natural operation of the psyche to protect itself.

As an unconscious function, you don’t realize it when it’s happening.
We all have dissociated to one degree or another. Every one of us!
We all have a well-developed shell we can hide behind without anyone noticing.

You’re not aware that you’ve shut down and a piece of you is now snagged in time.
You can feel, though, the uncomfortable feelings this loss has left.
Persistent uncomfortable feelings are often born in the moments of dissociation.
They are at the base of most depression, anxiety, phobias, compulsions, and obsessions.

If feelings come up during the use of FEEL that are depressing, feel them.
If you feel depressed, seek a professional first before using the technique.
The state of depression is best explored with therapy, not FEEL.
However, if depressed feelings emerge during FEEL, they should be felt.

It’s easy to lose parts of self while growing up.

Parts of self get lost through socialization, dissociation and compromise.
In the process of growing up, your sense of identity gets firmer and firmer.
Once it’s fully developed, other people’s ideas don’t get in as easily as they did before.
Until your sense of self develops, it’s easy for external ideas to get inside.

Once an idea takes root, you could live your life based on the assumptions of that idea.
The more of self that’s left behind, the more easily others can have influence over you.
When you don’t trust your own sense of direction, you’ll accept other’s points of view.
When you depend on others, it’s harder to make important decisions on your own.

The reality is: Any action you take can have unexpected negative consequence.
That means that any decision can turn out to be a mistake.
Relying on others has a downside that can’t be avoided.
If a mistake is made based on your decision, you’ll feel bad about it.
If you make a mistake and it wasn’t your idea, you’ll feel much worse.

Dissociation keeps you from trusting your feelings and knowing your innate.
The innate has the knowledge you want and need.

Did you know that you have a second brain?

It’s not a brain you might recognize because it’s in your stomach.

THE ENTERIC SYSTEM

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The enteric system sounds like a sector of space out of a Star Trek episode, but it’s actually a place
inside of you. The enteric system is a separate nervous system in your body that begins where the food
goes in and ends where it all comes out. In other words, your whole digestive system is endowed with
its own, local nervous system.

Scientists consider the enteric nervous system a “complex integrated brain in its own right” and call it a
“second brain.” It has as many nerves as the spinal cord, and is just as complex. Most of the enteric
system is in the lining of your stomach. It is made of millions of neurons that, in essence, are a second
brain. The effects of this system on you is commonly referred to as your “gut sense.”

Now that’s a lot to think about and maybe hard to understand.

What that means is that your gut sense is an expression of innate intelligence.
Messages from the gut are usually practical, sensible, and sometimes valuable.
Feelings from your gut could contain wisdom that’s good for you to know about.

There is value in being in touch with your gut.

Can you see that? Do you know that? Can you feel that?

An interesting side note about the enteric system is that the actual shape of the neurons in that system
resemble that of simple invertebrates. An invertebrate is an animal with a backbone. So, it’s almost like
having a backbone in your gut, if you could only trust it.

When you ignore gut feelings, you lose a valuable piece of your own real estate.

When someone lies to you, you might not notice the body language inconsistent with what they’re
saying. You might not focus in on a facial expression that doesn’t match their tone of voice in the
moment it happens. While you’re not aware of all the visual cues incongruous with their statements, a
lot of it does register with the subconscious.

Studies shows that whenever someone tells a lie, at some point, in some way, it registers in their face or
body language or both. You might not consciously pick up on the features and details within the small,
split second their real face comes out, but in that snapshot of a moment, it registers somewhere within
you; as you feel it in your gut, your heart, or both.

The heart sees better than the eye.

Hebrew Proverb

If you rely on others, you might miss the moment of their inconsistency.
If you depend on logic, you might not read between the lines.
If you don’t trust yourself, you may not feel your stomach twinge when you hear a lie.

The heart sometimes finds out things that reason cannot.

Robert Benson

Detachment from feelings leaves gaps in awareness.

Down the avenue of life, gaps in awareness can cause you to be blindsided.
Imagine using only part of your heart and brain.
It would restrict your ability to function.
However, in time, you would adjust to the limitations.

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Life would go on and you would accept your disabilities.

The fact is that to some degree, this is just about what has happened to you.

Socialization has decompartmentalized you.

Awful events have dissociated you.
Conditioning has repressed you.
And fragments of self have split.

When using FEEL, you invite yourself to feel more.

In time, as you feel more, you begin to trust yourself more, as well.
In time, that trust of self expands to thoughts and decisions.
In time, that trust of self expands, becoming a safe space around you.
Like a comfort zone.

A comfort zone is not only comfortable.

It is a space to more comfortably make a stand.

EMOTIONS

What are emotions?

Emotions are the central nervous system’s reaction to events based on beliefs formed within the
conscious mind. In other words, if you tell me that you hate me, my immediate, automatic reaction will
come from my belief about what that means to me. If I’m glad you’re out of my life or will miss you
terribly will directly influence how I feel about what you’ve said.

Feelings can best be understood in the context of meaning.

What does the event or circumstance mean to you?

Children are at the affect of their emotions and are greatly influenced by them. Their bodies are small
and so feelings don’t have very far to travel. Poke an infant in the stomach and their whole body reacts.
In a child’s small frame, feelings don’t have far too go, and there is little to no disconnection yet.

While beliefs are formed through experience, the mind can be programmed with ideas that are foreign to
its nature. Children don’t have the emotional boundaries that adults have in order to fend off external
ideas and beliefs. A parent’s mind-set or set of feelings can integrate into a child’s psyche, becoming
accepted realities or personality traits. Like osmosis, a mother’s anger can find it’s way into a child’s
emotional makeup and stay there, forever. If you’ve been angry as long as you can remember, you’ll
accept this trait as part of your personality, never questioning that these feelings might not have been
yours to begin with.

Formed in childhood, our emotional mindset often lasts a lifetime.

However, your mindset is also formed by experience and programming.
Experience is the natural process of learning.
Programming occurs when the mind swallows an idea whole.

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

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 Albert Einstein

When something very good or very bad happens to you, it causes a strong emotional response. To better
insure that it never happens again or that it happens more often, you form fixed or idiosyncratic
responses. As certain thoughts, feelings and reactions become characteristic of how you respond and
react, in time you accept these reactive responses as part of your personality; as just part of who you are.

If you were slapped down when you tried to assert yourself as a child, the inner restraints developed in
those moments can last forever. If you were shamed when you expressed vulnerability, your sensitive
side may not come out very often any more. When you develop a fixed response, over time it feels like
it’s a natural response. But it’s not so much from you, as it is your conditioning.

When you were born, you didn’t arrive with the ability to hold back your emotions.
You learned to hold them in with the help from unconscious, automatic mechanisms.
The body unconsciously tightens to help you hold back your feelings.
Over time, this self-control integrates into the psyche, manifesting as rigid responses.

Sometimes the best thing to do is hold back, especially when the situation is volatile. However, when
you hold your self and your feelings back so often you hardly notice it, it’s not healthy and it’s not
satisfying.

It takes tension to hold feelings in.

Tension that holds in feelings becomes fixed and chronic.
You don’t feel the tightness because it is always there.
The tension of a watch mostly goes unnoticed for a lifetime.
So too, can the inner tensions that hold back your emotions.

Inner emotional restraints over time give birth to chronic responses.

These habitual responses then become accepted as personality traits.

Chronic emotional restrains turn honest feelings into safe half-truths.

Self-expression becomes muted and censored and subdued.
When self-expression is lost, feelings aren’t expressed well or fully.
Aspects of love, anger and vulnerability get lost in the translation of feelings into words.

Getting in touch with the inner you automatically aids and encourages self-expression.

Emotions are from the innate, from your inner being.

You don’t have to think about what you feel.
You just feel it!
Why, because the nervous system is designed to feel.

You may see yourself one way while others see you another.
Inner being bypasses these relative points of view and attitudes.
Inner being comes from your center and your innate.
Using FEEL creates a naturalistic trance that brings you closer to the inner you.
When you’re in touch with the inner self, feelings are more comfortable to feel.

FEEL isn’t programming.

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FEEL is an experiential process of learning.
FEEL resonates to your inner being.
FEEL reverberates to your core.
FEEL vibrates within your center.
FEEL enlivens your emotions and makes you feel more and feel more alive.

Emotions come from one of three places:

1] Internal tension
2] External programming
3] A natural response from self, and the innate.

Feelings originating from internal tension vibrate on one level.

Feelings programmed externally by others resonate on another.
Feelings that come from the heart have a very special resonance.
Tension, programming and the innate each have their own frequency or vibration.

It’s hard to tell if feelings are coming from tension, programming or from your self.
It’s hard to contrast the subtle differences in these kinds of feelings or vibrations.
The innate, however, can tell the difference.

The vibration of “feel” enables the innate to help you sort your feelings out.
“Feel” has a vibration that encourages and stimulates the nervous system to feel more.

“Feel” is a vibration that empowers the innate as it resonates within the core of self.
The innate knows what belongs in the psyche and what’s foreign to it.
The innate knows the difference between real emotions and reactive ones.
The innate can tell if a feeling comes from tension or from the heart.

When feelings surface, you don’t stop to think what kinds of feelings they are.
You just know that the feeling came up without any effort on your part.
A thought could come from the heart or from an idea planted years ago.
While you might not know the difference, the innate does.

Using FEEL daily produces benefits because “feel” vibrates and the innate responds.
Innate can help sort what belongs and what doesn’t, what’s you and what’s not.
Innate heightens conscious awareness and helps determine what’s not a part of it.
When feelings are sorted out, what’s left is you.

Heightened awareness encourages more of that which is really you to the forefront.
Clearer and more definite feelings make it easier to find the right direction.
Your body may be what you eat, but you are what you feel.

FEEL helps the innate help you.

The innate is a natural force.

The dynamism behind anti-bodies attacking germs is from the innate.
The innate also has the potential to help the heart fill in some missing pieces.
The more a heart is restored and can feel, the more it can feel satisfied.
When a heart is satisfied, the body can hold a positive charge for a longer period of time.

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FEEL increases your ability to feel and hold a positive charge, longer.
The more positive you feel, the clearer perceptions, judgments and insights become.
Perception, judgment and insight are all qualities of discernment.
A heightened ability to feel your feelings promotes better discernment.

Distinguishing whether feelings come from you or your history is not easy.
We all carry the legacy of our parent’s emotional mind-set.
We also contain some of the generational history that preceded them.

FEEL helps sort out what belongs and what doesn’t, what’s you and what’s added.
Again, when you sort out feelings, what’s left is you.
Using FEEL is a journey of self-discovery about who you are.
In time, negative, unwanted feelings transform into positive emotions.
Using the Feel Technique on positive emotions is then a journey of who you can be.

The thing you set your mind on is the thing you ultimately become.
Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Feel Technique makes you feel more.

“Feel” is a vibration that brings blocks and disconnections to the surface.
“Feel” can dissolve some disconnections.
The ones it can’t dissolve or reduce need therapy.

When disconnections surface they can release their energy.

When a block releases its energy, without its charge, it can then transform.
Disconnections that surface can then dissolve, forging more unity within.

The Feel Technique makes you feel more.

The purpose of FEEL is to create unity of self.
Unity of self makes you more comfortable being in your own skin.
Unity of self makes setting boundaries easier.
Unity of self produces greater inner strength.
Unity of self makes for a sweeter essence within you and without.

The goal of FEEL is unity of self, but what is the purpose of unity?
To be comfortable with yourself.
To be comfortable within your own skin.
A unified mind dissolves or lessons anxiety and negative feelings.

Decisions that come from the heart, not tension or programming, produce more solid and satisfactory
results. However, decisions that come from the heart can also be wrong or even evil. And, for all its
wisdom, the heart is capable of greatly deceiving itself for a time. So wisdom, reason and logic are
essential ingredients in any decision. And, while even a wise decision is no guarantee of success, any
decision that considers the needs of the heart is still more likely to be fruitful and nurturing.

Feelings have a profound influence on how your life turns out.

Feelings of achievement or purpose help to determine your goals.
Feelings of confidence then help you to achieve them.
Feelings of uncertainty can get in the way.

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Feelings can make us feel right when we’re wrong and wrong when we’re right.
For better or worse, feelings are our emotional compass in the sea of life.

Feelings lead to decisions and decisions lead to action.

Your place in the journey of life is a direct result of those actions.
Increasing your capacity to feel will lead you further down the road in that journey.

FEELINGS AND RELATIONSHIPS

Feelings are the foundation of our decisions and actions. For instance, when buying a product or a
service, you have practical and logical reasons why you did so. Yet, if you take a step back and examine
your reasons for buying, you’ll find the reasons are really based on your emotions.

Usually, we make up our minds based on how we feel, and then add on the reasons why.

Most decisions are based on three things:

Feelings of comfort, confidence and trust.
Decisions entail how comfortable you feel getting involved.
They’re about how confident you feel about the outcome.
And about how much you feel you can trust the people involved.

You can have any number of good reasons for making a decision.
But they’re really based on feelings of comfort, confidence and trust.
Any venture, emotional or financial, can involve significant risk.
The greater the importance of the venture, usually the more risk.

The ability to feel more is the result of a heart that’s more open.
An open heart in a sea of closed hearts is a risky venture.
People will take advantage, if you let them.
That’s why being taken advantage of is most everyone’s number one fear.

Yet, with an open heart comes aliveness and a renewed interest in life.
Aliveness and interest have unique rewards.
Aliveness and interest are their own rewards.

Aliveness makes you feel closer to people.

Relationships are like investments.
They can pay off in emotionally satisfying ways.
And they can make you vulnerable to the risk of loss.
Yet there’s little to no reward without risk.

Do you feel emotionally strong enough to take the chance to feel more?
When you feel more, there’s greater involvement with others.
What can happen then?
You can be betrayed.
You can be hurt to the core.
You can make a new friend that enhances the quality of your time here.

