Reply To: Si & Inner Sensory Experiences

[a.k.a.Janie]

I am sure I am much more aware of how feelings are experienced at all time in the body than most people. I get a felt sense about everything I experience. If this bodily sense is blocked (in some kind of pressure) I cant assess memories very well because I somehow archive memories due to feeling tone/quality. If it has anything to do with Si I am not sure. I have many years of practice trying to cultivate an ability to make use of such sensations, so as it can be used as a way of knowing. Some has this as a natural ability, but it can be learned/trained by what was called “Focusing” by Eugene Gendlin, a professor in psychology, it is a skill that has to do with listening to the wisdom of your body. (it is not about becoming “focused”, but is a metaphor from old times when you had to adjust your camera so that the initial blurred, diffus, unclear picture came into focus)
One can find answers to a lot of things by this listening, which is a (patient) listening to the “felt sense” which is not the emotion in itself but the felt sense that can be found around or behind the emotion, or thought, or experience one have had. Even dreams can be delt with by getting a felt sense about aspects of the dream until a “felt shift” in the body is felt, which usually accompany new insights into a subject.

Reading especially this part of this post, had me scratching my head, like ' @sekundaer is TiNe? It sounds like he's describing my Fi!'
Then towards the end I started to understand how this was in fact being described in the context of Si. And be a challenge for Fi users (although I do not relate to ever having had that particular problem, I've been stepping back from, analyzing and archiving my emotions since I was little). For me the challenge (and this is a known "thing" for Fi leads) is that when having to make new decisions, I only truly know the right decision for me *after* I've made it, because only then can I actually feel how the result sits with me, which is how I judge things.
It really has me thinking now. Lately, I've been becoming increasingly aware of thoughts/feelings/chemical reactions that happen in my brain/body as I catch them happening, whereas before they always did happen, I just kind of took them for granted, or was unconscious of them, or at least never questioned them or thought about how other people may experience different ones, which contributes to their different sense of reality than mine. I feel like it's my Fi bumping up against Si. I'm not really sure exactly where the boundary is, but I can definitely feel how the physical and psychological are interrelated. The extensive impact of the gut microbiome on so many aspects of heath--including depression and anxiety--is a good example and something important to me currently. Some instances when I "listen" do seem borderline physical (Si) and emotional (Fi). Others are obviously one or the other. I know I am not supposed to have Si, at least in CT, but it's kind of hard for me to see myself as not having it, especially in light of the fact that I identified with "INFP" for 3.5 years until coming here, and attributed many of my things to Si. Very interesting. I will check out the website.