Out of the Box Coaching and
Breakthroughs with the Enneagram, Mary R. Bast, Ph.D. 
Copyright © 1999. All rights reserved. Revised: July 16, 2010 

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.

Much more at Dr. Kathy McGuire's Creative Edge Focusing web site.