the focusing space

Put simply, Focusing is felt-sensing. As such, it is a process that we all know. Well...at least... we can know it, if we becom e curious about how it happens that we understand situations in a lived-in kind of intuitive way. We can know it because we already are inwardly supported in our everyday lives by this very dynamic way of knowing our selves as situated in the world. We've got our own life-optimising genius built in! We tend not to reflect on how this happens, though.

With a little training, we can become more attuned to our inner processes, and then we might come upon this fundamental way we are, 'inside,' when we carry forward  the situations in our lives - from the most simple to the more complex life-changing situations. When  felt-sensing as a trainable process is spoken of, it is called Fosusing. It was named thus by the U.S. philosopher Eugene T. Gendlin, who in his writings has so clearly articulated the importance of the felt sense in our lives. A lot of his work can be read at the Focusing Institute's website.

Why is it called Focusing? Well, this has to do with how this way of giving attention to our inner life brings something hitherto unclear into focus. The act of focusing a camera manually is an analogy. I'll have more to say about how we can bring the fuzzy, unclear sense of 'something in there' into focus elsewhere on this site.

Focusing has especially been taken up in the psychotherapeutic community, because it empowers the client. In fact, Gendlin speaks of the felt sense as the 'client's client.' However, it isn't just for use in psychotherapy. As I said above, it underpins much of our daily life. And it is invaluable in many other fields of human endeavour - in business, politics, social and humanitarian services, artistic endeavours, and many more. The Focusing Instutute's website has a drop-down menu that lists fields where people are applying Focusing. Here are some: Afghanisthan, a better world, psychotherapy, expressive art therapies, trauma, addictions, body work, research, children, spirituality, medicine, creative process, science and business.

Just the most ordinary things in our daily lives can involve this activity. For instance, I have to cook a meal for my friends and I have to write this article for the website. I start the article. I'm enjoying writing, but I'm keeping an eye on the clock - because I still have to prepare the meal. As I go, I get 'a feel' for how the article is going vis-a-vis my need to start the meal and where I can neatly finish writing for today. As I do this, I don't work only from the 'logic' of time. I get a feel for how 'time' is living in me, in the situation that I'm in, and I let that 'feel' guide me. I let it tell me whether I can complete this section of the article before I need to go to the kitchen.

That's a simple, domestic thing. On the other hand, the 'situation' might be something as difficult and important as leaving a relationship, or leaving a job, and so on.  A felt sense is a place where some life process is stopped and where it needs our  gentle, attentive support to carry it forward.

It's not uncommon knowledge that we make our life decisions on more than a purely logical basis. We may include logic, but at some stage we usually consult our gut feelings and act on them. This experience is intricate. I said above that even without training we are already supported by our felt senses as they operate in us as we are situated in the world, during our day. Of course, it is a little more complex when you look at it; because the felt sense happens precisely because we are not separated from our world - because we and our world are not two. So, it's more like... felt-sensing is a dynamic way of knowing: ourselves-in-and-as-the-world-in-process.

So, in summary: Focusing is a human process whereby we find inner guidance by attending to the body's felt sense of the whole of something, including the more than we currently know about it. For example, our whole sense of a situation or problem. The felt sense is at first vague, or fuzzy, but from there you sense that you do know something about the situation. You might not have the words yet, but you can tell from the feel of it that it is exactly about something you know in your life. Eugene Gendlin, a philosopher and then professor at the University of Chicago, developed a easy-to-understand process of six steps to teach people who aren't felt-sense-savvy how to access the life-forward movement inherent in the felt sense. He developed this approach (based on his previous philosophical discoveries) when working with Carl Rogers, an influential psychologist who was the originator of 'person-centred psychotherapy,' at U of Chicago. The Focusing steps suggested by Gendlin bring the words we are seeking for that vague something (the felt sense), and when the words (or some other symbolisation, like: dancing, drawing, imaging...) come, then further life-process naturally flows.

All this is possible because living bodies are made of the situations that they are in.