WHAT IS FOCUSING?
credit: penabranca
Focusing is a method for engaging with that bodily sense of any life experience, recent or long gone. It’s a way to dive into that bodily reaction and explore it, seeing what that’s all about, and allowing it to ‘speak’ or transform. It’s a way to give your “gut feeling” a voice.
Bodily information is your physical reaction to a situation, or a person. For example, you may not know why, but you simply don’t feel right about your job, or your relationship, or some other situation. It's that “gut feeling” that you can’t necessarily explain rationally. It’s that feeling of your hair standing on its end when you sense that something is right or wrong. It’s that heavy molasses sadness that seems to descend into the chest for no reason at all. These are bodily experiences of thoughts or events.
Focusing is an introspective, meditative technique that allows us to pose questions and receive information directly from the body, rather than the mind.
Focusing is also a great way of slowing down and spending time with stronger physical or emotional discomforts that may have become our constant companions, especially those emotionally triggered pains like nausea, neck pains, or headaches. It’s a way to find out what lies beneath chronic tensions, and in so doing, often allows them to release.
Bodily information is your physical reaction to a situation, or a person. For example, you may not know why, but you simply don’t feel right about your job, or your relationship, or some other situation. It's that “gut feeling” that you can’t necessarily explain rationally. It’s that feeling of your hair standing on its end when you sense that something is right or wrong. It’s that heavy molasses sadness that seems to descend into the chest for no reason at all. These are bodily experiences of thoughts or events.
Focusing is an introspective, meditative technique that allows us to pose questions and receive information directly from the body, rather than the mind.
Focusing is also a great way of slowing down and spending time with stronger physical or emotional discomforts that may have become our constant companions, especially those emotionally triggered pains like nausea, neck pains, or headaches. It’s a way to find out what lies beneath chronic tensions, and in so doing, often allows them to release.
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Focusing was developed by the philosopher and psychotherapist, Eugene Gendlin at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1968 to 1995. He was trying to figure out why some patients had "lasting positive change" from psychotherapy while others could see a therapist forever and still be stuck in the same problem.
He found that when clients connected to the bodily sense of a problem, a window of changeability opened, which did not happen if they only thought about a problem. He spent the rest of his life teasing out the details of that relationship with oneself and creating a step-by-step guide to accessing that state of changeability which can lead to transformation.
What he found was a process that depends on compassionate listening, kindness, patience, and complete momentary self-acceptance. This self-kindness, especially towards the parts we may judge as ugly or shameful allows us to truly transform and release our emotional or mental burdens. We approach life with greater resilience, and grace. We can experience the true power of self-acceptance and authenticity. We discover new resources in our unique and fascinating inner landscapes.
He found that when clients connected to the bodily sense of a problem, a window of changeability opened, which did not happen if they only thought about a problem. He spent the rest of his life teasing out the details of that relationship with oneself and creating a step-by-step guide to accessing that state of changeability which can lead to transformation.
What he found was a process that depends on compassionate listening, kindness, patience, and complete momentary self-acceptance. This self-kindness, especially towards the parts we may judge as ugly or shameful allows us to truly transform and release our emotional or mental burdens. We approach life with greater resilience, and grace. We can experience the true power of self-acceptance and authenticity. We discover new resources in our unique and fascinating inner landscapes.
FOCUSING WAS DEVELOPED BY
EUGENE GENDLIN
"Gendlin... demonstrated that the client's ability to realize lasting positive change in psychotherapy depended on their ability to access a non-verbal, bodily feel of the issues that brought them into therapy. Gendlin called this intuitive body-feel the “felt sense.” He studied how those successful clients accessed and articulated this felt sense, and developed Focusing in order to teach others how to do so. In 1978, Gendlin published his best-selling book Focusing, which presented a six step method for discovering one's felt sense and drawing on it for personal development."
www.eugenegendlin.com
EUGENE GENDLIN
"Gendlin... demonstrated that the client's ability to realize lasting positive change in psychotherapy depended on their ability to access a non-verbal, bodily feel of the issues that brought them into therapy. Gendlin called this intuitive body-feel the “felt sense.” He studied how those successful clients accessed and articulated this felt sense, and developed Focusing in order to teach others how to do so. In 1978, Gendlin published his best-selling book Focusing, which presented a six step method for discovering one's felt sense and drawing on it for personal development."
www.eugenegendlin.com
