Category: Focusing

  • Q & A: How are mindfulness and Focusing similar and different?

    Q & A: How are mindfulness and Focusing similar and different?

    Mindfulness and Focusing share the characteristics of observing our experiencing in the present moment, having a somatic grounding, and requiring a certain quality of presence that I might call dis-identification. Dis-identification is the awareness that I am not my “stuff.”  My stuff might be past experiences, present problems, worries, strong emotions, daydreams, etc.

    In mindfulness practices, I observe all of that “stuff” and let it go by as I sit. When I become aware that I’m thinking of things again, I use the simple tools of Sound, Ground and Breath to gently return to the present moment. Another way to picture this is: I let my experience go by like clouds floating across the sky. I am not my clouds, but I have clouds. I do this for 30 minutes each morning and sometimes with clients in my office.

    Focusing begins with grounding in the physical body as mentioned above. In Focusing, dis-identification is realizing I am an “I” with no content, or again “I” am not my stuff. Up to here it is quite similar, we can say Focusing is mindfulness —and it is something more! In Focusing we become interested in our stuff. Not all of the clouds or worries but one, which will tug on us until we turn toward it with interested curiosity. I like to use a phrase borrowed from my friend and Focusing teacher Ann Weiser Cornell, “I’m sensing something in me that feels…” (has a certain fuzzy but noticeable felt quality to it). Then I describe it and say, “Hello” to it. In other words, my experiencing becomes relational. I am with an “it” or a “something” that is emerging freshly from my implicit awareness.

    All mindfulness activities are a process of orienting our awareness to our implicit right hemisphere. It is present moment engagement with the world, through the body. We take time to let our left hemisphere (concrete) awareness take a break. It often doesn’t like this and is referred to as “monkey mind” in its repeated angling for our attention. In meditation we keep coming back to the body and our breathing because they are in the present moment. Thoughts and feelings (left brain) and murky implicit felt qualities (right brain) are just noticed and let go of.

    In Focusing, implicit awareness is the royal road of emerging experience: it is where new fresh information comes from. Here, we drop below what is explicit and known, below thoughts and feelings that we are identified with. Here, is how “that whole thing you are worried about” feels in your chest and quivers in your throat. Here, is mind-body knowing before the split. As we sit with this “cloud” we listen to it and let it show us what it needs to let go and move on. This happens as we let the left hemisphere bring symbols that capture the felt quality of the whole. Symbols can be words, images, somatic sensations, memories, gestures, movement and more. Focusing is a weaving back and forth between body-sensing and mindful-symbolizing of our experience. When this happens the stuck place or problem unwinds and releases in a forward direction of new possibilities and growth.

    I have two Focusing partners who I exchange Focusing turns with. It is free therapy and can change the world. If you enjoyed this, you might also like: Searching for the Truth that is Far Below the Search.

     

  • Q & A: What did Brené Brown discover is the key ingredient for overcoming failure and why is it so important in the process of change?

    Q & A: What did Brené Brown discover is the key ingredient for overcoming failure and why is it so important in the process of change?

    “He or she who is the most capable of being uncomfortable rises the fastest. There is a huge correlation between a capacity for discomfort and wholeheartedness. If you cannot manage discomfort, that sends you barreling into perfectionism, blame, rationalizing–without taking away key learnings.”
         (Brené Brown to Time Magazine, September 2015)

    The notion of being with what’s uncomfortable feels oxymoronic to most clients. Naturally, people think, “I don’t like this feeling; I need to make it go away by doing or thinking something else!” This avoidant reaction, however, leads to irrational processes that circumvent the actual learning that’s available in the pain and adjourns its resolution. I lead clients into sitting next to what’s uncomfortable while remaining emotionally regulated. Maintaining emotional regulation is key or our clients will miss the value of being with the experience by immediately trying to fix the discomfort.

    Key phrases you will hear a client say are, “I feel angry and frustrated…” or “I don’t like this part of me…” In these moments we want to guide our clients by saying, “You are sensing something in you that is really angry, let’s pause here for a moment.”  We want to encourage them to take a moment to be with what is making them upset. From there we want to encourage them to realize their mood does not define them. They can keep company with their negative feeling/sense, and just be. This regulated way of staying with uncomfortable feelings, Brené Brown says, is the beginning of the true ability to overcome failure and pain, and to heal.

