Focusing, Chapter 4, Continued: Extra Advice If The Steps Are Hard

I’m reading Chapter 4: The Focusing Manual of the book Focusing. All the quotes are from this chapter.

Now we’re coming to the meat of the process, the Six Focusing Steps. It isn’t always easy for people to pick up the method just from reading the book, so I’ve added some extra advice on what to do if the steps don’t seem to come easy.

A bit of perseverance is definitely also helpful in learning this. 

Step 1. Clearing a space What I will ask you to do will be silent, just to yourself. Take a moment just to relax. . . . All right—now, inside you, I would like you to pay attention inwardly, in your body, perhaps in your stomach or chest. Now see what comes there when you ask, “How is my life going? What is the main thing for me right now?” Sense within your body. Let the answers come slowly from this sensing. When some concern comes, DO NOT GO INSIDE IT. Stand back, say “Yes, that’s there. I can feel that, there.” Let there be a little space between you and that. Then ask what else you feel. Wait again, and sense. Usually there are several things.

If this step feels hard, it can help to make a written list. There’s just something about writing things down that helps focus the mind. That way, if you find yourself distracted by something later, you can simply add it to the list.

The list becomes particularly meaningful and comforting if you can make a deal with yourself to come back to the other items later. There’s a sense of self-trust that comes from a regular practice of coming back to things.

If you find yourself getting too sucked in to the structures you’re naming, try prefacing with “Something in me”, rather than “I”. “I’m worried that …” becomes “Something in me is worried that …”.

You can even add “I’m sensing”. I feel mad” becomes “I’m sensing something in me that feels mad”. (These are two moves from Untangling that help you unmerge from parts.) I find that this works as a language equivalent to what Gendlin calls standing back. 

Language moves seem to work better for many people as they are learning to build out the spatial sensing required for Focusing. This moves pairs well with using a written method to begin with.

Step 2. Felt sense From among what came, select one personal problem to focus on. DO NOT GO INSIDE IT. Stand back from it. Of course, there are many parts to that one thing you are thinking about—too— too many to think of each one alone. But you can feel all of these things together. Pay attention there where you usually feel things, and in there you can get a sense of what all of the problem feels like. Let yourself feel the unclear sense of all of that.

This step requires discipline, I think there’s no way around it. Many of us have ingrained habits for interacting with our problems. It can be really tempting to run off into worrying, problem solving, ranting, aruging, despair, etc. If that happens it helps to treat this as a type of meditation. When you notice that you’re doing something that isn’t felt sensing simply bring your attention back to it. It can also be really helpful to have another person there to gently remind you. 

This step can also require feeling safe. For some people felt senses are shy or bringing attention to the self is difficult. Some people are really external and internal attention is unfamiliar and challenging. Others deal with a lot of default dissociation.

If you attempt this step and "nothing happens”, then playing with creating more of a sense of safety can help. Maybe you’re safer by yourself, or safer with someone else present. Maybe you feel safe in your bed under a blanket (I do!) or under a tree. Make sure you’re well fed, warm enough, and you have some space to yourself. Turn your phone off. If you have a lot going on, try again at a later time when you feel more calm.

Some people seem to have felt senses but don’t feel them spatially or in the body. Gendlin’s language tends to favor a particular way of inner sensing and there are other modalities for interacting with the implicit. Some people have strong inner seeing, hearing, tasting, touch or smell. If you get rich holistic senses behind words (or symbols) that seem to open to your attention and reveal new information, that’s probably a felt sense. 

Step 3. Handle What is the quality of this unclear felt sense? Let a word, a phrase, or an image come up from the felt sense itself. It might be a quality-word, like tight, sticky, scary, stuck, heavy, jumpy, or a phrase, or an image. Stay with the quality of the felt sense till something fits it just right.

When this step is hard, it can be helpful to describe the felt sense from the outside, with your inner senses, rather than letting symbols arise from it. This is a little akin to trying to read off how someone is feeling from their body language instead of them telling you. You can ask “Does it have a color, texture, location, sound, taste, smell?” If this is done with positive intention (curiosity, respect and compassion) it can help you attune more precisely to the felt sense. In the metaphor from before, attending to someone’s body language can help you show up in such a way that they’re more willing and able to tell you how they feel. 

