Our bodies cary knowledge about how we are living our lives, about what we need to be more fully ourselves, about what we value and believe, about what has hurt us emotionally and how to heal it.
The primary domains of the mind, are not the place where change can happen. The place where change happens is in the body.
Who benefits from focusing? If you feel stuck in your therapy If you'd like to know better what you feel and want If you'd like a way to handle overwhelming emotions If you'd like to release action blocks or addictions If you' like to release self-criticism and increase self-love and acceptance If you'd like to make clear and centered decisions
People don't know how they feel and that creates a log of frustration. Note: Its called alexithymia. So what you perceive as normal, and maybe unrelated or non-relevant, likely is a feeling.
Little "Tour" of the focusing process:
Focusing begins with bringing awarenesss into the body, especially the throat, chest, stomach, and abdomen.
We don't try to find a feeling, or try to make something happen, but we invite something to be felt by asking a gently, open question such as "What wants my awareness now?"
When we first find a feeling, we acknowledge it by saying an inner hello to it, and then we describe or name it
In the next stage of Focusing, we sit down with the feeling to get to know it better, with an attitude of interested curiosity
We take time to allow a little more meaning to come from the feeling, perhaps a word for an emotional quality. Then we check the word with the feeling, to make sure it feels right
We are not in a hurry. We create an inner atmohsphere of no pressure, just being with what's there. We ask gentle questions as a way of inviting the feeling to tell use more
In Focusing, change comes in steps, small (usually) realizations, each one of which feels right and makes some difference in the body. After each one, we could stop and focus again another time, or we could keep going, perhaps with another gentle question
The meaning that is carried in the body is sometimes connected with a memory, a belief or attitude, or an unmet need or an unexpressed part of ourselves, There is no need to "fix" or "solve" the problem. Acknowledging the message, really hearing it, is all that is needed to bring deep relief
Ending a Focusing sessin happens slowly and respectfully. We may want to stay for a while with good feelings. We thank the body, and say we'll be back
Life curcumstances may bring back feelings that were there in the Focusing session. This is an opportunity for "mini-Focusing" – a little bit of Focusing in the midst of life
A climate of safety and trust in your inner world is what makes Focusing possible.
Notice how you feel as in "Yes, that is how I feel".
You can be absolutely assured that allowing your feeelings to be as they are is how they can change.
What is split off, not felt, remains the same. When it is felt, it changes, Most people don't know this. They thinkg that by not permitting the feeling of their negative ways they make themselves good. On the contrary, that keeps these negatives static, the same from year to year. A few moments of feeling it in your body allows it to change. If there is in you something bad or sick or unsound, let it inwardly be, and breathe. That's the only way it can eveole and chang einto the form it needs.
The inner climate of letting it inwardly be is necessary for inner change. An inner conversation starts that leads to change.
Being in a relationship with your inner experience alows you to be with your feelings, not in them. Focusing teaches us that change comes from from a relationship with your feelings.
Think of your emtions as a big lake. You have the choice: you can plunge into the lake, or you can sit next to it. Focusing works best when you "sit next to" what you feel instead of pluging into it. When you are in a relationship with something, you can sense it as a whole.
If you want to know what the soup smells like, it's better not to stick your head in it".
There are parts of you that want ot be heard, without judgement. Remeber how good it felt to be heard? Focusing is being a good listener to your inner self. In Focusing, you can give yourself that non-judgmental listening that feels good and brings greater clarity.
A welcoming presence that invites interest and curiosity. A non-judgmental awareness. A holding space that brings your awareness to your inner world and holds it there. A hearing of the essence for what is longing to be heard. A staying in present time where you bring yourself from distractions, dwellings on past, future, fantatsies or fears, back into the body.
Focusing is like being a friend to your own inner experience. The qualities of friendship include acknowledging, allowing, patience, curiosity, respect, warmth, welcome, empathy, compassion and lovel. If you don't feel you can be that much of a friend to yourself immediately, don't worry - you'll be able to build up to it, step, by step. When you notice a feeling, say to the feeling "Hello. I know you're there". You might already feel much release by just doing that.
We treat our felt senses like unwelcome party guests, to be talked about but never directly spoken to. When your senses are all scary and intense it becomes more important to say hello. The reason that acknowledging is so powerful is that your felt senses are here to communicate with you.
Note: here is a strong cross-over to internal-family-systems
Focusing is about having a positive and supportive relationship with yourself. Every relationship begins with hello.
When you cannot bring yourself to be friendly to your felt sense, that is OK and you can still do Focusing. Just move your awareness to the part of you that isn't feeling friendly. The not-friendly feeling, whatever it is, becomes the new felt sense.
When something is in the way of being friendly and accepting, we call this the feeling about the feeling. It might be: "I'm angry about this fear", or "I'm impatient wiht this stuck place".
Note: here we are talking about meta-emotion.
We often believe that we must feel only one way about something. Ambivalence is wrong, we think. But it is the most natural thing in the world to have mixed feelings. A part of us wants to get to know someone better, another part of us is scared to get too close.
Focusing allows all the parts of our self to be heart. You don't have to choose betwen different parts; they can all be there at the same time and have their own space.
We are complex beings in an ambiguous world. We are full of often contradictory feelings and thoughts. With Focusing we learn how to welcome, acknowledge, and accept all our responses to life - whatever they are. We can feel all our variety and subtlety, all our richness and complexity.
Note: For more insight see dispositional-state, emotions-feelings-affects, fun-criterion
Be willing to approach your inner experience without thinking that you know all labout it already. This is an attitude of not knowning. As long as there is still a felt sense wanting your attention, there is something about it you don't know yet. If you are still experienncing tightness, fear , constriction, or stuckness, there is something your body knows and is trying to tell you.
In our culture we have a bias for clarity which can lead to feeling uncomfortable in the face of something unclear and unknown. "How would I explain this to anyone? How would I defend it? What good is it?". Before you learned to honor and listen to felt sense, you might have dismissed them in just this way. instead, enjoy them! Like a treasure hunter is most excited by the treasure chests that have not yet been opened. The wisdom is not in what is already clear and known - thats old information - but in what is emerging in you, the knowing that is coming into awareness right now.
Learning Focusing is learning to value and even cherish the slow, subtle, and vague.
Follow the felt sense. You can trust the felt-sense.
Focusing is a natural human process. and it is always more than we will be able to put into words. Every Focusing session is unique. You can't predict what is going to happen. The felt sense will only bring you what you can deal with, and if you trust it and flow with it, you will find a natural resting place, a warm shore, a little close to home.
The phases that guide you through your focusing sessions: