Swiss psychologist Alice Miller wrote:

“Ultimately the body will rebel. Even if it can be temporarily pacified with the help of drugs, cigarettes or medicine, it usually has the last word because it is quicker to see through self-deception than the mind. We may ignore or deride the messages of the body, but its rebellion demands to be heeded because its language is the authentic expression of our true selves and of the strength of our vitality.”

This is a very powerful statement. Our true sense of self is rooted, not in ideas or thoughts, but in a “feeling of what happens” that is experienced at a bodily level.

Because this statement is so powerful, I also want to be careful to point out what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t negate the value of ideas and rational thinking. This would be absurd. It’s just that, if we were to only pay attention to logical thinking, we’d be cutting ourselves off from a major portion of our resources. Our goal is to combine both.

This is the power of Focusing. We can take an issue that we are thinking about, a feeling or an emotion, a situation and sense inwardly all about how our body holds this too. We come into balance in the considering of all the data that is entering our field of awareness. If we just “think” and use logic then we become top-heavy. All of our energy stays in our head. If we just follow feelings we can become blown about by emotions which come and go, we can start to believe we are our feelings and we lose our stability. If we combine all 3 ways we are designed to process information we become stable. It is like the process of “triangulation”. The term triangulation originated in cartography where two or more reference points are used to locate an exact position.

Most of us spend so much time thinking about our problems and some of us spend time overwhelmed by the our feelings about our problems  that almost forget to be in touch with how our body is carrying the issue. Sometimes thinking and feeling don’t even connect to each other. have you ever been dissuaded from feeling a certain way through the power of logical arguments – or does that just leave you feeling unheard, invalidated or labelled as emotional.

The felt meaning your body carries enables you to listen to the story within that, at the same time, needs to be told and heard, by you. This is your own story. This is the key to Focusing and is what Gene Gendlin found was an important clue that unlocks the mystery of how change happens in people.

He discovered that:

Our bodies hold the key to transformation

when we can allow

the felt meaning to unfold

and tell its story.

Emotions such as fear, anger, confusions are just the easily-recognised tip of how our bodies carry felt meaning. Your issue speaks like a story by moving forward in the changing body feeling of it.

Connecting with care and curiosity to our own story as it is known by our living body connects us to our own inner wisdom. We become both the author, the reader and the listener to our experience. And it is through the felt meaning held in our body that we are able to move beyond (yet still include) our minds (ego, will, pre-written story lines, and inner critics) and our emotions (moveable and reactive) to a more stable place within that can lead us to an undivided life of self-trust, self-respect and self-connection.

Ooohh…today I was asked to contribute ideas to a workshop on “difficult conversations” and my first thought was, “Well, I’d really rather not have any of them thank you very much!”

What I really meant was:

“I’d rather not deal with the difficult feelings that come up in me when I have to face situations that I am not comfortable with.”

Hmmm. In the Focusing world they have a phrase for this.

Process Skipping.

It is a long standing pattern we have of relating to the more negative part of ourselves (remember the Jell-O parts). The difficult part is realising that these old and difficult feelings we treat as enemies are, in fact both friends and teachers! No, its true! And it is possible to come into a new, kinder relationship with ourselves instead of making war inside – holding chronic kinds of tension around relationships, situations, issues, self-judgments and circumstances.

Each of us usually develops a pattern of numbing our difficult feelings. We might exercise, we might drink, watch TV, work long hours, play computer games, talk on the telephone. This, actually, takes us away from ourselves, which seems like a good thing if we are feeling guilty, scared, angry, annoyed, confused etc. Or we might go outside of ourselves to find the solution. We might talk to someone, defer to advice of elders, counsellors, meditate into deeply relaxed states and so on.

We don’t process-skip deliberately. It’s kind of automatic. But you can ask yourself:

How, precisely, do I avoid, numb, or run away from my difficult feelings?

What to do?

However, Gene Gendlin, who developed Focusing says that while the “mind” looks for a “solution” to a problem, our body actually looks for a ‘resolution”. We can find the resolution by spending time with how our body carries this issue in a Focusing kind of way. So, “difficult or uncomfortable” feelings hold the key to resolving the recurring issues in our lives. They hold the key.

The possibility for change and growth  lies not with emotion reactions, but in your body’s  more connected sense of meaning, its Felt Sense, to any given situation or part of yourself. We stay with the Felt Sense of the situation which may show itself to us as a metaphor, an image, a feeling, a shape, a sound, a colour. A felt sense is not just an emotion. Anger, happiness, sadness, fear – these are emotions. But what is under those emotions? What more lies there?

Have you ever tried to talk yourself out of the something that lies under the emotion and found it answering back – like it has a life of its own? We can, by attending to it, let it reveal itself to us. We let it show us what it knows all about this situation and how to resolve this issue. We hold a new kind of conversation with our body.

Our body can only know something is wrong by feeling uncomfortable because it instinctively knows what is perfectly right for us. Our job is to learn how to listen, listen again and trust in its embodied wisdom.

Genuine new beginnings emerge from a realignment of ways of looking at the world and a renewal of energy.  We often look for external signs to guide us into a beginning, but our inner attitudes toward life, our renewed self-knowledge and our intuition are really the hallmarks of our new beginnings. 

Staying on course

By relying on our inner voice to tell us where to go in life, we are likely to have more motivation than if we were to depend on the traditional expectations provided to us by others. 