    Being with and not defined by pain, distress, fear, etc. is also a key aspect in change itself. Being able to turn toward discomfort without drowning in it or fleeing from it is the first big step in the change process. Clients are not able to do this very well unless they have someone who knows how to bring them up to the edge of discomfort and safely guide them into their bodily experience. Here is where clients can begin to tap into and learn to trust what they bodily know but have turned away from in the past. This process is not a kind of pushing through the discomfort. It is a way of being with the discomfort, so the body can proceed with its natural healing process.

    Would you like to be able to do this smoothly and confidently with clients?
    Check out my training page for upcoming FOT-1 workshops.

     

     

  • Q & A: Why isn’t Focusing more well-known?

    Q & A: Why isn’t Focusing more well-known?

    My three favorite reasons why Focusing is not better known.

    1. Focusing was discovered through research, not invented! It is a natural human process. Gene Gendlin developed steps in order to help people find this innate process in their own experiencing. Gendlin was an anti-guru who had little interest in selling Focusing to the world, instead he gave it away.

    Gendlin intentionally avoided trademarking Focusing or standardizing its curriculum so that it could be kept open and used in any domain one could imagine. He thought that such an amazing and transformational process should be available to everyone and this motivated him to publish the book Focusing in 1978 –a notably simple and accessible writing from a brilliant Philosopher, Psychotherapist and Researcher.

    Gendlin wanted a better world not a bigger bank account. Others picked up on his research and Focusing steps finding it a valuable contribution to their own processes and methodologies. This blending and borrowing is why it is often said that Focusing has inspired much of the mindfulness and somatic work being done today.

    1. Focusing is uniquely broad in its application. It makes everything better! As an experiencing-process Focusing brings fresh meaning, richness and depth to everything you use it with. It is not just a method of therapy, but rather what makes therapy work. It goes beyond mindfulness to Relational Presence. Combined with spirituality it becomes bio-spirituality and a doorway to transcendent experience opens.

    When someone asks what Focusing is good for, the answer is something like holding up a little brown jug of liquid and saying, “this makes everything better.” How can a single process do so much? Focusing is already involved in the way each of us allows new information to come into awareness. We are always on some level Focusing (bringing unclear felt knowing into focus and explicit awareness). It is part of our natural process!

    1. Focusing goes to the very essence of change, which is a fundamentally different approach from the usual popular themes of simply problem solving in our culture. Western philosophy meets Eastern philosophy as we understand the nature of being. Focusing comes from this philosophical ground, which sees change as a process of stepping back from your experience, observing it (mindfulness) and then being with it and relating to it bodily (emerging right hemisphere experience meeting language in the left). All experience is there to be related to, not fixed, manipulated, medicated or labeled. This is a radical perspective that goes against our “just do it” culture.

     

     

  • Stay Peaceful and Present through the Holidays with this NEW Course

    Stay Peaceful and Present through the Holidays with this NEW Course

    Peaceful and Present through the Holidays:
    A NEW Focusing Course with Jeffrey Morrison

    Would you like to shift from distracted, anxious, and overwhelmed to Patient, Peaceful, and Present through the holidays? I can show you how in six weeks or your money back!

    When: Six Thursdays, November 29th through January 3rd, from 6:00 pm to 7:15 pm
    Where: Move to Center Studio, 3618 SW Alaska St, Seattle, WA 98126
    Fee: $125 (includes all materials)
    Email: with subject “Help me relax!” to jeffrey@morrisontherapy.com

    Focusing is an experiential, embodied and relational process at the heart of all change. I have taught Focusing to therapists and other healing professionals for years. Now I want to share this amazing process with you personally.

    Focusing promotes a healthier relationship with the person who stands in the way of change — you! Learn to be more patient, peaceful and present as you shift your way of experiencing and shape your own process of change.

    Change is not something we force. It is a way of being with our body’s innate knowing and wisdom. We all have an inner GPS, guidance system of knowing. What we lack is a way of knowing how the system works. Focusing will help you learn how: Guaranteed!

  • Therapists, healing professionals and spiritual seekers – enrich your practice with your unique gifts

    Therapists, healing professionals and spiritual seekers – enrich your practice with your unique gifts

    My Focusing Training Program benefits therapists, healing professionals, and spiritual seekers.

    Perhaps you have been reading the latest neuroscience that points to working in an attuned, mindful and body-centered way with clients, and you’d like to learn how to incorporate that into your practice. My Focusing workshops help practitioners like you to deepen your work in this way and nourish your personal life at the same time.

