Focusing
Eugene T. Gendlin
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN: 0553278339
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The classic guide to a powerful
technique for personal transformation
Based on groundbreaking research conducted at the University of Chicago, the focusing technique has gained widespread popularity and scholarly acclaim. It consists of six easy-to-master steps that identify and change the way thoughts and emotions are held within the body. Focusing can be done virtually anywhere, at any time, and an entire “session” can take no longer than ten minutes, but its effects can be felt immediately–in the relief of bodily tension and psychological stress, as well as in dramatic shifts in understanding and insight.
In this highly accessible guide, Dr. Eugene Gendlin, the award-winning psychologist who developed the focusing technique, explains the basic principles behind focusing and offers simple step-by-step instructions on how to utilize this powerful tool for tapping into greater self-awareness and inner wisdom. As you learn to develop your natural ability to “focus,” you’ll find yourself more in sync with both mind and body, filled with greater self-assurance, and better equipped to make the positive changes necessary to improve and enhance every aspect of your life.
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situation changes, you change—and, therefore, so does your life. Let’s study these two propositions in more detail. First, I want to be sure you understand what a felt sense is. A felt sense is not a mental experience but a physical one. Physical. A bodily awareness of a situation or person or event. An internal aura that encompasses everything you feel and know about the given subject at a given time—encompasses it and communicates it to you all at once rather than detail by detail. Think of
If we have a secret, we will keep it safe from those people, safe inside us, untold. That way it won’t shrivel up and lose all the meaning it has for us. But if you are lucky, you know one person with whom it is the other way around. If you tell that person something exciting, it becomes more exciting. A great story will expand, you will find yourself telling it in more detail, finding the richness of all the elements, more than when you only thought about it alone. Whatever matters to you, you
minute with your angry feeling. Just feel it for a minute. See what more is in it. Don’t think anything. . . .” How to help a felt sense form There is a gradation of how much help people need to contact a felt sense. Always do the least amount first, and more only if that doesn’t work. Some people won’t need any help except your willingness to be silent. If you don’t talk all the time, and if you don’t stop them or get them off the track, they will feel into what they need to feel into. Don’t
asked, return to the first person with an invitation to say more. When all are down on one person, there has to be someone who is more interested in letting that person get heard than in joining the attack. Even if you feel insecure or an outsider in the group, you can always express your wish to hear more from any person, or to have that person repeat something to which the group didn’t respond. There are ways to help with an interaction between two other people. If two or more are having
not surprising that Allan came to Chicago to be listened to. Now that these skills are spreading, Changes is no longer such a rare island. After the mutual listening part of the Changes evening, there is a short break. Then people go to special groups. There are listening-training groups. There are several focusing groups in which a very gentle climate prevails, and they would be shy to let you in. There are also other activities. Someone might have stood up spontaneously in the big group and