Tag: FOT

  • FOT Q&A: What do Bessel van der Kolk, mythology, and spiritual perspectives on healing have in common? 

    FOT Q&A: What do Bessel van der Kolk, mythology, and spiritual perspectives on healing have in common? 

    FOT Q&A:

    What do Bessel van der Kolk, mythology, and spiritual perspectives on healing have in common? 

    Focusing is about a kind of experiencing– one that is embodied, works with the implicit (bodily sensed emerging experience), and is relational. Neuroscience provides a map, but learning to navigate the complexities of trauma takes knowing the territory. The healing journey of working with trauma is an off-road experience. Maps help, but a feel for the territory and walking with others through their dark night of the soul requires experience and understanding outside of the reductionistic models that permeate our field.

    My vision is one of a journey taken with a small group of people dedicated to our own unique unfolding, while we explore working with trauma and post traumatic growth together. We integrate neuroscience scholars like Bessel van der Kolk, with mythology (our own and others’), indigenous perspectives of land and healing, philosophy, spirituality, and of course Focusing-Oriented Therapy. All of which offer wisdom and support in the healing journey for both practitioner and patient. As we deepen our skills and understanding, we gain confidence in how to help clients release embodied trauma and chronic stress and we learn that attending to our own wounds reveals our own unique gifts. This work touches on the spiritual as it enables each person to trust their unique way forward.

    Perhaps what is most special about my program is the people doing it! The process of going through this journey together as a small group of amazing people is not only educational but deeply meaningful and fun. As we explore our humanness, vulnerability, and growing edges, we come to see how relational healing really is. We learn to be Present and to use our Focusing skills to facilitate the body’s filling-in of what was blocked by trauma and allow our gifts to come forward.

  • FOT Q&A: What is a felt sense?

    FOT Q&A: What is a felt sense?

    In my July newsletter I discussed the research that led to the discovery of a natural human process that became known as Focusing. The key research finding pointed to something successful clients (those who found fulfilling change) were already doing. Find out more here.

    Successful clients slowed down and sensed into the felt quality of what they were trying to articulate, a process which often brought forth fresh language and expression. What were they sensing into? In Focusing we call this somatic (felt) knowing (sense): a felt sense. It is bodily felt, and it has a “knowing” that makes sense and feels right.

    Neuroscience of the cerebral hemispheres suggests that whole body knowing is first felt and sensed in the right hemisphere as a vague implicit awareness. This kind of knowing is bodily felt and slow to form. As it is sensed directly and felt into, our experiencing carries over or connects with left hemisphere processing that controls symbol formation and expression (words, metaphor, gesture, images). As we find the right words to express a complex sense of a situation the experience comes into focus.

    We have all had the experience of struggling to find the right words or way to express something. We stumble and grope for words. We may say something and immediately know it kind of fits but still doesn’t feel right. When the right words/expressions do come there is a bodily relief, a kind of shift in how that whole situation is for us.

    Check out this brief summary from my training program of what a felt sense is and how it is so different from our usual way of experiencing.

    A Felt Sense Is…

    “A felt sense is a freshly forming, wholistic sense of a situation that has a ‘more than words can say’ quality to it.” (Cornell, 2013, p. 42)

    “A felt sense is the right hemisphere’s take on our here and now inner experience, a subtle quality of feeling. It is holistic (raw perception, before the left hemisphere divides it into separate units), non-verbal and informed by the ongoing state of the body.” (Afford, 2014, p. 249)

    Clients speaking from a felt sense:
    • After a recent loss: “I feel like 100 bricks are on my chest that contains a broken heart.”
    • The feeling of being stuck in life: “It’s like being in snow up to my waist.”
    • Describing a part of her life that is not being taken care of: “It’s like there is a glass bubble over the part of me that is starving.”

    How clients may appear when they have (are speaking from) a felt sense:
    • Groping for words while becoming inarticulate saying things like, “I’m not sure how to say this.”
    • Becoming quiet, looking down or away (while attending to inner experience)
    • Gesturing toward the middle of their body
    • Using words like “kind of” or something” or “here”

    Felt senses are:
    • Emergent process (in the process of becoming), and therefore experienced in the here and now
    • A hard to describe emergence of “more than” can be cognitively expressed, which often need fresh metaphorical language
    • About a life situation but contain more (implicitly) than has been previously known.
    • Experienced in a bodily way
    • An intricate whole that sums up, captures, includes, contains, all the aspects of a situation at once: a picture is worth a thousand words!
    • An opening where strands can unfold bringing steps of change, and a gateway for something completely new to happen!

