More Than We Can Think: Coming Home Through the Body
I want to begin with an esoteric but favorite quote of mine:
“Experiencing is a myriad richness that exceeds any number of separated facets. We cannot think all that just was. We feel more than we can think, and we live more than we can feel. And if we enter into what we feel in certain genuine steps, we feel more than before. And there is much more still.”
— Eugene Gendlin (Unpublished manuscript, 1971)
There’s a wisdom in these words that goes beyond explanation—something I’ve bumped into again and again along the path of healing. Something worth writing about as I reflect on why feeling, and feeling through the body, is not just therapeutic, but holy. Gendlin’s words have marked many arches of my journey, some of which I still cross daily.
The Ache for Aliveness
Most of us don’t realize we’re not fully alive.
We go through the motions—love our families, attend Mass, meet our responsibilities—yet still feel disconnected from our bodies, our emotions, even God’s Presence.
We may subtly chalk it up as a sign of redeeming grit, that we’re enduring in our vocation, or through desolation.
And while the Lord does call to us through all that—yes desolation, grit, vocation, and a plethora of other things—I feel urged to ask, have we stopped to notice if...
We’re living in our heads.
We’re analyzing our pain.
We’re trying to think our way into healing.
If this doesn’t resonate, maybe you know someone who lives in their head too much. I know I still do at times.
In a way, the mind becomes an impenetrable fortress in this hyperactive state: congested, stale, anxious, frightened, and distrusting. For good reason, no doubt. Many of us were taught—by experience, parents, teachers, or institutions—that the mind was the safest place to retreat.
And while our cortical regions of the brain and spiritual intellect are indeed gifts—tools for critical thinking, meaning-making, beauty, and synthesis—they remain dull and disconnected unless rooted in felt experience.
As Gendlin reminds us:
“We feel more than we can think. And we live more than we can feel.”
Why We Disconnect from Our Emotions
We often distance ourselves from emotion—especially in the aftermath of trauma, loss, or shame. Here are two key reasons why this happens, in my experience (not exhaustive, but too often overlooked):
1. Our nervous systems don’t know how to stay with emotion.
When we’ve endured complex trauma or relational wounds, our bodies learn to protect us by shutting down, numbing out, or flooding with sensation. These are not signs of weakness—they’re survival strategies.
Shutting down might look like going blank, dissociating, or feeling nothing at all. Numbing can show up through scrolling, bingeing, overworking, or staying constantly busy. Flooding might involve panic, racing thoughts, or being emotionally hijacked by one overwhelming sensation.
Without tools or safe support, emotions can feel like too much—too big, too fast, too unsafe. So we learn to stay out of touch with them. We keep moving, keep coping, and often don’t even realize we’ve been avoiding them for years.
But here’s something remarkable: an emotion, when safely and fully felt in the body, usually takes only 60 to 90 seconds to move through. What makes it last longer is when we resist, suppress, or get stuck in mental loops around it.
Learning to stay with emotion—bit by bit—rebuilds this capacity. It’s not about pushing through; it’s about slowly creating the safety to let the feeling exist, be witnessed, and complete its course.
2. We’ve been taught that negative emotions are dangerous.
In some religious, familial, or cultural systems, we internalize messages like:
Fear = weak faith
Anger = sin
Sadness = ingratitude
These beliefs are often passed down implicitly by wounded people trying to survive. And over time, we begin to believe that our emotions are not just uncomfortable—but morally wrong or spiritually unsafe.
This kind of shame burrows deep in the body. And it’s what quietly cuts us off from life.
It’s a slow spiritual death—as we numb ourselves from our core, shunning parts of ourselves from awareness, from communion, and from the love of others and God.
When Thought Alone Isn’t Enough
Neuroscientist, Iain McGilchrist, in The Master and His Emissary, explores how Western culture has become dominated by the left hemisphere—the part of the brain focused on logic, categories, and control. It values certainty, productivity, and answers.
