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Out of
the Box Coaching and
Breakthroughs with the Enneagram,
Mary R. Bast, Ph.D.
Copyright © 1999. All rights reserved. Revised:
January 09, 2012
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Focusing
"Eugene Gendlin discovered that...
successful clients were not highly verbal or analytical. Instead, they allowed themselves
to experience and tolerate feelings that were vague, blurry, and unclear; and they allowed
these feelings to unfold in their own time and way. They attended to their inward,
bodily-felt world, rather than spinning their mental wheels. These naturally gifted
clients could sense inwardly and contact the ever-changing flow of their experience
without being overwhelmed by their emotions. They slowed down, took time to sense their
feelings, and listened to whatever message these feelings were trying to convey... Gendlin
referred to this process as "trusting the wisdom of the body... Every bad feeling is
potential energy toward a more right way of being if you give it space to move toward its
rightness." Dr.
John Amodeo
"Focusing," writes
Dr. Gendlin in his book of the same name, "is a process in which you make contact
with a special kind of internal bodily awareness. I call this awareness a felt
sense...when it comes, it is at first unclear, fuzzy. By certain steps
it can come into focus and also change."
The six steps to
focusing:
1.
Clear a
Space
-
Relax and pay attention in your body; ask
yourself What's going on with me right now?
2. Felt Sense
- Select one problem, stand back from it, and let yourself feel a sense of it.
3. Handle
- Let a word or phrase or image arise (e.g., heavy);
hold it along with the
felt sense.
4. Resonate between the felt sense and the word, phrase, or image; let either change, if it
does, until it feels just right (e.g., "As if I weigh 300 pounds").
5. Ask
yourself, "What
is this sense of
weighing 300 pounds (or
whatever word, phrase, or image fits for your felt sense)?"
6. Receive
whatever comes up and notice what happens, even if
it's only a slight release.
It doesn't matter whether the body shift comes or not at a given time. It will come on its own
as you practice sensing where and how your body holds its concerns.
"If nothing happens, back up and slow
down! The most likely difficulty is that you are pushing too
hard, expecting too much. See if you can hold the attitude
that you are primarily building a trusting relationship with
the inner senses in your body. Any information that may come
is extra. Be there and be interested." Ann Weiser
Cornell, Ph.D., The Power of Focusing: A Practical Guide
to Emotional Self-Healing, p. 38.
Much more at Dr. Kathy McGuire's
Creative Edge Focusing
web site.
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