Focusing, Chapter 4: Instructions For Not Following Instructions

As I'm moving toward the second part of the book Focusing, in which Gendlin describes the actual steps of the method, I am reminded of how the steps are presented on the Focusing website. All quotes are from the website.

Here, Gendlin gives the steps, but below he also gives a wonderful, invaluable, piece of advice on how to interact with instructions. He hits the nail on the head so exactly that I'm just going to quote him again.

If you ever interact with any kind of method for personal transformation, introspection, personal process of any kind, follow these instructions for not following instructions. I would say this also applies for working with teachers, coaches, therapists and so on.

Instructions for Not Following Instructions

Isn't it wrong to publish instructions for inward personal process?

One danger with a set of instructions is that people might use them to close off other ways. Anything human involves more than one method. Please notice, we don't say that this method is all you need or might find valuable. Had we said that, we hope you would have thought us stupid.

Yes. That. Anything human involves more than one method.

Anything you learn here can go well with anything else that you may find helpful. If there seems to be a contradiction, go easy. Let your own steps find the way to reconcile the contradiction.

And that! There's a whole world view hiding in this paragraph. If two methods or views both seem deeply true and there is a sense of contradiction, that felt paradox can show you the way forward. This is a wonderful thing to use in any kind of dialectic.

There are other reasons one might not like specifics, such as these steps. Instructions may seem to diminish mystery and openness, although that is not so.

Also, written instructions cannot avoid misunderstandings. No formula fits every person. Anyway, one must find one's own path.

These problems occur with all types of knowledge about humans.

True that.

Adopt a "split-level" approach to all instructions: On the one hand follow the instructions exactly, so that you can discover the experiences to which they point. On the other hand be sensitive to yourself and your own body. Assume that only sound expansive experiences are worth having. The moment doing it feels wrong in your body, stop following the instruction, and back up slightly. Stay there with your attention until you can sense exactly what is going wrong.

Again, sound advice far beyond the scope of the Focusing steps. This can be applied not just to instructions of any type but to texts in general and even to teachers in general.

In my own experience teaching, both of these are absolutely essential. If a student isn't paying attention to what feels wrong in their body they are going to be prone to hurting themselves with even the most well-meant, carefully articulated instructions. If they aren't tracking whether they are following the instructions exactly then they are likely to only pick up whatever is nearby to what they already know and do and to then prematurely conclude that the method isn't working for them.

Doing both at once is likely to produce contradictions, and his advice on contradictions mirrors the one above: Stay with the felt sense and articulate it as precisely as you can (with the Focusing steps) until it shows you the way forward.

I can't stress enough how good this advice is! Such a gem, hidden away at the bottom of the page!

These are very exact instructions for how not to follow instructions!

And, of course, they apply to themselves, as well.

Yes. And that's a really, really great sign!

In this way you will find your own body's steps, either through the instructions, or through what is wrong with them.

Yes. There is a completeness in that that is wonderful and deep. With material of high enough quality you can always learn in both ways, either by directly following or by Focusing on what is/seems wrong about it.

If the student can approach the material from both directions then the material can meet the student exactly where they are.

Focusing is always like that: You don't push on if it doesn't feel right, but you don't run away either. You go no further, but you back up only a little, so that you stay until what is in the way becomes clear.

Focusing is quite safe. It may not work but it is not negative. So, if you sense something that does not feel life-forwarding and sound in your body, sense what that is until that opens.

But isn't it the height of self-contradiction to give exact steps for how not to follow instructions? Indeed. One often needs several attitudes at once.

I love that.

In a society increasingly skilled at human processes, of course we share the specifics we learn. Shall we teach the specifics of driving a car and not the specifics of finding and opening the bodily felt sense? But, human processes do give rise to more different specifics than can be logically consistent. Human nature is not fixed and not knowable in some single system. That is fortunate. No knowledge can push you out of the driver's seat of your life. Especially not our knowledge here, which is to be about finding your own process!

Human nature is not fixed and not knowable in some single system. Yes. That. That's the deep and difficult truth driving the postmodern/metamodern revolution society seems to be going through, summarized beautifully.

Therefore this knowledge, here, must arrange for itself to be superseded by you, as you sense for what feels sound, inside you. Instructions for not following instructions are the essence of Focusing—one's own inwardly opening steps.

One's inwardly opening steps. That by itself is such a gorgeous and phenomenologically accurate description of what Focusing is, what it feels like.

If you stop and sense what's wrong at any point, and if you wait there until that opens and reveals itself, you can make good use of all sorts of methods and instructions. You do any method better than its authors can arrange.

Yes.