What is Focusing? Learning to Listen to the Wisdom of the Body

"Your body knows more about your life than your mind alone can ever understand."

People often ask me what Focusing is.

The simplest answer is this:

Focusing is a way of listening to yourself that goes beyond thinking.

Most of us have learnt to solve problems with our minds. We analyse, compare, judge, explain and try to work everything out. Thinking is an extraordinary human gift. But there are moments when we've thought about something a thousand times and still don't know what to do.

Perhaps you've lain awake at night replaying the same conversation. Perhaps you've made endless lists of pros and cons. Perhaps you've understood exactly why you feel anxious, yet the anxiety hasn't changed.

At times like these, it can feel as though our thinking has reached its limits.

Focusing offers another way.

The body carries more than we realise

Eugene Gendlin, philosopher and psychotherapist, discovered something remarkable while researching what made psychotherapy effective.

Clients who benefited most from therapy weren't necessarily the ones with the greatest insight or the most articulate explanations. They were the people who naturally paused, searched inwardly and waited for something that wasn't quite in words yet.

Gendlin called this the felt sense.

A felt sense is not simply an emotion.

It isn't just a physical sensation either.

It is the body's living, holistic sense of a whole situation.

You might notice it as a heaviness in your chest when thinking about work, a knot in your stomach that doesn't quite fit the facts, or a subtle sense that something isn't quite right, even though you can't explain why.

At first it often feels vague and difficult to describe.

Yet somehow it carries far more information than we consciously know.

Thinking and another way of knowing

Modern neuroscience and philosophy increasingly echo some of Gendlin's insights.

Psychiatrist and neuroscientist Professor Iain McGilchrist describes two complementary modes of attention. One is analytical, precise and excellent at breaking things into parts. The other remains open to context, relationship and the richness of lived experience.

We need both.

Many of us, however, have become highly skilled at analysing our lives while losing touch with our direct experience of living them.

Focusing invites us to begin with experience.

Instead of asking,

"What do I think about this?" 

we begin to ask,

"What does this whole situation feel like in my body?"

Only then do words begin to emerge.

Your body is not simply carrying symptoms

Trauma researcher Dr Bessel van der Kolk has helped us understand that overwhelming experiences are often held not only as memories but also within the nervous system and the body itself.

Healing therefore involves more than understanding our history intellectually.

It involves learning to notice what is happening within us right now.

• To recognise the tightening in the jaw.

• The held breath.

• The collapsed shoulders.

• The flutter in the stomach.

• The impulse to move closer or further away.

• These bodily experiences are not obstacles to therapy.

• They are often the very place where healing begins.

More than the brain

Contemporary work in embodied cognition, including that of Dr Peter Afford, suggests that thinking is not something the brain does in isolation. Our minds are shaped by our bodies, our actions and our relationship with the world around us.

This beautifully reflects Gendlin's understanding that our bodies know our lives in ways that are richer than conscious thought alone.

The body is not simply carrying information from the past.

It is continually sensing possibilities for what comes next.

Gendlin called this a carrying forward.

Sometimes the next step arrives as a single word.

Sometimes as an image.

Sometimes as a deep breath.

Sometimes simply as a quiet sense of, "Yes... that feels right."

Learning to trust your own experiencing

One of the things I love most about Focusing is that it changes our relationship with ourselves.

Many of us have learnt not to trust our own experience.

Perhaps we learnt to dismiss our feelings.

Perhaps we were told we were too sensitive.

Perhaps trauma taught us that paying attention to ourselves wasn't safe.

Perhaps we became so busy caring for others that we stopped noticing ourselves altogether.

Focusing gently rebuilds that relationship.

Instead of asking,

"What's wrong with me?"

we begin asking,

"What is this part of me trying to show me?"

Rather than trying to fix ourselves, we become curious.

Rather than overriding our experience, we become interested in it.

Over time something profound happens.

We begin to trust ourselves again.

Meeting the different parts of ourselves

As I have continued to develop my Focusing practice, I have been deeply influenced by Inner Relationship Focusing, developed by Ann Weiser Cornell and Barbara McGavin, and by Internal Family Systems (IFS).

Both recognise something that many of us notice in everyday life: we are rarely of one mind.

Part of us longs for change, while another part feels frightened.

Part wants to speak honestly, while another worries about upsetting someone.

Part dreams of a new beginning, while another urges us to stay safe.

In IFS these are often described as parts. In Focusing we might simply notice them as different aspects of our experiencing that reveal themselves through the felt sense. Neither approach sees these parts as signs that something is wrong. Rather, they are understood as intelligent processes that have developed in response to our lives.

Often we discover that one protective part has spent years helping us avoid feelings that once seemed too painful, overwhelming or dangerous to experience. These protective strategies may have served us well in the past, yet over time they can begin to limit our choices, our relationships and our capacity to live fully.

Through Focusing we do not try to get rid of these parts or force them to change. Instead, we approach each one with curiosity, respect and compassion. As they begin to feel heard rather than judged, new possibilities naturally emerge.

This is one of the reasons I love Focusing. It helps us move beyond the question, "Which part of me is right?" Instead we begin to ask, "Can every part of me be listened to?"

From that place of compassionate attention, our choices become less driven by old patterns of avoidance and more guided by the wisdom of our whole embodied experience.

Becoming your own companion

People often think Focusing is something you come to a practitioner to do.

In one sense, that's true.

But my hope is always that it becomes much more than that.

I hope people leave not simply having solved one particular problem, but having discovered a lifelong relationship with themselves.

A relationship in which they know how to pause.

How to listen.

How to recognise the body's quiet wisdom.

How to meet themselves with compassion instead of criticism.

To me, that is what Focusing offers.

Not another technique.

Not another self-improvement strategy.

But a way of coming home to your own experiencing.

When we learn to listen deeply to ourselves, with patience, curiosity and kindness, we often discover that the next step has been quietly waiting for us all along.

Ways to experience Focusing:

• Focusing Practitioner sessions: Book a one-to-one Focusing practitioner session with me to experience this practice for yourself and to be gently guided so that you can learn a new skill, work with your parts in a body oriented felt-sense way, or deepen an existing practice. Contact me using the form below.

• Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy: FOT is therapy that incorporates Focusing, either for those who are new to Focusing or for experienced Focusers who want to have therapy. Contact me using the form below.

• Focusing Skills Courses: Learn Focusing in a group with other learners, learn to companion others as they Focus and deepen your practice perhaps in preparation for training as a practitioner. Contact me using the form below.

Please complete the contact form below.