Emotional Transformation by Don Ollsin

1. David Hawkins – Letting Go

Primary Portal: Emotion (as energy)

• Focus: The energy of emotion itself, uncloaked from story or thought.

• Key gesture: Surrendering resistance to the emotion—not analyzing it, not expressing it, not acting it out. Just being fully with it, allowing it to run its course.

• Body: Yes, the body is involved (he mentions pressure, contraction), but it’s secondary to the energy field of emotion.

• Direction: Vertical—transcendence, release, ascension.

• Character emphasis: Letting go moves through Character 2 (pain body), but is held by Character 4 (presence) until the emotion dissolves into awareness.

Confusion arises when we try to locate the emotion in the body in a precise way (like SE or Focusing). For Hawkins, the body is an energy antenna, but emotion is the frequency—a total field, not a local sensation.

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2. Eugene Gendlin – Felt Sense

Primary Portal: Sensation (with implicit meaning)

• Focus: A bodily felt sense of a situation—not yet emotion, not yet thought, but a murky whole. A “more-than-you-can-say” sense that you pause with.

• Key gesture: Pausing and listening to the edge of meaning. Staying with the vague, bodily “something,” and letting it form.

• Body: Central. The felt sense lives in the body, but it’s not just a sensation—it’s an embodied sense of a life process, held in the body.

• Direction: Lateral and downward—deepening into meaning, emergence, articulation.

• Character emphasis: Character 4 listens, but Character 3 often brings the language. It’s a poetic emergence.

Confusion arises when we equate “felt sense” with emotion. It’s not emotion. It’s often pre-emotion or underneath emotion—the implicit edge that includes emotion and more.

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3. SIBAM in Somatic Experiencing (Peter Levine)

Primary Portal: Sensation (as a tracking system)

• SIBAM = Sensation, Image, Behavior, Affect (emotion), Meaning

• Focus: Sensation is the entry point—the most trustworthy channel in trauma healing.

• Key gesture: Tracking sensation to allow discharge and regulation. Affect (emotion) is important, but always grounded in body awareness.

• Body: Primary. This model is built on nervous system regulation, using pendulation, titration, and discharge.

• Direction: Circular—tracking across channels to restore flow and coherence.

• Character emphasis: Starts with Character 1/2 tracking survival, moves into Character 3/4 as healing deepens.

Confusion arises because emotion (Affect) is part of SIBAM, but not prioritized. Emotion in SE is only safe and useful when paired with sensation, otherwise it can lead to flooding or retraumatization.

Character emphasis is from Whole Brain Living by Jill Bolte Taylor.

An Integrative Frame

Think of it as layers of embodiment:

• When in emotional charge, start with Hawkins—Let go into the energy.

• When in vague discomfort or creative block, shift to Gendlin—Sense into the “more” beneath it.

• When in dysregulation or trauma, rely on SIBAM—Track sensation safely.

A three-part embodied practice for transmuting emotional charge, accessing inner meaning, and restoring nervous system coherence.

PHASE 1: SURRENDER THE CHARGE (Hawkins – Letting Go)

Intention: Release resistance to emotion as energy.

1. Pause and notice:
   Something is arising—an emotion, a contraction, a swirl of discomfort.
   Ask inwardly: What am I feeling right now, without naming it?

2. Drop the story:
   Let go of the mental commentary. You don’t need to figure it out.
   Just be with the pure energy of it.

3. Allow and feel fully:
   Let the feeling be as intense or as subtle as it is.
   Say silently: I welcome this feeling. I allow it to be here completely.

4. No resistance, no expression:
   You are not acting it out, analyzing, or suppressing.
   You’re simply being with the feeling until it shifts, lightens, or dissolves.

Optional support: Place your hands on your heart or belly. Breathe. Let gravity hold you.

PHASE 2: LISTEN FOR THE “MORE” (Gendlin – Felt Sense)

Intention: Sense into the deeper meaning just beneath or behind the emotional energy.

1. Pause again, freshly:
   Ask: Now that I’ve let go of the emotional charge, what is left?

2. Feel for the edge:
   There may be a vague, bodily something—not quite a thought, not quite a feeling.
   This is the felt sense.

3. Stay with it gently:
   Don’t try to define it too quickly. Just acknowledge: Yes, something is there.
   Give it room. Wait with it, like sitting beside a friend who is about to speak.

