Your “Felt Sense”: How to Tap Into Your Animal Awareness

Kristen Dawn
Jun 29, 2024
3 min read

You are a human animal.

Maybe you’ve forgotten this with all the things you have to do (I get it! Adulting is freaking hard 😵‍💫). But, that ancient part of you is WILD. That unbridled, instinctual being you’ve stuffed down is a key to clearing out trauma and anxiety so you can claim your power.

Your Animal Awareness

How can you feel your animal senses? You can feel your primal power when your body takes the reins from your mind. When this surge of awareness is teeming through you, three senses—interoception, exteroception, and proprioception—are affecting how safe you feel and the next action you take.

When you sense what’s going on inside your body, it’s called interoception—like noticing your heartbeat or if you’re hungry.
Exteroception is about sensing things outside your body, like the temperature or textures around you.
Proprioception is understanding where your body is in space, like how your limbs relate to the room or the Earth

Murphy, my super chill golden retriever puppy (😂), would like to demonstrate his animal senses in this clip taken on the Farmington River outside my office at the Collinsville Axe Factory.

Murphy’s epic stick-getting skills are an example of instinctual body senses taking over. I guarantee his mind wasn't turned on at all! Hah. (not to say his mind is EVER turned on…) And on the way home, his sense of proprioception took over, prompting him to feel his being move through the air.

During a craniosacral session, I work with all three of these senses to help folks’ animal instincts — or “felt sense”— do the healing work. I may ask questions about what they’re sensing or seeing inside their bodies. I may use my voice as a toning vibration to help their cells know they’re safe. Or, I may just let their mind baseline to a thoughtless zone so their body can take over.

Your Felt Sense

How do you know your body is operating from your felt sense? You know something is happening somatically (in your body) when it’s hard to formulate words about what you’re feeling. That’s because your brain is catching up with the healing work your body is doing. Your mind is coming up with language to describe a sensation that it (the mind) has never experienced before.

There is a wild wisdom to your body…and you can source it.

Wild Wisdom Tip: 🦊 Fox-Walk to Source Your Animal Instincts

ree — BTW, walking barefoot allows potent energy from the earth to travel through your feet, up your body, and into your spirit.

Step 1: Notice where your eyes are positioned. Next time you take a walk, pay attention to where your eyes are placed inside your head. Are you in your thought-cycles... moving endlesssly through your brain? Are you lost in an emotion from a recent exchange with someone? If so, your eyes are probably physically set back in your head. Alternatively, are your eyes leaping forward with shock or widened in panic? This means they’re set too forward.

Eyes are meant to zoom in and zoom out… but they can get stuck too far in or too far out. (p.s. 👀 I know a Cranio tecnhique that’s eye-mazing!) This in-and-out movement is called pendulation — it’s what your craniosacral rhythm (and all your organs for that matter) are constantly doing.

Step 2: Rest your eyes. Ok. Now that you know where your eyes are, straighten your body so your spine is in alignment. Feel your pelvis and shoulders square away. Then take some deep breaths. Now, locate the horizon in front of you and give your eyes permission to wander where they want to. Then, let them rest.

Step 3: Walk in your periphery. Now, like a fox trots with purpose, walk. And while you are walking, let your eyes relax even more. Invite them to see from the outer corners in this rested state. Look out only from your periphery and keep walking.

Step 4: Feel your animal awareness. Let your three senses — inside and outside your body, and where your body is in space — merge in this state. Feel your fox power take over as you move in your felt sense.

Key Takeaway

As wild animals, we’re hard-wired to constantly be on the lookout for just how safe we feel. When you are embodied, your felt sense can surge through ...uninhibited. It can teach you to know when you are safe and when to get the heck out. Feeling these instincts can guide your nervous system to trust that you know what you’re doing. Then — like the fox — you can move/hunt/play in your pure being.