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What is Focusing and what are the benefits?
Focusing can help you to get to the bottom of a problem that is current in your life, and which has perhaps become a pattern for you. It can help you make decisions or help you if you feel stuck in some way. It can lead to increased self-awareness, self-acceptance and psychological growth. Focusing is a process which can be learnt.
For clients who would like to simply be guided in a Focusing process, and to learn how to do Focusing for themselves, this is for you.
Focusing as a guided process follows a loose structure which often begins with a guided grounding exercise (similar to mindfulness). This helps to bring your awareness into your body so that you may connect with your bodily feelings and sensations. Focusing can also be used with art materials and/ or with a body map.
The Focusing process is summarised below.
Clearing A Space
This refers to clearing a space ‘inside’ the body and is the first step in the Focusing process. We are often busy juggling many things in our lives; this is an exercise to pause and notice what is going on inside the body and mind: what is stopping you from feeling that all is well in your life?
You will be guided to identify and externalise all the different issues that are bothering you to some degree or another. Once these issues are identified and placed 'outside of the body' you will typically notice a clear space inside.
Noticing
The next step is to notice which feeling/ situation/ emotion identified in the previous step wants your attention. When this is identified we are ready to work with it.
A 'Felt Sense'
You will be guided to sit with that which wants your attention: to 'be' with it, allow it to be as it wants to be, give it space, hear it, sense how it feels in the body.
As you give your attention in this way, a 'felt sense' will begin to form and unfold.
Listening & Communicating
When we attend to the felt sense with patience, kindness and curiosity, it starts ‘communicating’ with us (from the body rather than the head).
It holds the answers. It knows why it exists, where it comes from; it knows what it needs, and what it wants you to know.
You might get a sense of an image which might encapsulate it, or a word, sound or movement which might express it.
A 'Felt Shift'
The experience of hearing from this ‘part’ of you, and for this part of you to feel heard, seen and understood brings with it a sense of relief.
In Focusing terminology this is referred to as a ‘felt shift’. It marks a ‘carrying forward’ of a process that was hitherto stuck and out of awareness. In psychological terms it is a movement towards greater wellbeing.
The word ‘focusing’ means to spend time, attending to that inwardly sensed edge. When that happens in the silence, the next thing and the next come gradually from deeper and deeper.
Eugene Gendlin
Research
Focusing is grounded in many years of research. It was first developed following an extensive research project that lasted five years by Carl Rogers and Eugene Gendlin in the 1950s and 60s.
A Learnt Process
The research showed that when clients naturally did what came to be called ‘Focusing’, they had successful therapy outcomes. Gendlin developed Focusing as a process that anybody could learn to improve their emotional wellbeing.
Widely Taught
Focusing, although originating from a therapy context is not confined to therapy and is widely taught across the world to individuals, mental health organisations, businesses, schools, and spiritual organisations.
Book An Appointment
For more information or to book an appointment with Sara Bradly, email sara@inner-focus.co.uk