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When deciding who to get close to and who to keep at a distance, you can factor in any number of
things. Determining who’s safe to confide in and who isn’t requires some judgment. As you weigh the
pros and cons of friendship with someone, as you rummage through all the ideas you have about them, it
really all comes down to this:

How comfortable do you feel with them?

How much confidence do you have in them?
How much can you trust them with personal information?
Your decisions are based on feelings.
Feelings of comfort, confidence and, most of all, trust.

Next time you have an important decision, ask yourself:

How comfortable will I be if I do this?
How confident am I about how well this will turn out?
Do I feel I can trust them to do what they say they will?
If any reservation comes to mind, or your gut flinches:
Trust your feelings!

The paradigm of comfort, confidence and trust is not a new one.

The cornerstone of any good relationship is trust and respect.
But reaching your goals requires that you know when it’s safe to disclose information.
It means knowing who to trust and what they can be trusted with.
Some will earn your trust while others betray it.
Life is a series of losing things, and sometimes that includes friends.

But since so much of life and the decisions you make come from your feelings, it’s in your best interest
to get to know your emotions and how they influence you. You want to meditate with “feel’ until you
get past the influence of those feelings on your actions. You want to come from a place of action, not
reaction.

And yet, regardless of how you feel or what you feel, there’s no guarantee of success.
Those who are in touch with their feelings make mistakes, too.
Very smart and fairly wise people screw up and have regrets all the time.

But here’s what feeling more does for you.

It creates a space inside that feels safe to be in.
When you feel safe inside, it’s easier to stand your ground.
When you feel more, actions that come from the heart may make waves.
Unity of self and harmony of feelings limit the influences of those external forces.
Inside that safe space within your center, other people’s actions have less effect on you.

HOLES

Dissociation leaves holes within the psyche that create uncomfortable feelings. Persistent
uncomfortable feelings are the foundation of depression and anxiety. Phobias, compulsions and
obsessions are attempts to manage or control them.

Persistent uncomfortable feelings are born in the moments of dissociation.

Self disconnects from self and leaves holes that can’t be seen, only felt.
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They generate vague feelings of discomfort that are hard to describe.
They can also manifest as somatic symptoms in specific areas of the body.

Holes reside in the unconscious, so we have no conscious control over them.

Holes in the soul make you feel like “enough is not enough” no matter what you do. When you can’t
hold a positive charge for very long, something is missing inside. It’s uncomfortable going through life
feeling the emptiness that comes from a hole.

Experimentation and lifestyles can fill holes for a while, but they both have their costs.
People, things and elements can fill them, but only for so long.
When you try to control others, it is usually an attempt to fill a hole.
Controlling others is an attempt to quell persistent uncomfortable feelings.

The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.

W.H. Auden

Most people never find out how to expand their senses, nor get to know their inner mind.
The Feel Technique provides a way to best contact and activate that unconscious center.
Holes in the soul are in, or near that center of self.
So when you use FEEL, you can expect to encounter holes.
After a time, some holes will dissolve.
When that happens, new points of control are conceived.

However, you don’t have to push yourself to make this work.

You don’t have to push yourself to feel more than you want to or are ready to.
As the old saying goes, don’t push the river.
Use FEEL to feel the holes coming from negative feelings when you’re ready to.

Parts of the journey of self-exploration are uncomfortable. Are you ok with that?
Start the journey of self-discovery with FEEL when you’re sure it is.

Archimedes believed that a long enough lever and the right place to stand could empower him to move
the world. The lever is your innate and the ground is your core. FEEL connects your conscious mind to
its source, where thoughts and feelings come from, providing new points of control.

Feel your way through the negativity instead of doing something to make your self feel better.
When you have to do something to feel better, the hole controls you.
Feeling your way through the negativity loosens its hold on you.
Controlling others is usually an attempt to make you feel better.
When negative feelings lose their grip, so does the need to control other people.

Allowing is liberating.
Allowing stops the struggle.
Allowing diminishes the charge within the negative emotion.
A negative emotion with a diminished charge is easier to change.

If the negative feelings don’t subside, then therapy, medication or both could be warranted.
If anxiety turns to panic, again it’s a call for treatment.

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There is one set of emotions that are tough to get through on your own.
They are called ‘enmeshed feelings,’ and are several feelings mixed into one.
Enmeshed feelings are two are more feelings that overlap and occupy the same space.

For example, ANger, GUIlt, and SHame can be enmeshed and experienced as ANGUISH. Enmeshed
feelings won’t dissipate until they are first separated. You can’t consciously separate feelings that are
unconsciously entangled. If you feel you are shame based, or that guilt controls your emotions or anger
runs your life, sort out your feelings with a professional first. Then use the vibration of “feel.”

II THE DEEP END

THE MIND

Now if all that wasn’t deep enough, we now go into the deep end.

Some decisions have to be made in a moment’s notice. When you have to make a decision within a
second, what does the mind do to help you? It sorts through a lifetime of information and then shows
you the relevant pictures needed for your decision. From moment to moment, you’re aware of how you
feel, but know nothing of the unconscious processes that produced that feeling.

For example, a strange dog comes out of nowhere while walking with a friend down the street. Within
seconds he’s in front of both of you. You bend over and pet the animal, but your friend backs off. What
caused the different reactions to the same animal?

You both saw different pictures of what you thought was likely to happen next. You’re not aware of
those pictures as they flashed before your eyes for about 1/10 of a second. Though too fast to
consciously see, it creates a sense in you of feeling safe or unsafe.

Where do feelings of safety or danger come from?

Feelings come from pictures that originate in the subconscious mind and flash or pop up too quickly to
consciously see. Though you’re not aware of having seen them, these pictures exert a strong power,
anyway. These pictures flash before your eyes for a fraction of a second, and you trust the information
coming from this inner, hidden guidance system. You trust it enough that you unconsciously base your
reality on it.

Somewhere between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind is the subconscious.
The unconscious is that pool of knowledge completely hidden from consciousness.
The subconscious is the information just below the surface of conscious awareness.
The subconscious can be our vehicle to the psyche’s deepest part, the unconscious mind.
The unconscious mind is the most direct link to the unconscious processes of the body.

Though the sound of “feel” is a silent thought, it is heard within the subconscious. Repetition causes the
subconscious to carry the invitation/command to the unconscious. It is the vibration (with meaning) that
prompts the nervous system to respond.

The realm of vibrations is a difficult world to understand.

The realm of vibrations is different then our level of existence.
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The realm of the subconscious and unconscious is also hard to grasp.

Fortunately, understanding is not necessary to get results.

Practice of the technique is.

Physicists tell us that while your chair is solid enough to hold you, it is vibrating on an unseen, atomic
level. This atomic, unseen world is nothing like ours, yet is the basis of all that is. The fundamental
substrate of the universe is an atomic world of vibration.

All life is vibration

All life has a vibration.
All existence vibrates.

Activating a deeper level of awareness to stimulate the lower leagues of the innate mind is a potent
strategy. Using vibration, the underlying level of existence, to stimulate the innate yields a new level of
awareness.

Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.
Albert Einstein

Vibrations are very powerful.

That’s one reason why truth resonates.
Vibration is the language of all matter and energy in existence.
Vibrations operate on an unseen level we can’t fully comprehend.
The subconscious also operates on an unseen level that we don’t understand.

With the exception of when you’re sleeping and your conscious mind is shut off, you don’t usually see
the contents of your subconscious mind. Even so, the unseen subconscious does influence most of our
thoughts and feelings. You can tell you’re receiving help by unseen inner forces due to the ease with
which thoughts come to you and how simply reactions arise.

Psychology talks about the cognitive world we’re aware of as well as the subconscious world we know
little about. Physics states that the world functions on a plane of existence we can see as well as an
atomic level we don’t. Whether we look at the surface or consider that which can’t be seen, all
existence is unified through vibration.

Whether a man looks passionately at the surface or dispassionately at the core, the core and the surface
are essentially one in the same, words only making them seem different in order to express appearance.
Lao-Tzu

All existence and everything in it share the common property of vibration.

Vibrations resonate on and through solid, liquid, atmospheric, and energetic levels.
Vibrations exist on the level of thought.
Vibration speaks to the core of being.
A vibration with meaning speaks to the core of self.
Understanding is not necessary.
Doing is.

The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds

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with the same notes, in vibrations that escape our ears.
Albert Camus

The vibration of life is unceasing, so it cannot be heard in the quietest moment.

FEEL induces a light trance that sends a vibration to the core.
The hum of existence is too constant and unchanging to be heard.
But the hum of being within resonates when the mind is in trance.

Trance means going within to the core of self.

Trance tunes into the vibration of being.

The earth moves, but due to size and consistency, we don’t feel it.
However, we can feel the gravity that its movement produces.
Existence has a vibration, but since it’s constant, we cannot hear it.
Existence resonates at a pitch beyond our sight and hearing.
Yet countless vibrations are all around us all the time.

Vibration speaks to physical matter and meaning speaks to the core of self.
Therefore, using a vibration with meaning has a strong influence within.
All matter, all objects, all things in the universe have a vibration.

Inviting one vibration to another vibration is a potent intervention.

The place where one vibration meets another is called a point of contact.
Points of contact are wonderful opportunities for change.

And you want to change.

You came into this world as a completely feeling person.

Your feelings got shut off and now you want to turn them back on.
To be more alive and awake, you have to connect with your very foundation.

There is a very big word for what feelings are based on.
It’s called epistemology.
The definition of epistemology is:
How you know what you know.

But how do you know what you know?

You can feel it.

If you’re hurt or angry, ask yourself how you can tell.

The answer will always be: “Because I can feel it!”

FEAR

Fear comes from the unknown.

And while knowledge overcomes fear, fear can also comes from insecurity.
Disconnections build a constitutional sense of insecurity within.

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When disconnected parts have an opportunity to mend there is an increased sense of security. When that
happens, the pressure and electricity of fear lessens. However, undoing fear and its effects is a paradox,
much like the Chinese finger test.

To release your fingers from the trap, you must push them in, towards each other.
You must first go further in before you can get out.

It’s the same thing with fear.

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience

in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Overcoming fear first requires a step towards it.

The vibration of FEEL activates and awakens you.
Sometimes, waking up is uncomfortable.
Sometimes you won’t like what you feel or come to realize.
Sometimes feeling afraid is a real possibility.

Here’s an example of someone who dealt with his fears directly.

Buddha grappled with fear fairly head on.

After Buddha found enlightenment, fear was never an issue.
By definition, enlightenment means to lighten up.
Buddha found enlightenment, but how did he do it?

Buddha was a Prince whose parents kept him locked in their castle until he was an adult.
His every possible need was attended to so he wouldn’t want to go outside of the palace.
Sheltering him from the realities of life, he never saw the pain and suffering of others.
His parents created a mythical world of safety and security to keep him happy.
They didn’t want him to know what was going on beyond the palace walls.
And they didn’t want him to leave.

One day, he looked over the castle walls and discovered some terrible conditions.
While he lived in a world of affluence and comfort, he saw poverty and death.
Seeing such terrible conditions for the first time in his adult life, he was devastated.

He didn’t know what to believe anymore.

He was certain though, that everything he was told, knew, and ever believed was wrong.
Realizing nearly all that he knew to be a lie, the Prince felt scared and very out of control.

He was royalty, so he had the best instructors and teachers.

But they had perpetuated his parent’s mythical world of comfort behind the palace walls.
Knowing his sense of reality had been distorted, he wanted to know what truth was.
But what would be the basis of his new sense of reality and his place in it?
He didn’t know where to begin or what direction to go.
He knew he couldn’t count on his educators.
He knew he couldn’t trust his friends.
And he knew his parents had lied to him about the nature of life since he was born.

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Very confused, he left the castle to search for truth.

Everywhere he went he saw suffering, poverty and death.

Buddha questioned the meaning of what he saw and how he felt.
He had many questions with few or no answers.
He had nowhere to go and no one to rely on for explanations.

So, in the search for truth, he went inside himself.

He picked a spot with a tree to sit under and then sat there for many, many weeks.
The tree had a stream nearby so he wouldn’t have to go far for a drink.
During the time he sat there, he got hungry and horny and scared and confused.
Over the long weeks, he had many strong feelings and a lot of mixed emotions.
The nerve endings in his back and bottom ached from sitting for so long.
His doubts would visit daily, pounding on his head that his actions were unheard of.
Fear would come and whisper that he’d soon be dead if he didn’t eat something soon.
Anxiety would scream in his mind that his sanity could not bear the strain much longer.

Yet, except to drink and relieve himself, he sat there week after week, hardly moving.

He felt his feelings more strongly because there was nothing else to do.
He was uncomfortable and had more negative feelings then positive ones.
The tree he sat under was out in the open and he could drink from the stream.
But sitting there day after day was more like solitary confinement.

So how did Buddha reach enlightenment?

He faced his fears until they were faced down.

He faced his fears until they lost their context and form.
He faced them until they no longer had meaning within his experience.
He faced them until they had no basis in his reality.
He faced his fears until they could no longer come back.
He was not God and never claimed to be.
He was just a guy who would do anything to feel in control.

Buddha had to sit under a tree for a real long time to conquer his fears.
You can use FEEL at your convenience and at your pace to face yours.

A good many people spend a good part of their lives in fear.

We are afraid of not being prepared, not being right or not being what we should.
When fear escalates to the point of feeling scared, that’s when it gets uncomfortable.

Our natural response is to get away from the source of the feelings that make us scared.
Though fear is a feeling that comes from inside, the source seems external.
Feelings don’t exist independently of you, but the cause usually appears to.

If you get scared during FEEL, you’ll notice there is no external source to the fear.
When the source of the feeling is clearly within and not outside, it can be a relief.
The insight that fear emanates from within is another step towards dissolving it.

