What does a Focusing session look like?

Focusing involves the verbalizing of these bodily-felt states. The person focusing closes his/her eyes. A Focusing Listener can be present with and guide the person's attention down into the trunk of the body where a felt sense of the issue being focused upon is allowed to form. Focusing is a listening within in a non judgmental, compassionate and accepting way, not knowing what will come, yet trusting our body holds an energy, a life movement towards healing.

I believe that the Focusing attitude allows us experience others and ourselves as holistic beings. Focusing enables us to know the body as the great healer and Presence that it is. Focusing also allows the many parts of our experience to speak. Focusing lets you be gentle to all the aspects of yourself so that a blocked system can release. Focusing also has gifts for people in pain, whether acute or chronic. If you are enduring symptoms of any kind of illness or condition, Focusing is not a cure... but it can help you tap into your inner resources for healing and relief. This same sensing inwards can help you explore patterns that seem unchangeable, emotional and spiritual yearnings. Focusing can help you find the next right step forward because the body actually holds and can show you this very knowing; a knowing that is unique for this individual, in this life, in this moment.

Focusing was discovered when Professor Eugene Gendlin of the University of Chicago researched the question: Why is psychotherapy helpful for some people, but not others? He and his colleagues studied tapes of hundreds of therapy sessions and made a fascinating and important discovery: successful therapy clients had a vague, hard-to-describe inner awareness, a bodily felt sense about their problems. Paying attention to the felt sense in specific ways proved to be a key component of successful healing and change. Gendlin discovered how to teach this skill, which he called Focusing and you can learn this skill too to enhance your own living forward.

The process of Focusing supports healing. You can integrate Focusing with your own preferred healing therapies. Focusing supports you in developing a sense of trust in yourself. A short guided exercise to help you get a feel for Focusing

So, let’s get in touch with everyday focusing …

I want you to experience unlocking some wisdom in your body. Notice your body just now…notice your feet and legs; how they feel…your back and shoulders…how they feel…your neck and how your head is sitting there…notice your arms and hands and belly and chest. See if you can follow your next breath into your body and notice where in your body it rests or ends. See if you can stay there and feel your body from the inside. Notice how your chest feels when you inhale…words or images may come which symbolizes that feeling of how your chest feels when you inhale. Notice that your body is symbolizing this experience that you rarely pay attention to and do every few seconds of your entire life.

So let’s get in touch with other ways our bodies experience….how do you generally feel when you haven’t eaten for a long time…(pause)…some words may have come quickly in there…just wait quietly for a moment and notice what else comes when you attend the “whole thing about having not eating for a long time”.

Or recall how you feel after you have filled your stomach…again say hello to the words, images and feelings that come first and wait quietly for what else comes “all about feeling full”…

Trying feeling inward “all about” being bored…what comes inside there…

What I’d like you to do is find something that you love or feel very special towards that’s not a person. It could be anything at all – a pet, a scene in nature, something beautiful, a piece of music or art, a fabric or item of clothing, a hobby. Whatever it is, just find one thing and make sure that it’s something that speaks to you today, not something that meant a lot to you last week or last year. If you said today, “I love this”, or “I feel really special towards this”, you could feel something alive inside. Give yourself a minute to go over the different possibilities until you can find the right one.

Okay, now allow yourself to notice how it feels in your body to be in the presence of whatever you chose. You might close your eyes and bring your attention down, and sense what it feels like to be in this scene of nature, or with this pet. See if you can find a distinct or vague body sense in there, what it feels like.

Now see if there’s a word, or a few words, an image, metaphor that would capture that, what would be a match for the body sense that you have. If the first words aren’t right, let them go, and see if there is another word or words that would be a better match. Take your time. Ask yourself, “What’s so special about this?” If your mind wanders, just bring it back and see if the right word or words come that capture the depth of what is so special to you. Notice if you get the words that feel right, what a difference it makes. And it may not be a word…it’s anything that symbolizes your sense of it. It might be a gesture, an image, a metaphor. But when you connect with whatever comes and get the right match, is there a little “yes”, a shift, an opening, a nod or smile that comes, when you really capture all of it?

That word or words are what Gendlin calls “the handle”. It’s the thing that when you say it, it picks up the body sense, like the handle on a suitcase. You can’t make it come…it’s grace…so you have to just sit with the body sense of something, and see whether a “handle” does come.

How many of you found a word or words that felt like it was a good match, which really helped you. You might be surprised by the words that fit, that produced the felt shift. Your mind might be surprised but your body wasn’t and this is about accessing your inner body wisdom. So sometimes we have to allow our minds to get out the way by bringing that non-judgmental, open awareness of just what is...not what we’d like it to be, or it should be…just what is.

Now, we are going to ask the felt sense; what is it all about this and here you insert your handle word or image. You may need to spend some time here with your felt sense…staying with the unclear edge, the fuzziness. The handle will help you return to the felt sense as often as you need to. So if your handle is a specific word…say that word to back to the felt sense and then ask “what is it about this whole….that makes me so …..”. So, in this exercise if you were thinking about how much you love yoga and the handle word you got was strength, you might ask yourself, “what is it all about yoga that makes me feel strong?”

If you hear a lot of fast answers in your head just let them go by and then ask again. What comes swiftly is old information from your mind. Just ask the question again and wait. You may need to do this a few times and then you may notice something new that comes; something fresh. They are words and images that flow out of the feeling and your body may respond with something like “hey, yeah, that is what it is all about”. Even if what comes is not pleasant or comfortable, the bodily experienced freshly felt new meaning feels good.

You can move through these steps as often as you like but for this exercise we will allow ourselves to receive what has come. Whatever comes, try and welcome it. If you are willing to receive this message in friendly way there will be others. You do not need to agree, believe and do what the felt sense says just now; you only need to receive it. It may be that the first response seems impossible to live…but it is very important to protect this first form, in which your life direction can be sensed, even though, right, now, it might not meet realistic expectations. Your body is changing, your life direction is appearing, and this is only one step. Keep that sense of what would be the right direction and don’t worry about the form it will take. Whatever comes in focusing will never overwhelm you if you can have the attitude we call “receiving”. You welcome anything that comes with a felt shift but you stay just a little distance from it. You are not in it but next to it. You have it, but you are not it. Rather, you are thanking each guest for the gift it has brought.

Finally, you might like to sense back over this session to see if any word, symbol, feeling seems important or wants to be remembered and if so gently acknowledge that…or you might like to check if there is something more that wants to come…and if there is you can let it know you will come back to it. See if you would like to thank your processes and all that has come. And when you are ready start to bring your attention back to the room, you might like to hear the sounds around you, or notice your whole body sitting on the chair, bringing your attention back in a way that feels most right for you today.