In an upcoming Focusing Workshop we’ll spend some time together exploring Focusing, a process giving ‘direct access to bodily knowing’, as pioneered by Eugene Gendlin (http://www.focusing.org/). We’ll be working with some practices developed by Gendlin, as well as some explicit dyad practices from Inner Relationships Focusing, as taught by Ann Weiser Cornell (http://www.focusingresources.com/).

There won’t be enough time in the workshop to go into all of the material in depth, so I’m presenting here some of the notes that will go with the activities we’ll do on the afternoon.

Below are eight characteristics of an experiential process step, compiled from one of Gendlin’s books, ‘Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy’ (1996). They give a taste of the sort of territory that you might expect to cover as we wander together along the edges of the first person process that is not a perspective, through the characteristics, of what you might expect to find, in Focusing:

1) A directly sensed source – sometimes showing up as the return of an image or a sense from a dream, sometimes an acknowledged upwelling of the place from which tears might spring, sometimes, in conversation, an admitting-in of the thing that we’re trying to explain, or ‘get at’ – all these movements point to the existence of a direct access point, having an earlier origin than our interpretations would usually allow ‘in’. This is a key element to the Focusing process – a border zone between known, and unknown.

2) An initial lack of clarity – the direct source is direct, but it’s also unclear – fuzzy, vague, indefinable, however present. The unclear is different from experiencing an emotion, having it’s own, unique quality. Unclear edges frequently become hard to find, in talking therapies, mostly due to the pace at which we communicate, which does not typically allow for the silent space where unclear edges can truly emerge.

3) Occurring in a bodily way – while the unclear edge does not need to start or stop, as a felt sense, the body will be a reference point by which a link to the unclear edge can be identified. In beginning the practice, the best way to attend to this is to turn the attention inwards, into the viscera of the body. The felt sense, here, is not definable content. We’re used to separating out our experience, into categories, ‘thinking’, ‘feeling’, ‘understanding’, ‘imagining’. Focusing shows us, quite directly, that these are somewhat false distinctions and a felt sense, particularly, is different from all these. A felt sense is always new.

4) A felt sense is a whole – an intricate whole, a multiplicity present in a single felt sense. The felt sense is something that we have, not something that we are, and sometimes an immense relief comes with this acknowledgement.

5) Change steps come from the felt sense – an unmistakeable, definitive shift comes with a felt sense – there is a process available by which we can acknowledge change.

6) A step will bring you closer to being yourself – the sense-of-self is different from before, and always renewed, as a step by step development of a centered whole. Continually, through Focusing, we are made aware that we are not the felt sense. Through this, we become more deeply, ourselves.

7) Steps are in the direction of growth – in a time where ‘growth’ sits as a somewhat socially inept term, Focusing reveals a non-legislated, but consistent, growth pattern, in our own awareness. Gendlin (1996) distinguishes growth from catharsis, the sense of sloughing off uncontrollable emotional anger or fury through physical and verbal expression. Distinct from this process, Focusing takes us deeper into our own existence, rather than extinguishing parts of it – catharsis returns us to a state of homeostasis, whereas Focusing takes us closer to the source of that homeostasis. Life energy, interest in own process, positive stirrings, inside, central elements become revealed, and we are made aware that they are far from static.

8′) Steps can only be explained retroactively – process steps are always more finely grained and more textured than we can expect. A key learning of participating in a Focusing dyad over the past six months for me has been that the sessions never, ever come in the way that I expect. With this is an acknowledgement that the logic that we might ascribe to the process steps is always retroactively available and applied – progression in this process is only ever available, in hindsight.

Ref:

Gendlin, E. (1996). Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy: A Manual of the Experiential Method. New York: The Guildford Press.