Feelings Are Sensations: Why Emotions Are Not Thoughts in Existential Kink (EK) Shadow Work
One of the simplest and most transformative shifts in Shadow Alchemy is this:
Feelings are not thoughts.
Emotions are not sentences.
They are not interpretations.
They are not the story of what happened.
Feelings are sensations.
Existential Kink becomes a real embodied practice when you stop relating to emotion as narrative and start relating to it as somatic experience.
Thoughts Are Words. Feelings Are Experience.
A thought is often just language:
“My mother is dead.”
“This person doesn’t love me.”
“I’m behind in life.”
Those thoughts may or may not produce emotion.
The thought itself is not sadness.
Sadness is the sensation that sometimes arises in response:
heaviness in the heart
tightness in the throat
watering behind the eyes
a gray inner quality
contraction, ache, weight
This distinction changes everything.
Shadow work begins when we locate emotion in the body, not in the explanation. t3
Why This Matters in Existential Kink Practice
Many people try to do EK through analysis:
“I’m doing this pattern because of childhood.”
“I attract unavailable people because I fear intimacy.”
These stories can be clever.
They can even feel comforting.
But they often do not transform the pattern.
Existential Kink is not primarily about understanding.
It is about approving sensation.
The unconscious moves through charge, not through concepts.
How Do You Know You Feel Something?
A powerful question from this teaching is simple:
If you didn’t feel it, how would you know you felt it?
If you are sad, something is happening somatically.
If you are angry, something is happening somatically.
If you are bored, restless, ashamed, turned on, terrified…
There is an inner texture.
An internal quality.
Emotion is a mind-body event. t3
The Practice: Translate Emotion Into Sensation
Try this the next time you say:
“I feel sad.”
Pause and ask:
What does sad feel like, physically?
Not the story.
Not the reason.
The sensation.
Examples:
a pressure in the chest
sinking shoulders
ache behind the eyes
hollow belly
heaviness in the spirit
This is Shadow Alchemy.
We stop living one step removed.
We enter the actual experience.
Why Sensation Is the Portal
Existential Kink is the willingness to turn toward what arises internally.
Not to fix it.
Not to perform around it.
To approve it.
Radical approval begins when we stop outsourcing emotion to story and start meeting it as sensation.
This is where integration happens.
When You Can Feel It, You Can Work With It
Many people notice:
They think they are sad, but their body is fine.
They think they are angry, but nothing is moving.
This is often because the mind is narrating while sensation is subtle or suppressed.
Shadow Alchemy trains awareness of the actual inner qualities so that real integration becomes possible. t3
Return to the Shadow Alchemy Hub
New here?
Start with Lucy Baldwin’s complete Shadow Alchemy overview for readers of Existential Kink and EK-style erotic shadow work
Frequently Asked Questions (Feelings and EK)
Are emotions always sensations?
In Shadow Alchemy, emotions are understood as somatic experiences in the mind-body field. Sensation is what makes emotion real and workable.
Are thoughts emotional?
Thoughts are words and images. Emotion is the sensation or inner quality that may arise in response to thought.
Why does this matter for Existential Kink?
Because EK is the practice of radical approval of unconscious charge. That charge is felt somatically, not just understood intellectually.
How do I practice this?
Translate emotion into physical sensation and meet it directly with presence and approval.
Next Steps: Enter DOMINION
If this teaching feels true, you are ready for the deeper field.
Shadow Alchemy is not story polishing.
It is sensation, embodiment, and radical approval practiced over time.
That is what DOMINION: A Field of Radical Approval is for.
DOMINION is Lucy Baldwin’s EK-themed community for people who want to go beyond reading Existential Kink and actually live the practice:
radical approval without self-deception
somatic EK integration that changes the nervous system
erotic shadow work beyond purity
sensation as the portal to freedom
the end of exile