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Some advocate denying or ignoring fear in favor of love.
Denying fear is a betrayal to the heart because that’s where fear comes from.
Life can be scary. Can you let it be ok to be scared sometimes?
Life is scary, so fear is an emotion best allowed until its energy extinguishes itself.

Fear can also contain or mask other emotions such as anger or sadness.
When feelings of fear lessen to the point of diminishing, other feelings can then surface.
When those feelings surface and are felt, they can release their energy, too.

Feelings that are felt have a fairly short shelf life.

If you begin to feel afraid while meditating on “feel,” you can do one of three things.
First, you can continue with FEEL until the feeling subsides.
Or invite the sound of “feel” to the area where the fear is located.
Or you can stop using the technique for a day or so.

FEEL connects you to yourself.

FEEL connects you with emotions.
Emotions include fear.
Allow yourself to feel scared.

However, allowing yourself to feel the sting of fear has its limits. Don’t want to allow yourself to be
overwhelmed by fear unless it feels right to push through that feelings. Take all the time you need
during the mediation to be certain that that feels like the right way to go.

Emotions include fear, which comes from the heart, but panic is in the head.
DO NOT USE this technique if you feel high anxiety or are subject to panic attacks!
Panic is a symptom of an earlier disconnect or the inability to nurture yourself.
(The inability to nurture your self is the unlearned ability to do so.)
If you use FEEL when feeling panic or while under emotional assault you’ll feel worse.

FEEL may activate a memory where a part of you is still stuck. You can tell when a memory is
unfinished because you have an aversion to recalling it and when you do, it seems to go on and on
forever. If an unpleasant memory comes up while using FEEL, continue to focus on the sound unless
you feel overwhelmed.

One feeling that’s good to allow yourself to feel overwhelmed by, however, is grief.
It is the nature of grief to be overpowering, so it’s ok to feel it.
When a feeling is intense, yet it feels right to stay with it, allow the feeling.
Otherwise, stop and use the Feel Technique another time.

If overwhelming feelings continue, it’s a sign of unresolved issues and inner pain.
Severe emotional pain may require more attention than a technique can offer.
If the feelings get worse and memories won’t go away, therapy might be the answer.

If feelings come up during the use of FEEL that are depressing, feel them.
If you feel depressed before using the technique, seek a professional first.
The state of depression is best explored with therapy, not FEEL.
Yet, if feelings come up while meditating that are depressing, allow them if you can.

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Unless the feelings are panic or emotionally overpowering, or are
getting in the way of daily functioning, let it be ok to feel your
feelings for as long as you can. When the roots of fear are from a time
when emotional or survival needs were threatened, facing fear can feel like facing death itself.

On one TV show, a character went into therapy to learn how to express feelings of anger and
dissatisfaction to those closest to her. Her newfound expressiveness began to positively impact her
relationships as each person she confronted acknowledged her feelings and agreed to change. With each
encounter, the positive feedback increased her certainty that she was right to feel the way she did and
correct to say something about it.

The positive reinforcement she received made her voice stronger and firmer as she progressed from
person to person. Her ability to clearly, concisely and with heartfelt assertiveness express herself began
to dramatically change her life and transform her closest relationships in a concrete and meaningful way.
Life began tasting sweet as things started to go more her way, as she felt in control for the first time in
her life.

Her husband couldn’t take it, however, and killed her.

The fact that her death was, in part, accidental, added all the more irony to this scenario because her TV
death plays to our worst fears that we will die or something terrible will happen if we say what we really
feel.

Our fear of death, of course, is not rational.

The death of others is not your death, though it can feel that way.
You have never died, so death is only a concept.
Though death is only an idea, the concept seems like more than a notion.
It’s hard to see past your fear about death to fully know that it’s only an idea.

The fear of death is one of the scariest feelings you can have.
When you face it, though, you discover it’s only a feeling.

Feelings pass.
Feelings of fear pass.
As fear diminishes, you realize it’s only power over you was as a thought, nothing else.
When you realize your fear is only an idea and a concept, something changes.
The power given over to the thought immediately then transfers to you.

Knowledge overcomes fear.

The knowledge needed to overcome fear isn’t always obvious.
That’s why it’s helpful to learn how to see outside the box.
Seeing outside the box provides a new perspective and new information.

Trusting your feelings helps you to think outside the box.

Preparation is a requirement for success and achievement.
Having a new or different perspective provides an advantage, as well.
An alternative is a choice you don’t know you have until you see it.

Knowledge tells you what is needed.

Wisdom tells you which direction to take.
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The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
Henri L. Bergson

Alternatives can help you avoid experiences that are avoidable.

More alternatives mean more options and choices.
More choice means better results and more satisfaction.

Increasing your ability to feel adds input from the heart.

Input from the heart helps the mind to think outside the box.
Thinking outside the box provides different views and new options.
At worst, alternatives show you a way to avoid unpleasant situations.
At best, they show you how to reach your goals.

You no longer have to face fear unprepared, without a plan.

What can you do now that you couldn’t do before? FEEL!

Facing down fear and achieving unity of self is not easy.

Fortunately, the Feel Technique is.

ARE YOU ALIVE?

Here’s a tough (and unusual) question that you can take a moment to consider:
Do you feel totally alive or do you feel partly shut down?

There are times when we all feel totally alive or partially shut down.
And sometimes, you can feel somewhere and anywhere in between.
However, most people feel shut down more often than they feel totally alive.
Since almost everyone feels this way, it’s a safe guess that you do, too.

Why do most people feel more shut down than alive?

Well, we do follow routines. And routines are, by nature, boring.

Putting life on automatic while taking care of standard operating procedures can dull things down a bit.

But it’s more than that.

Let’s look at it from the perspective of your emotional condition when you first arrived.

After you won the race to get here, you arrived kicking and screaming and letting your needs be known,
pretty immediately. Self-expression was not an issue upon your arrival. From birth to infant to toddler,
expressing your needs was easy. From that point however, through childhood, adolescence, to young
adult and then into adulthood, you learned to curb those needs and tuck them away.

In the process of ‘tucking,’ the heart, by degrees, shuts itself off.

We come into this world with a heart as a tender root.

The only way the heart can protect itself is to shut off or shut down.

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It is a tender organ and has no other way to stop emotional pain.
The heart only knows how to feel!

If that becomes too painful, it finds a way to stop.

To the degree you didn’t get enough love growing up, your heart stopped feeling.
Once shut down, it doesn’t often return to its former capacity to feel on its own.
Turned off, fear of pain won’t allow the heart to fully feel the need again.

The cause of most intimacy disorders is due to a heart that is shut-down.

All relationships in love, friendship and business depend on connection.
If your ability to respond is hampered, it will hurt your connection with others.
We all do the dance of intimacy where we get close and back away and get close again.
But disconnections within the psyche restrict how attached we’re able to become at all.

By definition, an ‘opportunity’ is a window that closes in time. When the opportunity to be satisfied
comes around, you may not react fast enough to take advantage of it. If your heart is shut down, it’s
easy to miss opportunities for satisfaction.

We are symbolic creatures and symbols are more than important to us.
Symbols hit so close to home that we trade away personal power for them.
Symbols have such great significance, we easily lose ourselves in their trappings.
A Cross, Star of David, or a Crescent Moon can instigate actions other things wouldn’t.
When the heart is shut down, it’s easier to get lost in symbols.

We identify so intimately with symbols, we give up a lot of self to be closer to them.

Many trade in feelings of aliveness and identity for symbols of money, love or power.

Money buys freedom but it doesn’t buy soul.

Love feels good but it doesn’t buy peace of mind.
Power always feels good, but how much of it do you already give away?

The Feel Technique creates a feeling off centered-ness and grounded-ness.

Centered and grounded people are not very willing to give up their power.

EMPTINESS

If you’re doing things you’d rather not be doing, emptiness is running your life.
Emptiness is an emotion that controls you if you’re doing things to make it go away.

The experience of emptiness is a difficult emotion to allow yourself to feel.

The feeling of emptiness is a difficult space to allow yourself to remain in.
Emptiness is scary and uncomfortable, especially if you feel powerless to change it.

However, the Feel Technique offers a new approach and a new perspective.
You no longer have to face the emptiness unprepared, without a plan.

So what can you do now that you couldn’t do before?

FEEL!
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BOUNDARIES

Your skin and your sense of self separates you from others.
A boundary is the space between you and someone else.
A request that doesn’t serve your interests is an invasion of your boundaries.
A boundary is where you end and someone else begins, and visa versa.

Boundaries are also your ability to say no.

You want to define your boundaries and defend them.
It’s human nature that if you won’t, no one else will.

Defining and defending your boundaries is on of the best ways to keep mentally healthy.

FEEL strengthens feelings.

A stronger emotional base bolsters the balance between the heart and mind.
A good heart / mind connection fosters more secure boundaries.
Respecting and protecting your boundaries may still take effort.
But a stronger sense and a willingness to say no, builds confidence.
And confidence reinforces boundaries.

Firmer boundaries help keep other’s negativity and doubts out of your head.
Or at least to a minimum.

Feeling more will increase self-confidence, which makes you more sensitive to others.
Sensitivity that comes from self-confidence and not co-dependency is healthy.
When you’re more sensitive to others, they respond and become more sensitive to you.

To have a friend you have to be a friend.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

ON BELONGING

Connecting with people creates a sense of well-being.

Regardless of how friendly you are or not, human beings, as a species, need to belong.

A long time ago, a hermit lived on the outskirts of a small European village.
One day, a fire burned the entire village to the ground.
No one was hurt, but now they weren’t sure if they wanted to stay there anymore.
So they decided to vote on whether to rebuild there or move and build somewhere else.
The next day they voted to move far away.
Soon after, they all left.

So what happened to the hermit?

He moved to the outskirts of another nearby village and became their hermit.

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A hermit cannot be a hermit without a village.
You cannot be who you are without the context of others.

We all need other people, even when we think we don’t.

So making a better connection with others leads to a natural feeling of well-being.

Connecting in new ways produces a sense of well-being that’s unexpected.

Yet, even as we desire to belong in some way, getting close can be risky.
Life comes with hits and hurts and plenty of them…often from those we most trust.
As a child you get hit physically, as an adult the pain is emotional.

That’s the way life is.

If you can accept that life comes with hits and hurts, you’ll struggle with it a bit less.

Life is a series of losing things.

So sometimes letting go is the best strategy.
Sometimes when you let it all go, it all comes back and comes back in a wonderful way.

But letting go isn’t so easy when you’re stuck in the past.

Letting go is something only you can do and no one can force you to do
The advantage to meditation is that it calms the mind.
A calmer mind allows you to let go more easily.

WORDS HAVE POWER

You’re familiar with Patrick Henry’s words, “Give me liberty or give me death.”
However, you don’t know what he said just before that.
You don’t know who was around when he said it.
You don’t know what he was wearing when it happened.
You don’t even know what Patrick Henry looked like.
But there is one thing you are certain of:
The words he spoke that day.

Words have power.

Some words have more power than others.

Sound has vibration.

Sound goes where other properties can’t.

Intention has direction.

A plan with a goal makes a difference.

THE HEART AND NEGATIVE FEELINGS

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Sometimes doing your best doesn’t get the job done.
If that happens often, it might be due to something you’re not seeing or don’t know about.
Dreams are hard to reach without the hope and stamina to catch them.
They’ll be more difficult to reach if your heart is shut down.

When the heart shuts down, qualities and characteristics of self are cut off.
To the degree your heart shuts down, something is missing inside.
When a part of self has disappeared for a long time, it’s not missed anymore.
So you might not feel like there is anything’s missing, at all.
More often, though, you can tell something isn’t right because of an emptiness you feel.

The missing parts of self became lost when your heart defended itself and shut off.
Traumas, abuse, neglect and loss can scar the heart, take a piece out, or break it.
Negative or traumatic experiences can cause a barrier to form around it, as well.
Scarred or blocked, the heart becomes emotionally weakened and closed down.
When parts of self are lost, so too is the inner strength they could provide.

Everyone’s heart is scarred or blocked to some degree.

It’s an uncomfortable truth that must be accepted for any emotional growth to occur.

There is a story of a woman in group therapy, who did a group exercise

when asked to describe herself as a tree. She said that she was a big,
strong, mighty oak with rich soil, and wonderful leaves, and so on.
When the therapist asked how the tree got to be such a strong, mighty oak
in rich soil, she broke down, tearfully admitting that she really felt
like a burnt out stump but was too embarrassed to admit it.

Once she acknowledged that she felt like a burnt out-stump, though, further exploration of the tree
metaphor revealed a new branch growing from the back of that stump. Her ability and willingness to
acknowledge her real feelings helped her grow past the negative feelings that were holding her back
emotionally.

When did she discover and admit her true feelings to herself?
When a therapist’s question made her feelings so strong that she had to be honest.
The strength of her emotions alone pushed the truth to the surface.

Are you resisting feelings that keep you from new possibilities of growth and change?

If negative feelings are a bad thing to be avoided, your fight will be a never-ending struggle. Like the
monster blobs in science fiction that feed and grow stronger from the energy of the weapons turned on
it, trying to avoid negative feelings is a fight that gives life and energy to the very negativity you’re
battling with. However, if you accept negativity as an emotion to be felt through and dealt with, it can
then transform.

Under ordinary circumstances, the woman in this example would not have revealed her true feelings.
The heart knows how to protect itself, even if it means fooling itself and the brain and everyone else in
the process. When feelings are so bad as to be painful, the heart shuts down. Once that happens, parts of
self shut down along with it. The therapist’s question made her realize how she really felt and to allow
those feelings.

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Overcoming negative feelings usually involves patience and encouragement.

Thirty years ago a study was done on rhesus monkeys raised without parents and no contact with other
monkeys or siblings. These monkeys were starved of contact, and as they grew into adulthood, their
emotional state deteriorated to the point of exhibiting symptoms of schizophrenia. Then, as adults, half
of these schizophrenic monkeys were put into cages with normal rhesus monkeys. These monkeys were
at an age where they were still young enough to be playful, but not yet old enough to be aggressive
about it.

Once in the cages, these younger monkeys playfully forced the contact deprived monkeys to interact
with them. They pushed the withdrawn, socially inept monkeys into action and interaction. In the time
it took for the younger, normal monkeys to grow into adulthood, the schizophrenic monkeys they played
with became normal and fairly indistinguishable from the others.

A heart that’s shut down can learn to feel again.

The heart can learn to feel, but it takes encouragement.

FEEL stimulates the nervous system, which encourages the heart.
The more your heart can feel, the better you will feel.
The more your heart does feel, the worse you may feel, as well.
Sometimes you have to feel worse before you can feel better.
That’s the price of your aliveness.

Is it worth it?
Some think so.
Do you?

According to Alexander Lowen, author of Body Language, we all have mind-body disconnections and
inner tension to one degree or another. Dr. Lowen uses a type of psychotherapy called Bio-Energetics to
release tension stored in the body. He has examined thousands and thousands of people, and writes that
of all the patients he had seen over the years, he had only one who had no psycho-pathology in their
body. He had only one patient who didn’t have any evidence of inner tension or mind-body
disconnections.

Only one!

The rest of us have mind-body disconnections, and the inner tension they produce rob us of our
aliveness. Disconnections within may feel like a vague, generalized, hard-to-put-a-finger-on lousy
feeling; or may be felt in a specific area as negativity or tightness. Whether the feeling is generalized or
specific, take time to discover where in your body you feel it the most. Even if it’s a vague feeling,
where can you feel it the most?

Sometimes a negative feeling is experienced on the outside or around the body, as well.

How you feel, respond, and perform emanates from central nervous system processes as well as the
subconscious mind. Everything you do and are capable of doing is a direct result of the condition and
responsiveness of your nervous system. However, if your subconscious mind has been programmed to
where you are emotionally shut down, you won’t have the presence of mind to achieve all that life will
offer.

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The vibration of “feel” impacts your subconscious mind and your nervous system. When the vibration
of “feel” reaches the unconscious, the vibration stimulates it to feel more. As the unconscious mind
responds, you begin to feel more. Each time you use FEEL you reinforce this request and inner
command. In time, as you develop a greater capacity to feel, you may also find episodes or times of
increased enthusiasm and aliveness, as well

Enthusiasm and aliveness can help you prepare for the next opportunity.
They are essential ingredients for hope and stamina.
You need hope and stamina to catch your dreams.

Feeling more expands awareness, thereby adding points to your intelligence. One definition of
intelligence is the ability to read between the lines. The ability to read between the lines requires a
heightened level of awareness and a natural curiosity that comes with enthusiasm and aliveness.

When you have more heart you have a greater understanding of what you feel as well as a better
understanding of what’s going on around you. An increased ability to read between the lines is always
good for getting more out of life.

The more you feel, the more you know.

The more you know, the more you are.
The more you are, the more you get out of life.

FEEL builds the capacity of the heart to feel, so one admonition:

Try not to do anything that would make your heart reproach you.

HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF LIFE

Feeling more helps you get the most out of life by making more memories.
Memories stand out because of the strong emotions tied to them.
Take a moment to think about some negative memories from the past.
Then, for a few minutes think about a few of the good times that stand out.

After doing this simple exercise you’ll discover that both good and bad memories share one common
characteristic: Strong emotions. It is the very strength of these emotions, either good or bad, that turns
events into memories.

Times most easily or vividly remembered have emotions attached to them.

Events or circumstances that evoke little to no emotion are usually forgotten.
It is the intensity of the feelings themselves that produce memories.
Increasing the intensity of feelings disposes the brain to remember.

More memories are proof you’ve gotten more out of life.

More memories add meaning, and meaning adds value.
Feelings make the difference in how we assemble our memories and remember them.
Much of how we define ourselves comes from our memories.
Memories influence our feelings and much of how we see our place in the world.

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Life is short and the end is always just a heartbeat away.
He who dies with the most toys, dies.
He who dies with the most memories, lived.

Feeling more and with greater intensity turns moments into memories.
Additional memories add up to you having lived more.
Living more is the most you can get out of life.

With the meditation on the sound of “feel,” you will feel more.
While each of us is unique, many of us are sitting on some uncomfortable feelings.
When you initially begin using FEEL, some uncomfortable feelings may come up.
Is that going to be alright with you?
If it’s not or you doubt your emotional strength to use FEEL, then don’t use it!

However, if you feel like you can handle:

Feeling emotionally uncomfortable for a short time.
Allowing negative feelings and blocks to occupy the space they’re in for a limited time
And not always knowing where a bad feeling could lead.
Then you’re ready for the first step towards your journey of self-knowledge.

RESISTANCE

What you resist will persist.

What you allow and create can dissipate.

Resistance creates persistence.

If you doubt this, try not thinking about a pink elephant for the next 30 seconds.
It’s not possible because resistance does create persistence.

However, the opposite is also true.

Creation allows for dissipation.
So what you can allow, can dissipate.

If your feelings are hurt and you allow yourself to feel the pain, the negative feelings will dissipate
sooner than if you swallow them and try to forget about it.

How long can an emotion last?

Emotions can last a long time when they’re swallowed and stuffed down.
Most emotions have a short shelf life, though, once you allow yourself to feel them.
Feelings, even very bad ones, won’t last when you allow yourself to feel.
Increasing your capacity to feel helps create the emotional latitude for that allowance.

Vain, very vain is my search to find; that happiness which only centers in the mind.
Oliver Goldsmith

SAFE SPACE

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This section is about keeping you emotionally safe.

The Feel Technique is a powerful process because however simple it may be, it has the potential of
bringing up negative feelings strong enough to be overwhelming. That’s why it’s important for you to
know that you can keep yourself safe by not allowing yourself to be emotionally overpowered while
using FEEL.

Years ago I went into a sensory depravation tank. Closed in spaces don’t usually bother me, but in this
small box, it sure did. As I lay floating in the tank filled with water and Epson salt, I spent about fifteen
minutes or longer checking the door to be sure I could get out anytime I wanted to. I had to reassure
myself by pushing that door open again and again and again before I could relax.

I needed to know I could get out of the tank anytime I wanted to.
It was only after I reassured myself as much as needed, that I felt safe enough to relax.
It was only after I relaxed that I began to feel the benefits.

The situation is the same with the Feel Technique.

Using FEEL, you will feel more.
Benefits aside, it’s a new experience.
New experiences usually take time to get used to.
It’s our nature that new is scary, even when it’s positive.

So you need to know you’re safe.

You need to know you can stop the process of FEEL anytime you want.
You need to know you can stop a feeling if you don’t feel safe feeling it.
You need to know you’re safe and can “park” you’re feelings anytime you want to.
If you feel overwhelmed, you want to know you can stop the process and the feelings.

You want to be able to “park” negative feelings, to put them away until you can explore them later or in
a safer environment. If any feelings continue to overwhelm you while using the Feel Technique, therapy
is the best prescription. One way to diminish the effects of negative feelings when overwhelmed by
them is to change your physical position to one that feels less vulnerable. Whether going into a fetal
position, face down on a pillow, or any other position, your body will let you know when you’ve found
the right way to cut off a bad feeling.

Also, it’s important to postpone using FEEL if you’re currently in an abusive or unsafe relationship.
Before it is safe for you to feel all your feelings, you may want firmer boundaries in place. Boundaries
are your ability to say no. Good boundaries make it safer to feel. If you’re in an abusive relationship,
feeling more is not a good idea at this time. You could be sitting on an emotional volcano.

Please wait until the abuse issues are resolved before using the Feel Technique.

When negative feelings come up, you can choose to be with them or stop the process.
You can stop the meditation anytime.
You are always in control.
Don’t overload your psyche.
There’s no need to push yourself.

The Feel Technique is a method.

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But it is also a way to move through uncomfortable feelings like fear and emptiness.
And when negative or unwanted feelings do emerge during FEEL, you have a choice.
You can stop or continue.
If you’re not sure what to do, stop for now.
When in doubt, don’t.
Use FEEL another time.

The mind has natural defense mechanisms.

Defense mechanisms should not be tampered with nor overridden.
So don’t push yourself.

Emotionalism may convince you that something is happening, but there’s no need to push yourself to
feel too much at any one time. It’s the daily practice of FEEL that makes the difference, so be gentle
with yourself.

Time and repetition makes the difference, not effort.

You can expect times of emotional or physical discomfort during FEEL.

To the extent you can tolerate the intensity of a negative feeling, it can dissipate.
However, don’t push yourself to feel more than you can comfortably handle.
The innate makes persistent uncomfortable feelings disappear, not conscious effort.

The woman in the tree exercise had growth in her metaphorical tree after she was able to acknowledge
that it was a stump. When you can allow the negative feelings to occupy the space you find it in, it has
the freedom to begin moving towards dissipation of the symptoms…as well as moving your emotional
growth.

If you experience any physical or emotional negativity, welcome it for a while.

Allow the negativity or tightness to inhabit and occupy the area you find it in.
Struggling with it doesn’t improve the feeling, but repeating “feel” does.
Repeating “feel” stimulates the innate to resolve tension in the body and the psyche.
The only conscious effort you need apply is making the Feel Technique a daily habit.

We can consciously decide to think or feel differently to some degree, but for the most part, trying to
control negativity often becomes a struggle. Persistent uncomfortable feelings originate in the inner
mind and feelings come from within, automatically. So trying to consciously control unwanted feelings
takes a good deal of effort.

The subconscious processes that continually operate within us cannot be controlled.

However, as the vibration of “feel” reaches the self’s “control center,” it can be influenced.

You can’t push the river, but you can give it time to bend.

THE ENERGIZING EFFECT

In my own quest to learn how to get more out of life, I’ve been to a lot of seminars.
Many years ago I was in a seminar where I was given interesting instructions.
When I tried it out, it had an amazing energizing effect.

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The instructor told us to keep telling our inner mind to “wake up,” and to do so for a few hours to see
what effect it might have. Well, I did that and then some. Instead of a few hours, I did the mental
exercise for a few weeks. For days on end I kept thinking and silently repeating “Wake up. Wake up!”

After a few weeks, I was very impressed with the results.

I felt more alert and was more responsive to the people around me.
As I felt more ‘awake,’ I was more amenable to those around me.
I found myself automatically taking a greater interest in their lives than ever before.
More energized and alert, I had a new, natural curiosity about the people in my life.
Naturally, when you take an interest in others, they find you more interesting, as well.
As they reacted favorably to me, I saw them in an increasingly favorable light, and so on.
So, after a while, the weeks grew to months and I was still using the exercise.

What started off as a simple, almost silly exercise seemed to have a profound effect on me, my
relationships, and my life. It was a peak, life-transforming experience.

After several months, though, I stopped doing the “wake up” thing and was my old self again.
After that, those who had been on the periphery of my life were soon back there.

So, what happened?

It worked, but I didn’t stick with it.

I didn’t stick with it because the exercise was fairly hard mental work.
It was hard work because “wake up” wasn’t the right command.
No more than “relax, sleep,” or “calm down” are.
These are positive affirmations, which is just more mental training.
Your head has already had a lot of training.
You want to go deeper than that.

Positive affirmations can bounce all around in your head, but they won’t activate the central nervous
system to feel more. The command I sent within to “wake up” was effective, but it didn’t reach me,
where I live. So, while the results were impressive, it took a lot of effort. It felt forced, so it didn’t last.

You can tell yourself something a thousand times with limited effect. You can silently repeat “I feel
better” over and over again, but if your gut says differently, the good feelings you’ve talked yourself
into won’t hold. That’s why positive affirmations don’t last and don’t capture our attention over the
long haul.

While it holds true that what you put into something is what you get out of it, sometimes the rate of
return differs. Whether an investment, a relationship, or even a technique, the rate of return, what you
receive from what you’ve put in will vary from person to person and circumstance to circumstance.

We all share the universal desire to have a higher ratio of return.

Whether its business or love, we all want more than what we’ve put in.
Necessity is the mother of invention, but the father is certainly a higher rate of return.
Fortunately, the Feel Technique produces a good return if used daily.

Anyone would be happy to have a perpetual motion machine.

A perpetual motion machine is a machine that creates more energy then it takes to run.
A machine that creates more energy then it takes to run guarantees success.
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Men have dreamed of this device since the industrial revolution began.
Unfortunately, the perpetual motion machine hasn’t been invented yet.

We all want a better rate of return.

Whether finances or a relationship, it’s ok to want more.
Just don’t allow the quest for it to control you.
Remember that acceptance is part of any formula for happiness.

III THE FEEL TECHNIQUE

What is the Feel Technique?

The Feel Technique is a form of meditation.

What is meditation? It is the practice of quiet contemplation.
It is the continuous and profound contemplation on a subject, sound or object.

Meditation focuses and calms the mind.

It is a trance like state that produces better mental clarity.
Meditation creates deeper awareness and increased concentration.
Meditation is a respected form of relaxation that calms the mind and enriches the spirit.

The Feel Technique uses the word “feel” as a vibration and a point of focus.
The repetition activates the subconscious mind to carry the vibration to the nervous system.
When your nervous system is stimulated by the vibration of “feel,” you feel more.

Using the silent sound of the word “feel,” the vibration is carried to unconscious processes within the
nervous system, stimulating it to feel more to capacity.

The Feel Technique can be used:

1] As a Simple Meditation.
2] As a Body Focus Meditation.
3] During social interactions.

1] Simple Meditation

Set aside some quiet time in a quiet place.

Silently repeat the word “feel” over and over again.

FEEL can be used in any position, with the lights on or off. While it’s recommended you use FEEL
with your eyes closed, if it’s more comfortable, you may keep them open. Try to find a place where you
are the most likely to be comfortable and not disturbed.