Step 4. Resonating Go back and forth between the felt sense and the word (phrase, or image). Check how they resonate with each other. See if there is a little bodily signal that lets you know there is a fit. To do it, you have to have the felt sense there again, as well as the word. Let the felt sense change, if it does, and also the word or picture, until they feel just right in capturing the quality of the felt sense.

Steps 3 and 4 describe a loop of going back and forth between felt sense and handle to check for resonance. When these steps are hard, it can help to do an activity kind of like wine tasting.

Imagine you’re tasting wine and you’re trying to describe the different notes you detect. That way you can notice things about the felt sense that match but aren’t complete. Maybe the felt sense seems shy. That may not be it’s main quality, but it is a quality.

Maybe it seems slippery and hard to pay attention to.

Maybe it’s surprising or challenging. You may notice an emotional response to it — Oh, this one scares me.

Or it might seem familiar. This one reminds me of Christmas with my family somehow. You might notice associational notes.

Sometimes there may be a flavor, but you don't exactly have a word for it. "It's kinda like strawberry."

There can be lots of incomplete or imprecise notes to pick up on, and sometimes that’s way easier than getting the whole thing at once. Just don’t jump too far ahead with something incomplete or imprecise.

In Inner Relationship Focusing they have a slightly different method for refining one’s understanding over time which lets you work with partial resonance. You may get a word or image that’s somewhat right, but not quite. In which case you’ll also have a sense of the “not quite right yet” that is itself a felt sense. Or you may have a sense that it’s right but incomplete, together with a sense of incompleteness.

Then you can hone in on those senses of “not quite right” or “incomplete” and recursively apply the Focusing steps. While you do this recursive Focusing, try to maintain a connection to the felt sense of the context in which it is arising. 

Step 5. Asking Now ask: What is it, about this whole problem, that makes this quality (which you have just named or pictured)? Make sure the quality is sensed again, freshly, vivily (not just remembered from before). When it is here again, tap it, touch it, be with it, asking, “What makes the whole problem so ⎯⎯⎯?” Or you ask, “What is in this sense?” If you get a quick answer without a shift in the felt sense, just let that kind of answer go by. Return your attention to your body and freshly find the felt sense again. Then ask it again. Be with the felt sense till something comes along with a shift, a slight “give” or release.

This is the point where the method can open up to accomodate many different types of moves. You can replace the question with a myriad of other ones. “What can I know about this/ What am I allowed to know about this?” is one I like (it’s a bit more respectful of the parts in me that want certain things to stay unconscious). “What does it want me to know?” 

If you’re following a traversal process (like repeatedly asking “What’s good about this?”) then you may want to ask how what the felt sense is showing you is related to your original question.

If you’re doing an open-ended inquiry a felt sense may spontaneously arise. Then you can ask how it relates or what it means.

You can also do non-verbal moves, like touching the felt sense with your attention. If your attention includes enough positive intention (which it well may if you’ve trained it in some way or you’re in the field of someone who has) then simply attending to the felt sense may help it open and shift. 

There’s all sorts of fun stuff you can do here. If the felt sense has a color, temperature, sound, etc, that you can observe, then you can ask it what color, temperature, sound it wants to have, or would have if it were free to be however it wants to be. (This is from Joe Shirley’s method, which can be found here.)

You can ask it how it wants to move your body, what movement would express it. (This is particularly helpful if you’re working with something related to body tension or body armor.)

You can ask it to pick a song it likes and let it dance the song. (Because, why not?)

You can write a poem, paint or improvise on the piano, all from felt senses. (A lot of good art gets made that way!)

You can interact with felt senses that aren’t problems. (I’m writing this post from a felt sense of what I want to add to Gendlin’s work.) The possibilities are endless. 

Step 6. Receiving Receive whatever comes with a shift in a friendly way. Stay with it a while, even if it is only a slight release. Whatever comes, this is only one shift; there will be others. You will probably continue after a little while, stay here for a few moments.

I find that this step is important to let the body catch up with the mind. If you skip this too often (which I’m prone to) then you can feel something build up in the body, a sense of something being left behind, or of implicit updates that need to happen to “catch you up” to where you are. 

Staying with the shift helps propagate the update and helps with integration. You may even want to ask here, “What else wants to shift in response to this shift”. Or “What has changed?” Or if you’re following a traversal method, now is a good moment to check in with your initial question, or to move back up the causal chain you’ve created. 

If the shift made me feel better I also sometimes like to just sit with it and enjoy it in gratitude. Or if the shift brought up emotions I'll give myself some time to have my feelings.