But true aliveness depends on the right hemisphere—which attunes us to presence, harmony, mystery, empathy, and connection. It tolerates ambiguity and welcomes the ineffable.
McGilchrist argues that healing and integration require both hemispheres working together—with the right brain leading and the left brain serving.
In short:
Thought can explain.
But it cannot heal.
If we’re trying to heal trauma while living in a Western-minded, disembodied world, first know that we’re dealing with principles and principalities on a macro level, so you’re not alone, and it’s going to be an upstream swim for all of us in some capacity… and… we can all learn to reintegrate our capacity to feel, relate, and be in the body.
This isn’t just psychological—it’s spiritual.
The Role of Shame & the Body in Disconnection
So what happens when we carry the belief—spiritually and physiologically—that emotion is unsafe, dangerous, or bad?
Shame.
And shame isn’t just a thought—it’s a posture. A reflex. A felt sense that says:
Who I am is not welcome here.
Shame lives in:
The silence between breaths
The bracing in your shoulders
The urge to disappear
The fear of being seen
It doesn’t just say, “I did something wrong.” It says, “I am wrong.”
In response, our bodies do what they’re designed to do in the presence of threat:
We shut down. We disconnect. We hold our breath.
We keep people—and God—at arm’s length.
We may still go to church. Still try our best to love and serve.
But underneath it all, shame pulls the strings—shaping our capacity to be open, intimate, and alive.
Why? Because to feel anything—grief, longing, joy, tenderness—requires vulnerability.
And shame has convinced us that vulnerability is too dangerous.
That’s why shame must be healed holistically—not just by changing thoughts or reciting truths, but through safe, lived, embodied experience.
Healing Through Embodied Experience
Healing happens not just through knowing—but through encounter.
It happens when we begin to feel again:
A sensation in the chest
A wave of grief we thought we buried
A flicker of warmth in someone’s safe presence
These are what we call corrective experiences—where the body learns:
“I can feel this. I will not die. I am not alone.”
This is the real rewiring. The birth of new neural pathways. The fruit of safety and connection over time.
As Gendlin says:
“If we enter into what we feel in certain genuine steps, we feel more than before. And there is much more still.”
This new embodied belief—that we can feel our feelings without being destroyed—becomes the foundation for trauma healing, spiritual maturity, and Christian integration.
Because it didn’t just happen in our heads. It happened in our being.
How We Return to Ourselves
So, how do we begin?
We come home gradually, gently—through:
Feeling (the body’s language of truth)
Safe relationships (co-regulation with others and with God)
Embodiment (noticing, naming, and allowing)
Sometimes this return comes in a flood.
Other times, it’s one step at a time.
But the invitation is the same:
Come back to your body.
Come back to your feeling.
Come back to Presence.
Here are 4 simple steps to get you well on your way.
A Practice for Tuning into Your Felt Sense
Inspired by Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing Psychotherapy approach:
1. Pause and notice
Sit in stillness. Or gently activate your body—rocking, swaying, or tensing and relaxing your muscles.
Then, ask:
“What am I sensing in my body right now?”
No need to name it yet. Just be near it.
2. Describe it gently
Offer it a word, image, or metaphor:
“It’s heavy, like a stone.”
“It’s warm and pulsing.”
This is not about fixing—just being with.
3. Invite God’s Presence
Pray something simple:
“Holy Spirit, hold this with me.”
Let Christ join you there.
4. Wait and watch what unfolds
Your body, with the Spirit, will begin to shift when it’s truly felt and listened to.
So there you go.
These 4 steps will slowly change how you relate to yourself, your body, your feelings, and therefore, begin the actual, sustainable process of transforming your lived experience all together.
Some final thoughts.
You Are Not Too Much
You don’t need to have all the answers.
You don’t need to “figure it out.”
You don’t need to hide from your heart.
God became flesh to meet us in the flesh.
To save us not from our emotions—but through them.
As John 1:14 reminds us:
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
You are safe.
You are held.
You are welcome to feel.
And there is much more still.
With you in the Presence,
Kolbe