While meditating on the vibration of “feel,” thoughts, memories, itches and outside sounds will catch
your attention while you’re trying to focus on the sound. That’s ok, you will get distracted. Rather than
wrestle with the thoughts, when you’re aware that you’re not focusing on the sound, simply allow your
attention to slowly refocus on “feel” again. Instead of struggling for stillness of mind, we let the mind
go about its business and chatter, as we again focus on the sound until the thoughts go away.

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When you realize you’re not repeating “feel,” allow “feel” to re-emerge as your primary focal point. So
that even when you have thoughts or memories, begin to focus on the sound of “feel” at the same time.
After a short time, thoughts and memories will fade into the background as the sound of “feel” makes its
way to the forefront of your thoughts again.

During FEEL, random, unrelated thoughts will pop into your head.
This is just “mind chatter.”
This is what the mind does.
Rather than struggle with it, you can try one of two things:
1] Redirect your attention back to “feel.”
2] Listen to the chatter and repeat the sound until “feel” becomes
your primary focus.

“Feel” is silently repeated.

Gently, not rough, harsh, or loud.
Silently focus on the sound of “feel.”
You don’t have to repeat it quickly or slowly.
Repeat “feel” in a way that’s comfortable for you.
Just follow the natural rhythm, flow and speed of repetition that feels right.
You can’t make it work any faster than it does on its own.
Steady, easy and gentle is usually the best way.

While the sound of “feel” is heard in your mind, the sound is delivered to unconscious processes as a
vibration. Don’t try to make the word “feel” vibrate or resonate inside. The sound already has it’s own
vibration. Just silently repeat the word again and again.

You can meditate anywhere from five to thirty minutes or longer.

You can do it once a day or several times a day.
You can set a fixed length of time.
Or stop when it feels right to.

It isn’t necessary to experience anything special or feel something different each time you use FEEL for
the process to be effective over time. Sometimes you will experience a difference in your thoughts and
feelings and sometimes you won’t.

Questions will come to mind while using this technique.

The answer to most of them is feel.

There is only one prescription to obtain the most benefit from the Feel Technique:
Consistent repetition.

The mind is like a vinyl record.

The more you play it, the deeper the grooves become.
The more you play the song of “feel,” the deeper your capacity to feel becomes.

The more you use your brain, the more brain you have to use.
Gregory Dorsey

Make FEEL a daily habit.

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2] Body Focus Meditation

The purpose of using FEEL as a body-focus meditation is to reduce stress and tension.

As a body-focus meditation, you simply bring or invite the sound of “feel” to each part of the body, one
part at a time. This is a slow process that takes time as you focus on each part of the body with the
sound of “feel.” Take your time to meditate on each part of the body, concentrating on that area alone.

Using FEEL as a body-focus meditation helps reduce stress and tension.

This is accomplished by helping you to get out of your head more.
You have a body but spend little time in it.
Most of your focus is spent in your head.

Since you live in your head, it’s useful to expand your consciousness.
Expanding consciousness means getting past your mind to re-own your body.
Does this sound ridiculous?

When was the last time you focused on the area inside your stomach?
When did you last “go to” your feet or legs, sending your concentration there?
Have you ever spent time focusing on the area of your heart for a while?
The answer for most people is that they haven’t.

Most people never learn how to “get out” of their own head.
Spending more time inside your body definitely helps you to feel more.
You are more than your head and you need to “get out” more often to find that out.

A lot of us are trapped in our heads, relegating the body to of little importance.
The purpose of this body-focus method is to just “be” inside your body for a while.
To be more inside the whole of you and not just your head.

You have a mind.

However, you are not your mind.
You have a mind, but that’s just a part of you.
If you’ve never been told that, it’s easy to not know it.
If you were told that, it’s an easy thing to forget.
The Feel Technique helps you to get past your mind.

Using FEEL as a body-focus meditation, bring or invite the sound of “feel” to one area of the body at a
time as you concentrate on that region only. Take all the time you want in each area, considering that
the more time you spend in each body part, the greater the benefits can be. If you take time out of your
day and spend a half an hour focusing on your body, you’d be surprised at how centered and grounded
you’ll feel afterwards. Set a time frame that’s right for you, even if it’s a few minutes a day to start.

If you experience some discomfort while using FEEL, let that be ok.
At some point you will have uncomfortable feelings in one area or more.
The uncomfortable feeling may be physical or emotional.

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In this body-focus meditation you are inviting or bringing the sound of “feel” to one area at a time.
With tension or unwanted feelings, sometimes just the act of focusing on them for a time will make
them dissolve.

As with any meditation, this technique works best when you can let yourself go.
During the simple meditation you’re doing little else but following your stream of consciousness and the
feelings that surface during the process. However, during the body focus meditation, in addition to
letting go, you are encouraged to be an observer.

As an observer, you’re inviting the sound to an area.

This means you’re mentally observing the area as the sound of “feel” goes there.
As an observer, you’re watching and waiting to see what you experience next.
At times, little to nothing will happen, and you won’t feel any immediate difference.

But sometimes the benefits of heightened awareness will be unmistakable.

As an observer, you are (or try to be) detached from the results.
A position of detachment places you on the sidelines while innate does the work.

If you’re focusing on an area that has no tension, it will simply heighten awareness.
Focusing on an area of tension (over time) can lead to transformation.
Transformation takes a while.
Most feelings, negative or not, can retain their charge for only so long.
Give the process time.

Bringing or inviting the sound of “feel” to an area of stress, tension, or negativity can heighten
awareness of it even more. So you can expect that bringing attention to an area of discomfort will likely
intensify it, at least initially.

If an area has any ‘sense of vulnerability’ to it, then first invite the sound very softly, as a gentle
whisper. If you become uncomfortable, you can reduce the ‘volume’ of the vibration, or shift back to
FEEL as a simple meditation. Or just stop the process for a while and get up and do something else.

While it’s reasonable to expect that feelings sometimes get worse before they get better, it’s also
important to remember not to push yourself to feel uncomfortable for too long or too intensely. You’re
asking your nervous system to change, and that can only happen slowly. You can always stop the
process and try again another day.

It is important to remember to bring “feel” to an area with the intention of allowing the tension or
negative feeling to be where it is, the way it is, regardless of shape or size. If you can allow for
intensity, then allow it. But if it gets too intense, please stop.

If you try to change the tension or attempt to make it be different in some way, the subconscious mind
won’t respond. Any conscious effort, past repetition, is counter-productive. Just allow your innate,
subconscious processes to do the work for you.

You can only direct it, not control it.

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We have found that any order given to the subconscious mind will be carried out unless it is sidetracked
or countermanded by another and stronger order.
Napoleon Hill

Sometimes during FEEL you will:

Be at the affect of your feelings and you will feel them intensely.
Be the observer, watching the goings on in your physiology.
Be in a naturalistic trance, not having many thoughts or experiencing much at all.
Be in a state of heightened awareness, feeling very connected to your self.
Feel like nothing is going on.

When using FEEL, the most likely time for negative feelings to come up is during any of the three
methods is when using the method as a body focus method. Focusing on areas of the body holding
stress and tension, you could experience anger or sadness or other unwanted feelings that were
unexpected. If at any time you have intense anxiety or intolerable emotional pain, stop using the Feel
Technique for at least a day.

If anxiety or emotional pain continues, see a therapist.

Tightness, blocks and persistent uncomfortable feelings contain emotions that have never fully surfaced.
If they had, the body wouldn’t still be holding that tension. Bringing “feel” to those areas of stress or
tension could initially heighten emotional discomfort. If you feel emotionally strong enough to handle
the negative feelings that may come up, then use the Feel Technique. If you don’t, FEEL is not
recommended. Remember, don’t allow unwanted feelings to overwhelm you unless it feels right to do
so.
If you’re overwhelmed during the process, unless it feels absolutely necessary to go through the
experience, don’t push yourself to do so. It’s better to stop the process.

To repeat, you can always continue this meditation at another time.

However, if you do feel emotionally strong enough to allow for unwanted feelings then:
If negative feelings come up, keep repeating “feel.”
If negative pictures or memories come up, keep repeating “feel” while watching them.
Allow yourself to feel whatever emotions come up while doing this process.

Allowing stress, tension or negative feelings to occupy the space you find it in isn’t easy.
If you can allow the discomfort, transformation is possible.
If you can allow it long the discomfort for a while, transformation is probable.

You can’t push the river, but you can give it time to bend.

The aim of allowance and acceptance of uncomfortable feelings is to dissolve them.

When disconnections are fully felt, the negativity begins to lose its charge.
When negativity loses its charge, disconnections begin to re-connect.
When disconnections connect, uncomfortable feelings diminish or dissolve.
When disconnections disappear, there is greater unity of self.

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Results and benefits will take time and repetition. You can’t (realistically) expect a feeling or an area of
stress to change within a short time just because you’re focusing on it. It is only the combination of time
and repetition that generates results.

In other words, give it time.

However, this next method using the vibration of “feel” could yield results sooner than the first two
methods because it may have a centering effect that’s pretty immediate.

3] SOCIALLY

Silently repeat the word “feel” while you’re with others.

You can pay attention to them and what they’re saying, while at the same time, quietly repeating the
sound of “feel” inside. Your attention can go back and forth, or you can attend to them and the sound at
the same time. If you feel too distracted to concentrate on what’s being said, stop using FEEL for the
time being.

Using FEEL socially means going into your own space, even while you’re with others. Experiencing
your space while you’re with other people has a centering effect. With friends, family, business, or in a
group, the vibration of “feel” can be a very centering experience. (If this brings up distracting thoughts
or feelings, stop the process and attend to business first.)

At times, using FEEL will produce no discernable difference, sometimes it will.

The practice of FEEL socially can have immediate results and lasting benefits.
Regardless of the activity, FEEL can transform your experience of the moment.

Using FEEL socially can:

Make you feel like you’re more in the here and now, a part of the moment.
Transform the space within you.
Change the space between you and someone else.
Make the space between you and the place you’re in feel different.

Using FEEL socially increases your feeling of centered-ness. While any of the three ways of using
FEEL can accomplish this, the feelings of centered-ness are more pronounced when its used while your
with people. Using feel socially doesn’t always mean that someone else has to be around. You can be
in a room, in the mall or just walking around to feel the fairly immediate benefits of FEEL. Using FEEL
while your alone produces a different experience then when you’re out and about. Using it socially
connects you to your center relative to the outside world. Using FEEL as a simple meditation also
connects you to your center, but without outside distractions.

Each of these three ways exposes you to your center.

Long term exposure to your center has a terrific benefit.
It makes you more comfortable within the skin you’re in.

When you’re more comfortable within your skin, that feeling expands to your space.
When you’re comfortable in your space, in time that feeling extends to your ground.
When that happens, you feel grounded.

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When you feel centered and grounded, you’re more comfortable taking a position.
When you feel centered and grounded, you’re more comfortable holding your ground.
When you feel centered and grounded, you’re more comfortable speaking your heart.

FEEL silently stimulates your nervous system.

FEEL resonates as a silent reminder of your being.
FEEL refocuses you in relation to your center.
FEEL centralizes you, putting you in the middle of your experience.
FEEL supports your experience of having a body and occupying the space you’re in.

FEEL reminds you who you are.

In time you may find yourself thinking or feeling something you usually wouldn’t.
After using FEEL a while you may say or do things you ordinarily don’t.

WHY IT WORKS

The reasons why this works are complicated, especially if you’ve never taken a class on how the brain
functions. Fortunately, understanding how it works doesn’t effect how well the meditation will work for
you.

To start simply, when you feel more, you feel more alive.
Feeling more alive, things are more interesting and more interesting to do.

On a practical level, feeling more connects you to yourself and to others.

On a deeper level, this connection is facilitated by vibration, the underlying substructure of all there is.

Your essence, the basis that is you, is limited to the space you inhabit.
However, you have a vibration and you are a vibration.
All existence shares the common denominator of vibration.
Vibration is the foundation of all things and connected to all things.

On a spiritual level, you are spirit and soul.

On a psychological level, you are psyche and ego.
On an energetic level, you are energy and vibration.
On a physical level, you are but dust refined.

Though separate from the universe, the use of vibration connects you to the rest of it.
Vibrations connect you with something larger, outside of self.
You are one substance and the universe is another.
Yet vibration connects you both.

Connecting with something outside of self contributes to a different perspective.

A different perspective leads to changes in feelings, decisions and actions.
You’ll know the meditation is working when you begin to notice these changes.

The nervous system is the very underpinning of your ability to physically function. While it does many
things, the capacity to feel is the operation you’re most conscious of. Its primary function, after keeping
you alive, is to help you feel.
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And that’s what it does, actively, all the time.
You have feelings at all times.
Even when you’re asleep and dreaming, you still feel.

Feelings come to you from a number of places. Basically, however, they are the result of the
information exchanged between the body and mind. This chemical transfer between mind and body is
the way they share information about the other’s condition.

The chemicals exchanged are called neuro-peptides. There is a part in the brain (the limbic system)
where these neuro-peptides register as pictures within the subconscious mind. While you don’t
consciously see
them, you feel the reaction these chemicals and pictures produce.

The neuro-peptide exchange of information is not easily influenced. One reason positive affirmations
have limited effectiveness is because the signal only goes to the head and no further. Meaning you can’t
talk a neuro-peptide into much of anything. The neuro-peptide exchange of information is guided by
innate, not conscious operations. However, using the subconscious to reach innate operations is
effective because the subconscious is also a part of innate processes.

Conscious efforts to help the innate are counter productive.

But we can provoke the innate to do the work through with time and repetition.
Encouraging the innate to do the job it’s already designed to do is an irresistible force.

The Feel Technique is different than other methods. By appealing to the mind and body to do more of
what it already does, the vibration of “feel” activates the nervous system to feel more to capacity,
effecting the heart and the brain and their balance therein.