    Felt sense take time to form, a pausing, inviting, and allowing it to emerge. When we ask inside “How was that for me?” and pause in this way, we do not discover what was already there, but rather we allow something implicit to begin to come into focus explicitly which allows it to now function in a new way.

    There are many descriptions of the felt sense, here are a few of my favorites:

    “Felt senses can form when we pause …when we are not feeling overwhelmed or identified with emotional states …when we let go of familiar words or concepts for a while …when we sense at the body level of awareness …when we can stand it that what we feel is vague, unclear, hard to describe, impossible to explain.” (Cornell, 2013, p. 44)

    “Focusing is a mode of inward bodily attention that is not yet known to most people…. It differs from the usual attention we pay to feelings because it begins with the body and occurs in the zone between the conscious and the unconscious. Most people don’t know that a bodily sense of any topic can be invited to come in that zone, and that one can enter into such a sense. At first it is only a vague discomfort, but soon it becomes a distinct sense with which one can work, and in which one can sort out many strands … Focusing is a way to enter regularly and deliberately there where therapeutic movement arises.” (Gendlin, 1996, p. 1)

    “Focusing is the process whereby the concept that fits the felt sense becomes clear. Felt sense is a more complex phenomenon than emotion. It may be the inner ‘place’ (body and right hemisphere) from where emotion seems to arise. Emotion, on the other hand, can be left hemisphere biased (such as anger), and it can involve the right hemisphere overwhelming the left with high arousal (such as anxiety, upset) that disrupts cognition – neither of which are focusing experiences. The ease with which we can ignore felt senses reflects the left hemisphere’s ability to inhibit the signals coming from the right. Focusing is a practice that aims to overcome this inhibition.” (Afford, 2014, p. 249)

    References:
    Afford, P. (2014) Neuroscience and Psychological Change in Focusing. In Madison, G. (Ed.), Theory and Practice of Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy: Beyond the Talking Cure (245 – 258). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

    Cornell, A. W. (2013). Focusing in Clinical Practice: The Essence of Change. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

    Gendlin, E. (1996). Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy: A Manual of the Experiential Method. New York: Guilford Publications. Print and Kindle Editions.

  • How I navigate these days of darkness  

    How I navigate these days of darkness  

    These are the days of darkness. A time of year when it is wet, cold and dark. These are times of darkness in our world, something felt in our bodies that creeps into our consciousness regardless of intention. While culture shakes and climate rattles we can find ourselves checking out or becoming overwhelmed. For those of us in the healing professions it is a double dose, facing our own vulnerability while being open to and available for those we care for. What’s a person to do?

    Sometimes we can escape to another environment for some fun in the sun or perhaps a freshly powdered ski slope. Last year, I escaped first to a radiant beach on the coast of Chile in January and then to a sun soaked shore in Mexico come March. I felt fortunate for these experiences. We can’t always do such things. Everyday life brings many demands. This year it’s double college tuitions, projects, saving for future adventures, repairs to house and car: oh my! In the midst of these dark days and demands, how do we maintain perspective, keep hope alive, and carry on a positive attitude for those around us? Here is my suggestion:

    It starts with a Pause.

    It is so simple and yet revolutionary. When I pause, I stop the ongoing flow of thoughts, feelings and actions that sweep through my day. I make this one very simple intentional turn toward myself and ask inside, “How am I?” Then I wait for a moment, and listen. I could just fill in the empty space with what I already know or the list of to-do’s I am currently working on, but no, I stop and listen being curious, “How am I in there? What am I needing or wanting right now?” Then I wait, as if in meditation, and allow space to form from which something new will emerge. Even if you think nothing will show up, wait, it will: that’s just how it works.

    From this pregnant space, we have options. New possibilities present themselves. I can linger there inside myself and sense more deeply into my felt sense. I can just notice thoughts going by or I can say, “Hello” to something wanting my attention and listen to it.

    To pause, is to mindfully turn toward our present moment implicit knowing, the place where the new and creative originate. It is where we find new doorways to experience that lead us out of the dark, out of old ways.

    “Is this it?” you might ask. No, but it is a doorway to something more, fresh and new. Is that not the path we seek oh fellow traveler, to shift our perspective from the gloom and dread to finding the light inside the darkness? Pausing is a practice and takes time to make a habit of. It takes practicing! Are we not ever seeking practices for change and personal renewal? Start here, with a pause, and open the door to the little moments that bring real and lasting change.

    Below you will find some resources to help you on your way.

    The Pause Movement shows how teaching people to Pause brings real change in the world.

    In The Revolutionary Pause Mary Hendricks-Gendlin shares how pausing shifts us towards peace.

    If you’d like to deepen your experience of pausing and learn how it can nourish your healing practice, consider signing up for one of my upcoming Focusing courses.

  • 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.

     

     

  • 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.