Focusing, Chapter 7, Continued: The Magical Ingredient Of Space

I have been thinking more about Chapter 7: Clearing A Space of the book Focusing, and playing around with simply practicing the move of putting things in front of me, nothing else. 

It’s been slow going, to be honest. I find that I feel a lot of resistance to the idea of putting things outside. I find myself wondering how they get back in. There’s a ritual to put them outside, but none to put them back. But still, they must come back in somehow. I notice that parts of me want them to stay outside forever and thus other parts don’t want them to ever leave. Interesting.

But most notably, I find myself coming from a very relational approach. And it feels weird to treat parts (that I’m treating a little bit as if they’re people) in this way. Like, yesterday there was a baby part and I found myself thinking, “Isn’t it cruel to put the baby down somewhere without much of a plan to pick it back up? The baby wants to be held, so what now?”. 

And it got me thinking about how “unrelational” the original Focusing approach really is, compared to my own practice and practices like Inner Relationship Focusing or Internal Family Systems. Sure, there are edges of relationality here and there, like the idea of giving things a friendly hearing. 

“The first movement is the time when you establish an environment of friendly feeling within yourself. You prepare to give yourself a fair hearing. 
“How are you now?” you ask, gently. “What’s with you right now? What’s the main thing for you right now?” 
And then you don’t answer in words. No, you wait. Let the answer be the feelings that will come in your body.”

(Focusing: Chapter 7)

That’s relational language, using metaphors of external relationships to induce a stance towards the felt sense. But overall these bits are few and far between compared to my sense of how to do things. 

Instead of using relational language, Gendlin often uses spatial language. Stand a little distance apart. DO NOT GO INSIDE IT. Place it in front of you, as if on the floor. 

That’s really interesting. It’s making me think that whereas IRF and IFS draw heavily on our sense of Compassion, Gendlin is instead drawing on a sense of inner Space. In many ways Focusing is a practice for cultivating and utilizing Space. 

Maybe most inner work methods have a one, or a few, magical ingredients, aspects of True Nature that they are in turn cultivating and utilizing, in an up-spiraling feedback loop. I was previously using Focusing in a way that’s very centered on Clarity, another aspect. But also, Space.

Space is closely related to opening. I’m finding it hard to describe directly, because it doesn’t actually seem to have qualities of it’s own. It doesn’t really feel like anything but emptiness when I try to attend to it directly. Like a sort of nothingness.

It seems more easily recognizable by its effects on the rest of me. “I feel like I have more space around this now” is one of those things people say when they do inner work. What does that actually feel like?

It feels like the topic is easier to think about, easier to feel into, easier to be with. Things feel less crowded, less cramped. Less like you’re in a loud room, unable to hear your own thoughts. Less like your mind is acting on its own accord, jumping around thinking thoughts, without space for you to ponder and make choices. Choices happen in Space, as do shifts. 

Pause is another word Gendlin likes to use. It seems like Space arises where the ego pauses.

Space is the ingredient that allows for felt senses to shift spontaneously. The presence of space has an effect, the effect of thing spontaneously opening into it. Almost a little bit like a vacuum that subtly pulls. It has this very pleasant pull. 

Now that I’m paying attention to it, I can find the sense of space subtly evoked everywhere in the languaging of the book. There’s a feeling to the book, a calm, gentle simplicity, like you’re attending a Taoist Tea Ceremony. Space.