Also, the vibration of feel effects the electrical fields in your brain. Referring to the brain’s electrical
fields may sound esoteric, but the science is this: When you have a thought, millions of brain cells
exchange information by firing chemicals at each other. The chemical reaction is initiated by an
electrical charge. The electrical charge prompts a chemical reaction, which leads to a thought, which
creates a feeling that forms a decision, that provokes and action.

The Chain Of Command

An Electrical Charge
Chemical Reaction
Thought
Feeling
Decision
Action

FEEL is effective because the vibration that begins within the conscious mind reaches the electrical
fields and chemical reactions where thoughts and feelings begin. The Feel Technique reaches through
the chain of command from the conscious to unconscious processes in the central nervous system. All
conscious functioning, from thoughts to action, all start off with an electrical charge.

For example, if you hear the word “horse,” an electrical charge organizes millions of brain cells to
communicate with each other by exchanging their chemicals in concert with one another. One
hundredth-of-a-second later, all of a sudden, you imagine or see a picture of a horse. Any word or visual
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cue can set off this internal chain of command, resulting in the feelings you have and the actions you
take.

What you experience as your mind set, is a collection of bio-electrical fields with set neurological
patterns. Neurological patterns organize thoughts so that you are able to function. What you experience
as a thought or a feeling is part of an organized set of neurological patterns. When the right left side of
your brain hears or sees something, the left side explains what it is you’re hearing or seeing and what
that means.

Electrical fields trigger chemical reactions in the brain.

Actions and reactions are controlled or induced by these chemical reactions.
Inviting or bringing one vibration to another vibration creates a point of contact.
Inviting the vibration of “feel” to an electrical field has the potential for great change.
Vibration meeting vibration is a point of contact and can effect great movement.
Inviting one vibration to another is strong medicine.

Few things can change or effect bio-electrical fields directly.

Music does for a while, and shock treatment can for a long time, but few other things do.

The subconscious mind and bio-electrical fields are both part of the innate.
The concentration and repetition of “feel” induces a light
naturalistic trance.
This naturalistic trance puts you in closer touch with your innate
mind.

The most complicated achievements of thought are possible without the assistance of the conscious
mind.
Sigmund Freud

Through repetition, FEEL activates the subconscious to carry the sound as a vibration to unconscious
processes. The vibration of “feel” has instructions (a request and a command) to stimulate the nervous
system to feel more. Set neurological patterns are an unconscious function, not subject to conscious
change, but they can be influenced by vibration and constant repetition.

Changes made within innate processes can accomplish more than conscious effort.

More direct access to the unconscious processes uncovers hidden resources within.
More direct access to unconscious processes promotes new understandings.
New understandings lead to increased alternatives and new possibilities for success.

The Feel Technique does not use visualization to reach the subconscious.
However, pictures, images, and memories will come to mind.
You can watch the images while, at the same time, silently repeating “feel.”
Or you can ignore the imagery, and refocus on the sound again.

It’s not necessary to use visualization during FEEL because you are sending instructions to the nervous
system in the most direct manner possible. The request and command to feel instructs the nervous
system to do a bit more of what it already does naturally.

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There is nothing more primary and basic than feeling.
There is nothing more satisfying than the feeling of wholeness.
The goal of FEEL is the experience of unity of self.

Disconnections within the psyche interfere with your experience of unity.

These emotional blocks are born in the moment you ejected or rejected yourself.
Self is ejected in moments of abuse, trauma, neglect or loss to avoid the next moment.
Self is rejected when you reject yourself because someone you love or need rejects you.
When parts of self are ejected or rejected, those parts disconnect and go somewhere else.

When someone you love or need rejects you, you get angry.
More times then not, that anger is directed inwards.
The younger you are when this happens, the more likely you are to blame yourself.
It’s usually not safe to express this anger so it’s held in and turns on you.
This formula of self-blame often goes on for a lifetime.
If you often accept blame, it could the influence of this childhood formula at work.

Rejection from others that causes rejection of self is the source of most feelings of inadequacy. The
younger you are when you’re rejected, the more of self gets lost because you have fewer boundaries to
stop the psyche from dissociating.

The more of self that’s lost in the past, the larger the emotional holes within the soul.

What can a person do with an emotional hole but run from it?
Any effort to feel the hole is depressing and brings you down.
All attempts at controlling it only winds up controlling you.
The common solution is to ‘tuck’ the holes away along with their negative feelings.

With FEEL, though, you have a plan of attack.

Daily use creates the persistence necessary to counteract negativity coming from a hole.
By letting yourself feel uncomfortable, a sense of acceptance is created.
Acceptance allows disconnections to come together so the self can mend.
Unity of self creates a sense of wholeness and well-being.

The objective of the Feel Technique is unity of self. While unity of self is not something you can make
happen, you can feel your way through the blocks to it.

Getting rid of unwanted, negative feelings is beyond conscious control.

If anything, like the Chinese finger puzzle, the solution means first pushing closer into it.

Unity of self is more available through consistent periods of allowance during FEEL.
Consistent periods of allowance of that negativity gives its energy a chance to dissolve.
Consistent means daily and limited periods of time means 5 to 30 minutes each sitting.

Disconnections due to past wounds to the heart limit your ability to feel.
Disunity of self results in dysfunctional relationships.
Relationships involve family, business, friendship and love.
Disconnecting from feelings also means to disconnect from meaning.
When meaning is lost, so is self.

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Unity of self is the opposite condition of disconnection.
Unity of self is the state you were born into.
Unity of self is the state you want to get back to.
Unity of self makes you comfortable to be in your own skin.
Unity of self produces integrity within the self and the behavior that manifests.

A difference underneath makes a difference at the surface.

Hungarian Saying

The disunited mind cannot be completely honest with itself.

When you can fool yourself, it becomes easier to be dishonest with others.
The disunited mind cannot receive wisdom nor have peace.
The lack of wisdom and the want of peace bear no ground for joy.

Wholeness of self, however, is a natural ground where satisfaction can grow.

Unity of self is solid ground to bear new fruit.
The journey within isn’t easy.
But it can be wonderful.

When you experience unity of self, you feel centered more often.
Unity is a centered feeling that, in time, makes you feel grounded.
Centered and grounded decisions produce dynamic actions.
Centered and grounded people are dynamic.

While meditating on “feel,” you may or may not feel a difference while you’re doing it.
When FEEL activates your nervous system, the shift in feelings are usually subtle.
From subtlety to subtlety, in time, there is a difference.

From subtlety to subtlety, existence opens.

Lao-Tzu

When that difference begins to make a difference, you’ll notice it.

You’ll recognize a change in your feelings, perceptions, judgments, or thoughts.
Things you didn’t pay attention to before may start to catch your attention.

Feeling more connected and comfortable within is a wonderful experience.

As feelings grow stronger, your experience of life advances to new levels.
The experience of unity of self is hard to explain.
It may be best defined within the experience of it.
It can be said, though, that unity of self is ease and connection.

Both the mind and the body have the ability to heal itself.
Hippocates

The mind is creative and can surprise itself.

Under some conditions, the mind even heals itself.
The Feel Technique is a procedure to optimize change from within.
FEEL creates a condition of unity along with a foundation for new points of control.

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The human mind will not be confined to any limits.
Goethe

Feelings come to mind without any effort.

Thoughts and feelings surface automatically.
Emotions are innate, instinctive and complex.
While emotions can be complex, FEEL is a very simple method.

Can a simple method such as FEEL work on people with complex emotions?
Can something as simple as repeating a word/sound make a real difference in your life?
The answer to both questions is yes and here’s why:

Thoughts and feelings originate in your center.

By activating the subconscious with repetition, it reaches that core.

When the vibration is carried to your core, it stimulates you.

Vibrations carry energy that’s measurable.

The vibration of FEEL contains both a request and a command within the psyche.
From subconscious to unconscious processes, FEEL stimulates the nervous system.
This vibration encourages the nervous system to do a little more of what it already does.

Is it reasonable to expect that you can tell your nervous system to feel and have it respond?
Did you know that your eyes can be made to see better at a moment’s notice?

Participants in a study were asked to look at letters and numbers on a board at a bit of a distance. They
were asked to read them out loud as best they could. The writing was at a distance and somewhat small,
so it was fairly difficult to read. Due to these conditions they could make out some of the letters and
numbers and some they couldn’t. After reading the board, they were given a break.

During their break they were told that they would read the same information one more time. However,
they were also told that when they read the text again, they should imagine they were breaking a nazi
code, and the fate of the free world depended on them getting it right. With that imaginary thought in
mind, all the reading levels were a bit higher the second time around. Due to an imaginary thought, they
actually saw slightly better.

If your eyes can be encouraged to see better at a moment’s notice, what effect do you think prolonged,
repeated exposure to the request and command to “feel” could have?

Time and water wears away rock.

Confucius

Water is the most fluid, pliable, yielding substance known to man.

Yet the mighty Grand Canyon was formed by the persistence of water.
Perseverance makes it happen.

In this meditation the agent of change is vibration.

But it is the repeated exposure to the sound of “feel” that makes you feel more.

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If you repeatedly tell your nervous system to feel, in time it will respond.

IV AFTERTHOUGHTS AND AFTERWARDS

The Electron and You

Few understand and fewer still can explain the sub-atomic world of physics.
Yet there is something about the way an electron acts that can provide a valuable lesson.

No one knows why, but an electron moves in two different ways simultaneously.
An electron moves as both a particle and as a wave, at the very same time.
However, once the electron is observed, its nature then changes.
Once the electron is seen, it then only moves as a particle or a wave, and stays that way.
Once the electron is observed either as a particle or a wave, its course becomes fixed.
From that point on it moves either as a wave or as a particle, but never again as both.

Scientist are not sure why.

They are only certain it can move either way until observed.

What does this have to do with you?

When you see something as a problem, it becomes a problem.
If you didn’t see it as a problem, would it still be one?

IS THERE NO WAY OUT?

If you think FEEL doesn’t seem to be working or doing any good, it might not be.
Yet, it’s also possible you might be stuck in your head.
The problem is that most people who are trapped in their head can’t tell that they are.

Is there no way out of the mind?

Sylvia Plath

If you don’t think that FEEL is working, give it more time.

You might discover a blockage or a barrier to feelings that you didn’t realize was there.

If you stop using FEEL after you’ve dedicated and applied yourself to doing this process for a while,
consider that something may be surfacing that you’d rather ignore. Defense mechanisms can buffer
feelings well enough to disguise how you really feel. So, how can you tell if the technique is not
working or if you’re just stuck in your head?

Use FEEL for a while!

See what happens.
See what comes to you.
See what you feel.

What can you do if you discover an emotional block or disconnection within?

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Use FEEL!

Use FEEL as a simple meditation or a body focus meditation.

Take all the time you need to discover any blocks that might be inside.
Take all the time you need to experience the block where you physically feel it.

Take all the time needed to find out if you have an emotional block you’re not aware of.
When you can feel yourself blocked in an area, invite “feel” there.
When you discover more than one blocked area, attend to only one area at a time.

The majority of people live in their heads.

That’s where most point to when asked where their ‘control center’ is.
FEEL helps you feel more, which moves you out of the world of your head.

The inner world of your mind is where information comes from to guide your actions.
The outer world is where everything is happening and where the moment of now is.
In any given moment you’re in the inner world of the mind or the outer world of the now.
From moment to moment, the mind switches back and forth between these two worlds.

Shifting back and forth between the inner and outer worlds, reality gets created. Reality gets distorted
when emotional blocks misconstrue the information coming in. From moment to moment, switching
back and forth between inner and outer worlds, you can’t always tell if a problem is coming from you or
from your environment.

This confusion is natural and understandable.

Internal, unconscious blocks are easily projected as external issues.
Internal blocks are seen as problems coming from someone else.
Yet, problems in your life often have you as its source.

When you don’t see your contribution to an unjust situation, it’s easy to get angry.

You can’t see outside of the limitations of your own perceptions.

So you may be the cause of a dilemma and not know it.
If you are the source of a problem, you’ll want to know it.
You would want to know if the blocks in your life originate within you.
How else can you know where to begin to look for a solution?

Let’s assume you are like most people and have emotional blocks.
Solutions are easier to find when you know where to find the problem.
So to begin, you want to find out where you feel blocked.
You want to know how many places you can feel blocked.
You want to discover the location where you feel blocked the most inside.
You want to feel the blocks that come up, even though they are uncomfortable.
Feeling your emotional blocks is the path to unity of self.

In the moment of now.

Little or no reaction.
Just being.
Zen Proverb

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You want to feel good, but you don’t want to feel bad.
You want to feel good, so you turn off your emotional spigot.
You want to feel good, but your emotional capacity to feel has been dampened.

You may initially be uncomfortable doing FEEL.

Once you’ve shut down, inertia alone creates resistance to feeling more.
It’s uncomfortable to feel strongly when you haven’t for a while.
It’s uncomfortable to have more feelings when you’re not used to it.

Using FEEL could be uncomfortable at first or for a short time.

“Letting go” doesn’t come easily and neither does real growth.
Stretching through the confines of self and the routines of habit feels awkward, too.
At times you will feel foolish or absurd using the Feel Technique.

Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.
Albert Einstein

Your willingness to be uncomfortable will stretch you emotionally.

Your willingness to be uncomfortable will prove its own reward.

The experience of “I don’t want to feel,” is an emotional block to feeling.

The experience of “I don’t want to feel” is normal, and you will have it more than once.
When you don’t want to feel, emotional blocks help you to achieve it.
An emotional block is a repressive energy network that extends throughout the body.
It’s an unconscious system of cooperation between mind and body to hold your feelings in.

Words have power and influence.