Each day is an opportunity to check the alignment of our new beginning, to bring awareness of what is manifesting in our lives.  If we fail to do this, sooner or later we may inadvertently find ourselves reverting to our old ways of living or wondering how we wandered off course with no real awareness of doing so.

This process of checking-in and micro-adjusting our intentional choices to our our ongoing living experience will  depend on whether or not we can bring the Witness or Observer to bear on our continuing experiencing  and the quality of Presence we bring to our checking-in.
 

Trusting your Inner Voice through Focusing

In Focusing there’s a flow of awareness. What we can sense is how it is now. Yes, that includes the "now" of the past, our memories and the reactions of parts of us to what happened before. And it changes in response to each moment of our living while remaining aligned to our inner truths or essence. 

 
But I hear more than one Voice in there you say. I hear the voice that says do it, the voice that says you should be careful, the voice that says this is the wrong this to do.

We have many voices in us, and they can be in competition to be the one we act on. This can sometimes feel like an argument or even a war inside. These competing voices are often driven by fear, worry, and anxiety — and there can be a strong inner pressure to do what they say – and this can lead to a sense of overwhelm, disappointment or even the paralysis of procrastination because the voices might be advocating different steps or actions. Something just doesn’t feel right and there doesn’t seem to be a sense of ease.  And, of course, this would not be the inner sense of rightness that we talk about in Focusing.

These warring parts are what Barbara McGavin and Ann Weiser-Cornell call "Partial Selves," and they arise from an attempt to resolve a situation of trauma, blockage, or missing-ness. Because they are only  partial, they are not going to be able to bring about the resolution they seek—yet they do need to be listened to. But when I say they need to be listened to, I do not mean that we should act on them!

We need to ground ourselves firmly in Presence or our Inner Witness and listen deeply to what they’re afraid of and what they truly want for us – we need to hear their positive intent and let them know we have heard that is how it is – for them. One by one we listen to each partial self. Their energy eases up when they get heard. This leads to an inner calming that clears the way for the inner sense of rightness to be heard. Just saying hello to each voice-acknowledging their fear, anxiety etc can bring us into a clearer space and from this space we can sense the next right step.

This next step, sensed from a clear space after listening to our inner voices will feel fresh, intuitively supportive and a relief. The body knows the just right micro-adjustment if we listen.

Just 2 more thoughts…

We each need to let our intuition guide us, and then be willing to follow that guidance, directly and  fearlessly.

Shakti Gawain

I feel there are two people inside me – me and my intuition. If I go against her, she’ll screw me everytime, and if I follow her we get along quite nicely.

Kim Basinger

I cannot tell you how resistant I sometimes feel to responding empathically to others when I am feeling emotionally overwhelmed and challenged. The irony is that I facilitate courses based on NVC and have this internal expectation that, if I am offering trainings, I “should be” a near-perfect role model. UGH! GRRR!

So, why is it I resist what I know works? Try as I might, my mind simply cannot answer this question. I either go to analysis and/or excuses and/or blame and shame. Either way I stay in the same place.

So, I turned to my tried and true way of getting in touch with my own body’s knowing about what’s going on in there – Focusing. Finding some time to myself I got out my journal and just started to sense inwardly for how my body held “all about resisting being empathic when I am in pain even though I know it works and makes me feel good”.

First comes a weight on my chest and a squeezing feeling – from all sides all around my rib cage. Then an image of string coming out from the centre of my chest and me being pulled forward by the string.  I can sense my heels digging in and me leaning back against the pull of the string. Pulling the string are my expectations, my “shoulds” and the perfect model of NVC. Ohh! There’s also a finger wagging, it is near my shoulder and it is saying, “You know the model in NVC, now do it!.”

I acknowledge the pulling and the finger-wagging critic. Just say hello to them. I sense the critic wants me to feel in integrity. Oh, I get that. It wants me to live what I know works and makes me feel good. And when I do that I do feel an inner sense of integrity. A big sigh comes….and the string drops. My feet balance evenly on the ground now.

My attention is drawn back up to my chest again. The pressure has released and now there is pain inside the chest. A kind of soft sadness there. I say hello to that. It lets me know it wants me to pay attention to it first when I am getting stressed, into an argument or disagreement or something happens that feels hurtful. It needs to be taken care of before I can take care of anything else. As I acknowledge that an image and sensation of an aircushion comes around the whole of my chest area and it has the quality of calmness.  It provides a safe space for my pain. This feels good. Inside I can see how this space has a few parts of me in there – all responding to the situation differently. I need to pay attention to each part when things are unravelling emotionally – not just the strongest feeling – but all the little feelings too.

I ask this place, this felt sense, what is an action step I can take to bring this wisdom and bodily-felt knowing into my outer world and I get an image of taking time – or space – to take care of me. This feels like a self-empowering and self-strengthening move. I need to take as much time as it takes to get centred, if the situation allows that possibility.

Then this sensation moves up into my throat and I hear words like:

“I notice I am feeling triggered/stressed/confused right now and need to take some time out to get a better sense of what is going on for me. When I have worked that out I will come back to this conversation and from that space I feel sure we’ll be better able to hear each other…”

and a briefer version comes

“For us to better hear each other I need to take a little time out to get some clarity and calm. Can I get back to you once I have done that?

also

I’m finding this situation difficult and I’d like to check  what’s going on for me before continuing. Can I get back to you when I am in a better space  to be able to hear what you need me to hear?”