    Focusing for Therapy & Healing, the subject of year one of my Focusing Training Program includes a series of four professional Focusing workshops designed for psychotherapists, healing professionals, and others who want to set a different course in their life; one that will open up new possibilities for growth in their professional practices, relationships, and personal wellbeing. For therapists who complete year one and want to learn how to use Focusing to heal trauma in a clinical setting, may continue on to year two – Focusing for Complex Trauma. Additionally I am a Certified Coordinator through the Focusing Institute and I offer a Focusing Certification program.

  • Unwinding the Habitual: Present Moment Practices for Change

    Unwinding the Habitual: Present Moment Practices for Change

    Due to the COVID-19 pandemic spring and early summer workshops have been canceled and re-scheduled for the late summer and early fall.

    Unwinding the Habitual: Present Moment Practices for Change

    Full day workshop: Earn 6 CEU’s 

    A day of embodiment and renewal through present moment practices interwoven to allow a deep dive into how you find yourself “now.” We will combine Focusing, movement, yoga and meditation practices designed to transform stuck patterns and renew spirit.

    Through embodiment we become present, through presence we develop awareness and through awareness we encounter the freedom to choose non-habitual responses.

    This is a community workshop, all are welcome. No prior experience required. Come join me, connect and feel restored!

    Date and time: 9:00 to 4:30
    May 29th 2020
    Place: Vashon
    Cost: $165.00 if registered by April first, $195 thereafter
    Registration: Jeffrey@morrisontherapy.com
    CEU’s pending

  • What is Focusing? A free two-hour discussion with experiential exercises!

    What is Focusing? A free two-hour discussion with experiential exercises!

    FREE TALK: How to work with the Body in therapy

    When:
    Saturday September 22nd

    10am-Noon

    Where:     My West Seattle office.
    Space is limited so register early!

    West Seattle Professional Building:
    4505 44th Avenue SW, Seattle, WA 98116

    Email: with subject “Count me in!” to jeffrey@morrisontherapy.com.

     

  • Why I’m Going to the Felt Sense Conference

    Why I’m Going to the Felt Sense Conference

    by Kara Hill, MA, LMHC, FOT

    The Felt Sense Conference was established a year ago as a commemoration of Gene Gendlin’s life and a furthering of his work. It is a celebration especially of his philosophy. While I appreciate the mindful and somatic aspects of Focusing, what makes it truly unique in the work of psychotherapy is the rich philosophy underpinning it. Focusing-Oriented therapy is not a simple technique to apply, but a whole way of understanding being human and in relationship.

    In his philosophical work, Gendlin rejects the common notions of categorical thinking and fixed patterns. He demonstrates that we are primordially whole beings in interaction with everything (one another and the world), and that we are not objects but processes. Being human is never static. It is an ever growing, changing, emerging experience. Everything I experience is both a part of my unique process and actively in interaction with every -thing and -one else. This inherently intersubjective thinking reaches beyond “parts work” and self-regulation to emphasize a non-verbal whole “feel” of things within which even the tightest knots have the space to unfurl, naturally and in their own right way. This non-verbal, sensed whole, or “felt sense” of things is what makes Focusing truly effective for me and my clients. While we can all experience a felt sense without fully understanding it, the felt sense is best explained within the context of the philosophy underpinning it.

    In addition to my passion for his philosophy, I had the opportunity to speak with Gene on three occasions. Once he told me I was right-on, once he informed me I was dead wrong, and once we merely confused each other. I have deep gratitude to Ann Weiser Cornell for the gift of having had these encounters and am struck by how even such small contacts forged a real sense of connection to the man.

    Photo courtesy José Ignacio Salazar for The International Focusing Institute

    Connection to Gendlin and his philosophy were not the only draws, in my deciding to attend the Felt Sense Conference this year. It bears saying that I will also have the opportunity to further a friendship that was established in Chile at the Weeklong this past January. The Weeklong produced a friendship so deep and dear to me that I am, in some ways against logic, traveling to New York City to both support her teaching and to simply spend time with her again. I am grateful for the depth of community that learning Focusing and becoming certified as a Focusing-Oriented Therapist have brought me. I encourage you to consider joining me in this community by further exploring Focusing for yourself through this conference and/or through training in Focusing to enhance your therapeutic healing practice, life, or other passions.

    Kara Hill was Certified as a Focusing-Oriented Therapist by Jeffrey Morrison and is a graduate of his training program.