Feeling the Inner Child

The feelings in you as an adult, coming from when you were a child, are called the Inner Child. These influence a lot of your actions and feelings.

Child feelings

It is not always easy to feel this Inner Child. But, as an adult you may have had experiences where you felt like a child. In fact, many child feelings are there underneath the surface, and that is so most, if not all the time.

These feelings coming from your childhood experiences have a lot of influence. When you are looking to develop real maturity, they are in the way. So, it is a good idea to work through them.

You may have reasons to not like to feel the Inner Child, and thus avoid that when you can. You may perhaps want to appear as a mature person, and appearing like a child doesn't help with that. Or you may just find it weird, to feel like a child.

Exercise questions

Resisting the Inner Child

Have you felt your Inner Child before?
If not, are there reasons that you are aware of to avoid feeling like a child?
If you can, how do you feel about it, to feel like a child now and then?

Finding the Inner Child

Can you feel your Inner Child right now, when you try to find it?
It can help to feel inside your body, close to the core of it.
Can you estimate how old you are, when you feel yourself as a child?
(If you can't get to it right now, try the next exercise.)

The center of the belly

There is a spot in your belly, that can help feeling your Inner Child. This spot is in the center of your belly, halfway between belly button and spine. It is at the level of a few fingers underneath the belly button.
By focusing your attention on this spot, while also feeling inside your entire body, it is possible to tune in to feelings of the Inner Child.
When you try tuning into it this way, do you notice child feelings?
(Note that child feelings can also elsewhere be found.)

Stream of consciousness

When you are able to get to the Inner Child with some ease, you can do the Stream of consciousness exercise while keeping to the Inner Child. So, you describe the child feelings as they come up.

When you feel able to do the exercise without the describing, you can do it wherever you are, whenever you can get to enough privacy to feel those feelings.