4. Let it speak in its own way:
   A word, image, or phrase may arise—like a metaphor, not an answer.
   Receive it. It doesn’t need to make sense yet. It’s part of your soul’s language.

Optional support: Journal one sentence that begins with “It’s kind of like…”

PHASE 3: TRACK THE BODY’S SIGNALS (SIBAM – Somatic Experiencing)

Intention: Restore flow and coherence in the nervous system.

1. Shift into sensation tracking:
   Gently scan your body: What do I notice now?
   Tingling, heat, pulsing, tightness, stillness?

2. Identify any SIBAM channels:

   • S – Sensation: raw sensory data (e.g. “warmth in chest”)

   • I – Image: spontaneous visualizations

   • B – Behavior: impulses to move, gestures, postures

   • A – Affect: subtle feelings or emotional tone

   • M – Meaning: words, insights, beliefs

3. Pendulate:
   If something intense arises, gently shift to a neutral or pleasurable sensation elsewhere in the body.
   This keeps the system safe.

4. Wait for completion:
   You may notice a sigh, yawn, tears, warmth, or quiet—these are signs of discharge or integration.
   Let it finish naturally.

Optional support: Place feet on the earth. Imagine roots connecting you to the deep ground.

Closing: The Spiral Completes

End by sitting in stillness or journaling:

• What released?

• What emerged?

• What stabilized?

You might say inwardly:

“I welcome the intelligence that moves through my body. I trust the spiral of my becoming.”

The Core Distinction: Feeling vs Emotion vs Sensation

1. Emotion (Hawkins’ Primary Focus)

• Emotion is an energetic charge—distinct, nameable (e.g., fear, anger, grief, guilt).

• It tends to have a recognizable flavor, even if it isn’t immediately verbalized.

• Hawkins encourages naming it as part of awareness, but not to dwell in the story. Naming is useful only as a gateway to surrendering resistance.

• Key idea: “I feel fear.” Then: Can I let the fear be here?—without suppression or expression.

Hawkins does name emotions. But his emphasis is on letting go of resistance to the emotion, not the naming per se. Naming is a threshold, not a home.

2. Felt Sense (Gendlin’s Primary Focus)

• The felt sense is a bodily “about-ness”—a holistic, pre-verbal sense of a situation.

• It may contain emotion, but it’s larger and vaguer: e.g., “a tightness in the chest that feels like being stuck.”

• Gendlin does ask: “Does it have an emotional quality?” But he is not starting with emotion—he is inviting you to feel for what’s underneath or implicit.

• Naming in Focusing is gentle, tentative, metaphorical—e.g., “it’s like a foggy wall,” not “I feel angry.”

Emotion can be part of the felt sense, but Gendlin invites you to stay on the edge—not to fix it with labels, but to deepen the sensing until meaning forms.

3. Sensation (SIBAM’s Primary Portal)

• Sensation is raw body data: heat, cold, tingling, pressure, contraction, etc.

• It is not emotional per se, but emotions often arise with or through sensation.

• In Somatic Experiencing, you track sensation to stay grounded and support emotion to move without overwhelm.

• Naming is precise and body-based: “There’s a tight band across my chest.”

In SIBAM, naming is about tracking, not interpretation. The emphasis is not on “What am I feeling emotionally?” but “What is happening somatically?”

Role of Naming Emotions

Hawkins

Use emotion labels to identify what to surrender (e.g. fear, grief). Let go of resistance to it.

Gendlin

Use metaphor or soft words to point toward a bodily knowing. Naming emerges from the felt sense, not before.

SIBAM

Use specific body-based terms to track experience across five channels. Naming helps anchor and integrate, not explain.

So naming can be part of all three—but only if it deepens presence. The fog arises when naming is used too early, too quickly, or as a mental escape.

Emotional Intelligence as Integration

What you’re doing, is refining your ability to track, name, and stay with emotional experience as it moves through multiple channels:

• Start with Hawkins: “This is fear.” Then let go of resisting fear.

• Then pause with Gendlin: “What does this fear feel like in my body? What’s the quality of it?” Let metaphor emerge.

• Then track with SE: “There’s a dark heaviness in my gut. Now it’s softening.” Let the body complete the cycle.