When you hold your words in due to fear, you lose your power.
When you hold words in, you’re not aware how much power you give away.
Patrick Henry’s words are remembered for their eloquence against tyranny.
These words also stand out because of his unwillingness to give up his power.

When you don’t say how you feel, an emotional block keeps you from speaking up.
An emotional block is energy that is repressed in the mind as well as in the body.
The body carries tension within its physiology to keep the words from surfacing.

Defenses act as a buffer so you don’t have to feel the depths of your discomfort.
When feelings recede to where you no longer feel them, you have a repressed block.
A repressed emotional block holds a lot of tension and a lot of charge.
Sometimes you can feel that charge in the persistent tension that doesn’t go away.
When you hold your words in, body energy flows downward to help you swallow them.

FEEL helps to reverse the direction of the downward motion of repressive energy.
FEEL encourages feelings and unspoken words to rise to the surface.
FEEL makes you more comfortable having and owning your feelings.
When you say how you really feel, a lot of tension within is released.

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To answer the question, “Is there no way out (of the mind),” saying how you really feel is the best way
out of whatever emotional discomfort you’re in. If your decision to not speak up is out of choice and
not fear, the other “way out” is to feel what you’re feeling until the negative charge is gone.

The longer you use the Feel Technique, the more you’ll find that every so often a thought comes to you
that you’ll find particularly wise or smart. When you examine the content of those thoughts, you’ll find
that most of the sentences within those ‘wiser’ thoughts began with the words “I feel…”

Sentences beginning with “I feel…” demonstrate the heart was included in the process.
Thoughts that consider the heart lend an increased wisdom to the mix.
Decisions involving the heart usually lead to more solid decisions that satisfy.

If your inner mind isn’t deceived, your outer actions won’t be wrong.
Tibetan Proverb

Using FEEL activates and energizes the nervous system, which stimulates the heart.
A stimulated heart makes you feel more alive and helps the heart to trust itself more.

The Feel Technique improves your connection to your heart.

The stronger that link is, the more ease you’ll have of saying what’s on it.
Freedom of expression, when it’s from the heart, is a liberating experience each time it’s used.

The Future

While it’s true that the unconscious mind can put things together and figure things out that you are not
yet aware of, a feeling or an image representing a feeling is not a prognosticator of things to come. It
could be a cue or a clue as to which direction things are heading, but no one can tell the future. Many
things happen the way they do simply because we expect them to, so our subconscious inclinations and
conscious actions support that eventual outcome.

Regret

Regret is a natural outgrowth of disappointment.

Yet, every moment spent in regret is another moment of the “now” that is lost.
The loss of now reduces the potential to move forward.

To move forward you have to get out of the past.

It’s easy to tell someone to stop living in the past.

Yet we can’t help but feel the way we feel.
Regret is a persistent uncomfortable feeling.
Use FEEL with the feeling of regret as with any wanted, negative feeling.
Locate the negativity, allow it to be there, invite “feel” to that area.
See what happens next.
Feel what happens next.

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Negative Cycles

Negative feelings lead to negative actions and reactions.

Negative actions only put important goals further out of reach.

If you fill a hole in your soul with food, you’ll gain weight.
If you fill a hole in your soul with drink, you’ll lose control.
If you fill a hole in your soul with security, you’ll fear losing it.
If you fill a hole in your soul by controlling others, you’ll distance them.

It’s ironic that unmet needs lead to actions that create the conditions
that decrease the chances of those needs ever being met, even more.

Enlightenment In The Bronx

In one episode of “The Defenders,” a TV show about the law from the early 1960’s, a young, “retarded”
man from the Bronx, we’ll call Bill, witnessed a murder. When the wrong man is charged with that
murder, Bill is called as a witness to save the innocent man from false charges and certain execution.

Bill is a friendly person and happy to help. But when he gets to court and takes the stand, within
minutes the District Attorney’s demeaning tone and rapid volley style of questioning puts Bill off
balance, making him feel small and stupid.

As Bill leaves the court, he tells the attorney “I know I’m retarded, but that made me feel even more
retarded.” Adding that he “wasn’t going to go through that again.” The rest of the hour-long show was
spent trying to convince Bill to return to court because an innocent man would die without his
testimony.

Bill was adamant about not going through another humiliating incident like that again.

Time was running out and the attorney had an idea. He asked Bill to come to court again, but on a
different case. Not to testify, but just to “see something.” That is to watch something in the court
proceedings, nothing more. Once Bill was reassured a few times that it had nothing to do with him and
nothing would be expected, he agreed to go back to the courtroom.

In the next scene, Bill is in the back of the courtroom watching the proceeds from another case. It’s the
same District Attorney and the same courtroom, but on the stand now is a doctor. The doctor looks
intelligent, is well dressed with a professional demeanor about him. As the DA approaches him, the
doctor looks confident and ready to answer. The DA’s demeaning tone and rapid volley of questions,
however, quickly puts the doctor off balance, making him look stupid and unprofessional, in pretty short
order.

Bill sees this.

When Bill leaves the courtroom this time, he tells the attorney he has changed his mind and he is now
willing to testify. In the next scene, Bill is again on the witness stand. The same District Attorney
approaches to interrogate him. It’s obvious the DA remembers him because he has a big smirk on his
face as he swaggers over.

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The DA looks confident of victory as he lets into Bill with a barrage of questions and seeming
contradictions. He wants Bill to look uncertain about what happened on the night of the murder, but Bill
just sits quietly and doesn’t say a word. The District Attorney pauses for a moment and when Bill still
doesn’t answer, he again goes into his intimidation dance. After a few more questions the DA stops
talking and, looking confused, waits for an answer.

Bill looks up and slowly, very slowly says:

“I I I I I m-m-m-m-may-bbb be s-s-slow…bu-bu-bu-but I’m certain.”

The DA’s jaw dropped to the floor.

The case was won at the last minute.
The innocent guy went free, and the show was over.

Anatomy of Bill’s Enlightenment

Bill was afraid his heart would be wounded.

He feared it would be a familiar wound, the worst kind.
Fear paralyzed him and he couldn’t move forward.

Bill would not allow himself to be overwhelmed in the same situation.

However, he would allow himself to be uncomfortable, if he felt safe doing so.
As an observer, he had a safety zone within an adversarial arena.
As an observer, he saw the same situation from a different point of view.
As an observer, he was able to see something he couldn’t see before.
A different perspective furnishes new information and additional options.

He now realized it wasn’t about him, it was just about how court works.
That knowledge provided a new perspective.
That new perspective protected his heart from being wounded again.

New knowledge made him comfortable and gave him confidence.

New understanding allowed him to trust, not fear his condition.
New understanding allowed him to trust, not fear the situation.
That knowledge created a new center and a new ground for Bill.
This new center and new ground gave him a new place to take a stand.

Then he moved forward with the potential to move his world.

Only one quality made Bill’s transformation possible.

His willingness to safely be uncomfortable.
Life is tough, but it’s not always about you, it’s just about how life works.

That knowledge will help you endure any discomfort or difficulty you
experience in your willingness to be safely uncomfortable.

DON’TS

When using the Feel Technique do not use the words “I feel.”
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“I” contains ego. We want to activate the innate, not the ego.
Also, don’t use the words “I feel better.”
This only furthers the disconnection when it’s not true.
Only use the sound of one word: “Feel.”

The Feel Technique can be used socially except:

When driving or operating heavy machinery.
During a very important meeting.
During worship service or prayer.
Anything that requires your full attention.

Don’t do before bedtime. It might keep you up.

Don’t use when feeling panic.

If you feel panic or find yourself in a frightening situation, don’t use FEEL!
Concentrating on panic makes the feelings worse.
Instead, find a way to comfort yourself.
If you don’t know how to comfort yourself, you may have never learned how.
If you don’t know how to comfort yourself, find a way.

Many people who suffer from panic attacks were not comforted and nurtured enough as children, and so
never learned how to comfort themselves. For others, panic is a sign of a disconnection within the mind
and the body.

While it’s ok to use FEEL when feeling fear, it won’t help you when feeling panic.

When using FEEL as a body-focus meditation, don’t bring FEEL to the knot with the thought of
loosening it or undoing the block. Change comes from repetition, allowance and the innate, not
conscious effort.

Don’t try to make the Feel Technique work.

Just let FEEL and your nervous system and subconscious do it for you.
Your nervous system and subconscious mind KNOW WHAT TO DO.

Don’t use FEEL on rage. Anger has tremendous potential as a force for healing and change, but
focusing on anger or rage might encourage you to do something or react in a way you may later regret.

If using FEEL brings on feelings of rage, stop using this method until the issues are resolved. If the
feelings continue regardless of your efforts, immediately seek out a competent therapist. In therapy you
can find a safe place to feel your feelings without consequences. Saying ok to your feelings in a safe
environment like therapy is important if feelings of rage are involved.

One Upsmanship

Feeling right leaves less room for feeling bad.

The avoidance of bad feelings is a key incentive for most.

One way to avoid feeling bad is by feeling “right.”
Being or feeling right is most people’s favorite place to be.
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Being one up on someone is a strongly, universally desired position.

Feeling right gives you a feeling of control and control fills holes.
Feeling right can provide emotional leverage over someone else.
Feeling right is the substance of pride and pride feels good.

There is more to life than you see.

There is more to life than you can be right about.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched.
They must be felt with the heart.
Helen Keller

V BETTER SLEEP AND GROWTH TECHNIQUES

1] THE GAUGE TECHNIQUE

This technique is most useful at those times when you’re not feeling good.

Begin by asking yourself, on a scale of 1 to 100, how badly do I feel right now?
With 100 being the worst you could feel.

A number will come to mind without effort. That number will have come from your subconscious
mind. The subconscious will throw up an answer and you’ll know it’s right because when you consider
other numbers, they won’t ‘feel right.’ When you consider other numbers, your mind will come back to
the same number, or thereabouts.

The number will come to you from within, with little to no effort. You can easily confirm the number
because it will ‘feel right’ as a representation of how you feel. Whether you are sad or angry or even
hung-over from the night before, ask yourself: On a scale of 1 to 100, how badly do I feel?

Whatever number comes to mind, that number is your starting number, so remember it!

Then, as time passes, say every thirty minutes, take the time to check “internally,” to see where that
number ‘feels to be’ at that moment. When you try to gauge what that number (1 and 100) is each time,
(unless something is really wrong), the numbers should go down each time you check.

Each time you check and the number is lower than the time before, your anxiety should reduce. You’ll
feel better just knowing that you’re feeling better than before!

The Gauge Technique simply taps into the natural biofeedback available from within.

Unless you don’t like the number that comes to you and you try to block it out, the feedback on your
status is always accurate, simply because you know how you feel. (If the starting number is very high,
getting immediate help might be the right call.)

The Gauge Technique begins with a starting number that represents how you initially feel. When you
later check on the new number, it will be lower, creating a sense of comfort and reassurance that

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everything is heading in the right direction and it’s going to be ok. Each time that number lessens, you
will feel better and feel more in control.

This technique will only work if you honor and accept the numbers that come to you, rather than making
up numbers that you wish it were. Several studies show that mammals who felt like they were not in
control, did not fare well in the reproductive and survival departments. The most interesting point of
these studies was that it didn’t matter whether the subjects actually were in control or not! That didn’t
matter!

Of paramount importance, however, and all that mattered and made a difference in their reproductive
and survival rates was that they felt like they were.

Not feeling in control is the greatest source of stress a person or a mammal can have. This technique
provides biofeedback to reassure you that control is increasing with time.

2] SUCCESS EXERCISE

A major ingredient for success is to find the steps others have missed.

In the Success Exercise you make a commitment to yourself. Before making any important decision,
before you taking any action, you commit to ask yourself:
What other step could I take first before I do this?

Then wait!

Give yourself time to see if anything comes to you.

Sometimes a good night sleep is suggested before anything surfaces.
Sometimes, even a few days would be called for before making a decision.

While a new thought or idea may or may not come to you, the point of the Success Exercise is that you
are giving your subconscious and unconscious mind a chance to communicate with you. This lets you
know if there’s anything below the surface that could be of value because you already know more than
you realize.

The inner mind knows more than you consciously know.

Giving the innate a chance to share its knowledge could be a source of valuable information.
Innate can spotlight a small thing before it becomes a big one.
Small things become big issues real fast…especially when you don’t see it coming.

Success is hard work meeting opportunity. Successful people go through a lot of crap before getting to
the gold, so you could say that failure is the manure of success.

Even so, the difference between failure and success is finding the steps others missed.

3] CONCRETE STEPS

Let’s say you’re at point A.

And let’s say your goal is at point B.
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What’s in the way of getting to point B?
Space and time!

Everything else, every other obstacle is from you.

Anything else in the way is you.

Here’s a plan to get out of your own way, get out of your head and get what you want:

List your priorities.

List the specific steps to accomplish your goals.
DO THEM!

4] WHAT WOULD YOUR HEART SAY?

The heart is a muscle. So the more you use it, the stronger it becomes.

Sometimes, something will flash through your mind about something you’d like to say, but you don’t.
You censor yourself because you’re embarrassed or you feel awkward.

If the thought is from the heart, push through the discomfort to say what’s on it.
Speaking your heart creates an atmosphere that prompts or allows others to speak theirs.
It makes a heart feel good when others respond from their hearts.

So keep in mind:
What would my heart say?

5] FALLING ASLEEP FASTER

Method 1
Time and Space Technique

The only time you truly have to yourself is when you sleep.
It really is the only time of the day that you can call yours and yours alone.
The space in the bed that your body occupies is also yours alone, as well.
The time in that bed is yours and the space in that bed is yours.
Most importantly, the space in your head belongs to you.
To lay claim to that space you want to learn to control your thoughts.
Here’s how:

Whenever you can’t sleep, you’ll notice the thoughts and feelings keeping you awake all have one thing
in common: they involve people in some way.

