Focusing

"Most traditional methods of working on oneself are mostly pain centered. People get to repeat over and over their painful emotions without knowing how to use the body's own inherently positive direction and force."  Eugene Gendlin

I am really enjoying psychologist Eugene Gendlin's work. He has book called Focusing which I ordered and started working with in the past few months. It is a very good way to work deeply in the body with feelings of stuckness. Stuckness is something I feel a lot these days!

I sat in my car today waiting for my dog to be groomed and worked with many layers of stuck feelings  using this process of working with the "unclear" sensations in the body and focusing on them until they reveal new information. What I am learning is mainly we try to work with our thoughts and feelings but sometimes these can stay the same for years and we just keep on reprocessing them!

I will share some of the intuitive process for you here on how to address those "stuck feelings" in our body:

1.) Clearing a Space

On any given day we are all likely to have half a dozen problems that keep us stuck inside. Ask yourself. "What is bugging me?" Why don't I feel wonderful right now?" "How is my life going?" "What is the main thing for me right now?"

Stay quiet and let what comes come. Do not try to list every problem you can think of but only what has you tense right now. Let all these problems come up and out. List them, stack them in front of you and survey them from a distance.

Stay cheerfully detached from them as much as you can. "Well, except for all of these, I am fine."

2.) Felt Sense of the Problem

Ask which problem feels worse right now. Ask which one hurts the most, feels the heaviest, the biggest, the sharpest, the most prickly or clammy or sticky - the one that feels bad in whatever way you and your body feel bad. Or just choose one problem.

Don't go inside the problem as you usually would. Stand back from it. Ask, "What does this whole problem feel like?" But don't answer in words. Feel the problem whole, the sense of all that.

At this stage you will likely begin to feel a lot of static from your mind: self-lectures, analytic theories, much squacking and jabbering.

It is a matter of getting yourself to be quiet, listen and feel. Try to feel the whole inner aura of the problem. Try to get down to the single feeling of "all that" about the problem. The feel of the problem comes to you whole without details, like listening to a piece music made up of many notes and having one whole sense of it. I also find the problem is located in a very specific part of my body.

The felt sense is the holistic, unclear sense of the whole thing. This is something most people would pass by. because it is murky, fuzzy and vague. You might think, "Oh that!" "But that is just an uncomfortable nothing!" This is how your body senses a problem, it is at first quite fuzzy.

3.) Finding a Handle for the Problem

Find a quality word for the felt sense. Find a quality like "sticky", "heavy", "jumpy", "helpless", "tight", "burdened" ect. Or find a short phrase such as, "like in a box", "have to perform". A combination of words might work best like "scared tight" or "jumpy restless". Or an image might work better.

Try out different qualities until you feel a bodily shift and then discard everything else. You will know which one is right.

4.) Resonating Handle and Felt Sense

This is a double checking of the word and the felt sense to see if they resonate. Make sure the word is just right with the feeling. Once you get the sense of rightness, your body will shift again.

5.) Asking

Listen to the word you have decided is right and tune into the unclear felt sense for one minute. Using your word if it is say "jumpy", ask "What is it about this whole problem that makes me so jumpy?"

If you hear a lot of fast answers from your head, just let them go. What comes swiftly is old information from your mind. The mind rushes in and gives you no time to contact the felt sense directly. Ask yourself the question and wait.

Words and images will flow out of the feeling and offer a freshly felt difference. Just repeat your open-ended questions until the felt sense stirs. Ask, "What is the worst of this?" What would it take for this to feel okay?" "What does this felt sense need?"

This is not meant to be work but it is a friendly time within your body, inquiring.

6.) Receiving

Whatever comes in focusing, welcome it. Take the attitude that you are glad your body spoke to you, whatever it said. This is only one bodily shift and is not the last word. You do not need to believe, agree with, or do what the felt sense says. You just need to receive it. With each shift, your body changes and your life direction will appear step by step. Be willing to receive just one step. Once you locate this one shift it is very much like a place, a spot in your inner landscape. Once you know where it is and how to find it, you can leave it and return to it later.

"A felt sense is a bodily awareness of a situation or person or event...an internal aura that encompasses everything you feel and know about a given subject at a given time. It encompasses it and communicates it to you all at once. Think of it as a taste, or a great musical chord that make you feel a powerful impact, a big, round, unclear feeling."  -Eugene Gendlin

Try this process and see if it works for you!