Whether it’s getting your car fixed, seeing the doctor, an unfinished argument or paying the phone bill:
Somebody is involved! The goal here is to get them out of your head so you can sleep. To accomplish
this, it becomes your job to lay claim to the space in that bed and the space in your psyche.

Next time thoughts are keeping you awake, think about who is or would be involved. For example, let’s
say you were worried about something insensitive you said to a friend. It’s crossed your mind that he
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might look at you differently now and you’re wondering if you should say something to him. It’s been
on you mind all day and it’s on your mind now, at bedtime.

As you lie in bed, take the time to imagine you can see him. Take the time to imagine seeing him or her
in as much detail as you can. When you’ve got a fairly good picture of him, tell him to leave. Say
something like “time to leave my thoughts, time to leave my head and get out of my space.” Thoughts
have their roots in our inner pictures. So, in this exercise, imagine seeing the person involved and
imagine saying to them

“Whatever the problem is, it will have to wait until tomorrow!”

This is an easy thing to do. Your eyelids are closed anyway and it’s time to let your imagination run
free and allow the movie to play on the back of your eyelids or the back of your mind. In this instance
you might say something to him in your imagination like: “I’m sorry for what happened today, but I’ll
deal with it and with you tomorrow. I can’t discuss it with you now because this is my time, so you’re
going to have to leave. But I will talk to you about it tomorrow, so for now you have got to go.”

Play that scene or one like it until you see them go. If more than one person comes to mind, speak to
them as a group or individually. However you do it, let them know that this is your time and your space.
Once you’ve laid claim to your space, you will find that your mind has calmed down a bit and you can
now rest more easily.

Let whoever is occupying that space in your head know that you’re trying to sleep and this is your time
and they should take it up with you the next day! If it’s a phone bill, see the operator in her cubical in
great detail, and then, explain how this is your time and your space and your bed and your head. And,
however urgent it may be, explain to her that “it will have to wait till tomorrow.” If thoughts return
about the bill again, picture the operator again and get even firmer with her. No ifs, ands, buts or nuts,
tell her to leave your thoughts until you see her doing so! This exercise helps you to fall asleep by
dismissing the people involved in the thoughts at bedtime.

If the thoughts continue, then you have to persist in telling the people involved in the situations to leave
and keep telling them to go until you see them walk away. You can watch this unfold with your eyes
closed. If the thoughts return, that means the person has returned. So again insist they leave, again
telling them why.

((There is another benefit, also. When you fall asleep, your conscious mind turns off and your
subconscious takes over. The subconscious mind is only made up of one thing: pictures. So by treating
an image of someone as if it were real, you’re speaking the picture language of the subconscious mind.
By treating an image/figure as though it were real/literal, (as you do in your dreams), you’re activating
the subconscious mind. Activating the subconscious mind helps to usher in the onset of sleep.))

If you don’t see them return, you’re well on your way to a good nights sleep. If this becomes a struggle
and you can’t see them leaving no matter how many times you try, there’s probably something more
involved or going on that needs addressing.

If your conscience is bothering you, or if you’ve betrayed yourself, or you’ve used dishonesty as
leverage, you’re going to have to take whatever steps you can to patch up yourself, the situation, or the
relationship up before you’ll get a good nights sleep.

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Your conscience is part of your innate and so it cannot be compromised or conditioned. You can try to
silence it or ignore it, but it will stick its innate head out somewhere else. The innate and the
subconscious are closely aligned, so dreams are the most likely place for the conscience to express itself.

You need your sleep, so try to put right whatever needs putting right.

Method 2
The Counting Method

In the Counting Method you won’t be counting sheep.

Rather, you’ll be counting odd thoughts.

There are different stages of sleep.

The first stage is called twilight sleep.
The last stage is REM, or deep sleep.

At the stage when your mind shifts from consciousness to twilight sleep, your brain always starts to have
odd thoughts. An odd thought could be something like “The boat can’t get the mail.” Or “The house is
too small for that desert.” Or “Those tables are heavy when they shine like that.” Or any other odd
thought.

Odd thoughts begin when you approach the first stage, twilight sleep.
This is true for everyone.
This is a signal that you’re starting to fall asleep.
How can knowing this help you?

Simple!
Count the odd thoughts!

Because here’s the oddest thing of all!

It is highly, highly unlikely you’ll get past three odd thoughts before you fall asleep.

As you go to sleep, when you look for it, you’ll recognize when you have the first odd thought of the
evening. Once your mind knows and realizes that the first odd thought has occurred, your mind and
body will immediately relax, knowing sleep is on the way.

By the second odd thought, your psyche is well on its way to the twilight stage.
At this point you no longer need encouragement to fall asleep.

Most people don’t make it past the third odd thought before falling asleep.
If you’re still awake by the third odd thought, that’s ok.
You’re probably close to twilight sleep and you will soon be asleep.
If you wake up and become alert, start counting over.

In this exercise we’re not looking to control thoughts as much as just observe them.
Recognizing and counting odd thoughts will facilitate the approach of twilight sleep.

Method 3
Rest
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Many studies show that a night’s rest is almost as good as a night’s sleep.
If you can’t sleep, rather than struggling to try to sleep, just be content to rest.
A good night’s rest can give you enough energy for the next day.

6] A SECOND BODY-FOCUS PROCEDURE

What if uncomfortable feelings just won’t go away?

The body-focus meditation described earlier didn’t take much effort

other then repeating a word and staying put if it got uncomfortable.
All that was required was to invite the sound / vibration of “feel” to the area of discomfort or negativity.

There is another approach that may help undo tension or discomfort that won’t go away.
Some persistent feelings may require more effort than a body-focus meditation.
It may require some emotional maneuvering.

The following procedure is a method for going very deep in the subconscious mind.
This is a step by step procedure for handing persistent uncomfortable feelings.

(It’s recommended you use the first body-focus method from chapter three before learning this one.)

When using FEEL as a body-focus technique, use it on one area of your body at a time.

Step by step, it works like this:

1] Take time to discover and define where you feel the unwanted feeling.
2] Take time to find out what’s going on in that area and what it’s like there.
3] Take time to acknowledge its presence and allow it to be in that space/area.
4] Bring or invite FEEL to the area where you feel an unwanted feeling or sensation.
5] Allow the sound of FEEL and the uncomfortable feeling to occupy the same area.
6] Be an observer of the area and what’s happening there.
7] Watch and wait and see and feel.

Simply: Locate an unwanted feeling, allow it to be there, and then invite “feel” to the area.

The purpose of using the sound/vibration of “feel” this way is not to simply meditate on each part of the
body as in the first body-focus method described. In other words, in the first meditation you’re just
“being with it.” In this procedure you are taking action.

Please use the first body-focus meditation for a while before trying this one.

Remember the Chinese finger puzzle where you have to push in before you could pull out? This body-
focus meditation is like that. The paradox of undoing a persistent uncomfortable feeling is that it first
requires a step towards it. The purpose of using FEEL in this method is to reduce or dissolve negative
feelings.

The paradox is that even as we want to reduce or dissolve negative feelings, we must approach them in a
way so as to first receive and embrace them! This is accomplished through allowance. What you

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experience as an uncomfortable feeling or discomfort has vibration. So, as you receive and allow the
discomfort, you’re also inviting one vibration to visit another vibration to undo it.

What you experience as tightness or a headache has form and energy within the psyche.
Form and energy is less likely to transform while you’re struggling with it!

Though the purpose of using this seven-step procedure is to reduce or dissolve negative feelings,
allowance is an important ingredient. Inviting “feel” to an area for the purpose of dissolving it begins
with finding the location of the discomfort or negative feeling, then focusing on the area as you take the
time to know what it’s like there.

Once you’ve got its location and you know what it’s like, the next step is allowance. Allow for its shape
and its size, form, hardness, tightness, width, thickness, roughness or anything else you discover about
the characteristics and qualities of the area it is in. From location, to allowance, to transformation, this
second body-focus method starts with locating the total area and space the negative feeling inhabits.
If unwanted feelings are in more than one place, focus on one area at a time.

If it seems too hard to find the location for a negative feeling, stop using the technique as a body focus
method, for the time being, and just use it as a simple meditation. You can allow for uncomfortable
feelings while meditating, even if you’re not sure where they are. After meditating with “feel” for a
while, the location may be clearer.

Inviting the vibration of “feel” to an area of negativity produces a point of contact.

When the vibration and the negative energy occupy the same space, contact is made.
You may be aware of what’s going on within that point of contact or you may not.
You may feel or experience something happening there or not.

FEEL invites feelings to the light of day and open air of your conscious mind.
As with any defense mechanism, keeping feelings hidden does take energy.
And the older you get the less energy you have to spare for these defenses.

Allowing feelings to be where they are releases repressed energy.

Allowing feelings to be what they are doesn’t mean you have to act on them.
Allowing feelings to “just be” frees up reserves of energy held within your musculature.

Reserves of released energy empower the psyche to move forward in new ways.
Reserves of energy permit you to move towards goals with less effort.
There is no mystery to the truth that when the struggle stops energy is freed up.

It’s safe to feel what you really feel because you don’t have to act on your feelings. Accepting the
presence of uncomfortable, negative feelings, if even for just a short while, is a necessary first step in
encouraging the dissolution of that feeling. However, if an uncomfortable feeling persists regardless of
how many times you bring the sound of “feel” to it, then therapy might be the right direction to go.

Whichever form of FEEL you use, when nothing seems to be happening, that’s ok.
Just keep using FEEL daily.
Transformation takes time.
Take the time that will take.

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VI HERE AND NOW, NOW AND THEN

Unity of self is a here and now kind of experience.

Being in the here and now is a peak experience.
Part of the definition of a peak experience is that it isn’t happening all the time.
So no matter how good you feel using FEEL, it won’t always be a peek experience.

Trying to be in the here and now all the time is a struggle.

Only try for now and then.

VII THE END

When your nervous system feels to capacity, you feel good.

When you feel good, from time to time, you experience ‘wonder.’
Wonder is the experience of marvel, openness and curiosity.
Wonder is the door to new and life altering experiences.

From wonder into wonder, existence opens.

Lao-Tzu

I like surprise endings.

I can only guess that Lao-Tzu liked them, as well.
You may or may not like this surprise ending.
Fortunately, the technique works whether or not you do.

I am a Ph.D. which means a Doctor of Philosophy.

So you could say I am a professional philosopher.
Any philosophy is going to be somber and subjective.
Subjective because whether it’s Decarte, Camus, or Feel, it’s only an opinion.

The total focus of this book has been you and the inner you.
You’ve been encouraged to go inside of self for answers, and that still stands.
Going inside for centering before coming out to make contact with the world is healthy.
And makes good sense.

The greatest feeling you can experience is bliss, but is that the goal of life?

Though the Feel Technique is a very centering experience, it would be naïve and misleading to leave
you with the impression that you are the limits of your universe. Consider that you may encounter a
hole in the soul that FEEL and therapy can’t fill or heal. When a hole or emptiness won’t dissipate
regardless of treatment, something else is needed. That something else could be something outside of
you.

Man is not just a physical and psychological being, but also a spiritual one. In looking at something
outside of self, outside of you would have to be referring to a higher power.

The highest power we can address is God.

This makes sense, as any focus on the intuitive side of self would include spirituality.
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Even spiritually, though, we are symbolic creatures and think in conceptual ways.
No one has seen or met Him, so for most God is a concept and not much more.
A philosopher once said that if there weren’t a God, we would create one.
Maybe we would create Him because we are made that way.
Maybe we were made with a hole in our soul so we would want to reach out to Him.

If FEEL can’t dissolve a hole in our soul and therapy doesn’t resolve it,
is it conceivable that a Creator designed you with a hole that only He could fill?

It’s possible we’re made with a hole in our souls that treatment can’t touch.
Isn’t it?

Scientists believe that certain genes within our DNA predispose some people to seek God out more than
others. Spiritual logic points to the notion that we are designed to seek Him out, and that this desire will
be stronger in some than others.

You have a gene that predisposes you to reach out to God.

That gene may be stronger in you than most or weaker.
Regardless of your level of interest in the spiritual, consider this:
A hole that doesn’t succumb to treatment may be a space only He can fill.

All of life is about purpose.

The direction of all life is to get to the next stage.
And that purpose is always about the next thing or the next stage.
That’s why squirrels hoard nuts. For the next season.
That’s why you went to school. To prepare for adulthood.
That’s why you work. To get the things you want.
For some the next stage is retirement.
Life is all about getting to or preparing for the next stage.

For a sperm, the next stage is getting born.

Once here, what’s the next stage?
What’s the direction or purpose of your life then?

The objective of the Feel Technique is unity of self.

Unity of self is a wonderful, wonderful experience.
While it is the purpose of FEEL is unity of self, is that to be the purpose of life?
Spiritual leaders say the purpose of life is to get to know and worship God.

If there is a God, what would the purpose of life be?

If there is a God, wouldn’t the purpose of life be to get into Heaven?

People have all sorts of filters about being told how to get into Heaven.
Few things can make you more uncomfortable.
And you know how often you’ll go out of your way to avoid being uncomfortable.

However, is there a question that’s more important than where you will spend eternity?
A billion years times a billion years is only the hem of the garment of forever.
In our small slice of time we cannot fathom the width and depth of time forever will take.

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If there is a Heaven, isn’t it in your best interest to know now?
If there is a Heaven, wouldn’t you want to know what it takes to get in?

This is an uncomfortable thought.

It’s uncomfortable because we inwardly fear that we don’t measure up.

It’s also uncomfortable because it relates to death, a scary thing to consider.
And it’s an uncomfortable thought because the alternative to Heaven is also scary.

Most people avoid uncomfortable thoughts and you may want to avoid this subject, too.
Or you may want to find out what’s required.

These are uncomfortable thoughts.

Growth can be uncomfortable.
But as an Inner Space Traveler, you already knew that.

May the innate be with you!

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