A felt sense: the characteristics of Focusing (video)

Akira Ikemi, Ph.D. (Kobe Japan) presents the characteristics of Focusing, from the 12th International Focusing Conference held in Pforzheim in Germany, 2000.

Cultivating the courage to ask for help

I asked an NVC colleague to give me empathic listening time about a difficult issue. We have an agreement that we are welcome to ask one another for help at any time, and yet I still felt uncomfortable. A part of me still believes asking for help is "taking," and I have no right to "take" without giving back.

My colleague gave me feedback about what it was like to accompany me. From her response, I experienced that asking for help is not only "taking" from someone, it is also giving.

What helps me get in touch with that is the "post-empathic request": would you be willing to tell me how you are affected by being with me in this way?

When I take time to elicit, receive and be affected by the response of the person helping me, it connects me with the flowing of giving and receiving in my body. It’s a physical experience I can call to mind anytime. Taking time to receive it makes it more likely I will remember it.

Making the post-empathic request and receiving the answer gives me the courage to keep asking for help because it supports me in remembering how asking for help can make both our lives more wonderful.

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I offer Nonviolent Communication coaching, introductory and deepening workshops. I also integrate NVC in my practice of holistic psychotherapy. Sessions are available at $75/hr or 3 sessions for $200. For more see www.shula.ca, or contact me at shulamit@shula.ca or 613-868-9642. Follow me on Twitter: Shuliji

Empty space is sacred space

To follow the way of the listener, you must be empty. Set down, beside you, your feelings, knowledge and know-how. When you are already full, how can there be room for the other person?

In emptiness, the listener responds freely to the fullness of the other,
sensing the movement of life, the subtle ebb and flow of relational depth.
The empty space is a sacred space, if only we can keep it empty.

Rob Foxcroft

The Value of Focusing

Today I am appreciating the value of Focusing in my life. Gene Gendlin says, "No matter what you do, with Focusing, it will go better." And how true that is! I guide and teach Focusing because I am passionate about how it supports me in being whole and want to share that opportunity with others.

I was struggling with an interpersonal conflict. It felt painful. I was angry. When I took just a brief moment to look inside, I discovered how I yearn for both of us to be OK. Connecting with that yearning, and my beautiful vision of “OKness,” I felt an easing, and a wave of love toward myself (when before I was self-critical) and toward the other person (when before I was feeling angry). Not only does loving just plain feel better than being in pain and angry, it is way I want to be in the world.

Today, I am so grateful for how Focusing has supported me in connecting with and experiencing my deepest values, even in the midst of pain and conflict.

Focusing is a scientifically-proven and -validated way of accessing our inner wisdom and gaining physical and mental ease. I offer guided Focusing sessions on the phone or in person for $75 each or three for $200. For more see www.shula.ca or e-mail shulamit@shula.ca

I Know Nothing Ahead of Time

My certification as a Focusing professional took place on April 1st. Of course, during my certification assessment, I spent some time listening to my insides. At the close of my Focusing, they gave me a knowing. As I stepped forward into the “fullness of this” (my self as a certified Focusing professional), my insides wanted me to remember that I “know nothing beforehand,” reminding me of the Fool card in the Tarot deck.

This was very satisfying to hear. It is an experiential reminder of how I want to be in life, with myself and other people, and especially with psychotherapy and Focusing clients. It’s like Gene Gendlin says,

I want to start with the most important thing I have to say: What matters is to be a human being with another human being, to recognize the other person as another being in there… So, when I sit down with someone, I take my troubles and feelings and I put them over here, on one side, close, because I might need them. And I take all the things that I have learnt… and I put them over here, on my other side, close. Then I am just here... There are no qualifications for the kind of person I must be. What is wanted for the big therapy process, the big development process, is a person who will be present.

It is useful to have learned things. But they do not guide my being with myself or someone else. Reb Zalman Schachter Shalomi writes that it is necessary to leave what I know. I “have to leave the here to go there, to sacrifice the here for there.” In the holy place of “being with,” I must release myself from thinking that I know anything. Otherwise, what do I know? Only what I knew before. But touching the awe and mystery of what is happening now is dependent on not knowing, on not putting things in boxes. I must open a window through which I can see Ain Sof, the Open Space of the shining, infinite light of the Divine. “The place of unknowing… is desirable ignorance,” teaches Reb Nachman of Bratslav.

Just like The Fool, I have my traveller’s pack. It is here with me, on my shoulder in case I need the contents along the way. I know how to support people in process and by listening. I know how to demonstrate to them that I am with them. I know my professional boundaries and how to care for myself so I am in integrity and we are both safe. But how this person will be, who they are, and what is alive in them? This I do not yet know. The responses lie in this very moment. They are what is happening now, and it is for what is happening now that I want to drop my pack and be present. It is in reference to this moment of “being with” that “I know nothing beforehand.”

With gratitude to my Focusing teachers Ann Weiser Cornell, Diane Bourbonnais-Caron and Ruth Hirsch, and to Eugene Gendlin who brought Focusing to the world.

Gendlin, E.T. (1990). The small steps of the therapy process: How they come and how to help them come. In G. Lietaer, J. Rombauts & R. Van Balen (Eds.), Client-centered and experiential psychotherapy in the nineties, pp. 205-224. Leuven: Leuven University Press. Available at http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2110.html

Shachter Shalomi, Z. and Miles Yepez, N. (2009). A Heart Afire: Stories and teachings of the early Hasidic masters. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.

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To celebrate my certification, I am offering two free guided Focusing phone sessions (some conditions apply). Offer expires April 30, 2010. Please contact me for details.

I offer guided Focusing sessions in person or by telephone at the rate of $75/session. You can save $25 when you buy a 3-session package for $200.

I also offer holistic psychotherapy that is grounded in the Focusing process at the rate of $75/hour-long session.

For more information: www.shula.ca ~ shulamit@shula.ca ~ 613-868-YOGA

Spirituality in Psychotherapy

For many of us, bodily feelings have vague meanings. With Focusing, staying with these subtle bodily feelings brings new, clearer meanings.

The coming forth of new, clearer meanings is a process that is both spiritual and transcendent. It is transcendent because it involves moving beyond a former frame of reference in a direction of higher and broader scope. Its spiritual nature lies in the felt shift that results from the sensing of the new meaning and that may involve
experiences like a sense of rightness, bodily felt release, more life energy, and/or a feeling of being more present. The felt shift comes to us as a gift, not as something that we can maintain, create, or control. When a person attends to his or her felt sense and it unfolds into a transcendent growth process accompanied by a felt shift, the Focusing process and the spiritual process become one and the same.

This process definition of spirituality can be experienced by all human beings and does not judge or exclude anyone. The distinction between a process and a content definition is extremely important; each person’s religious beliefs and background, and thus the words and imagery they may use, are unique. But the transcendent, spiritual process in Focusing can be experienced by every person.

This spiritual process is always available to us. But like any aspect of our holistic, intricate, changing processing, we can become alienated from it. Our processing may then become stuck or stopped. Focusing gives us a way to re-connect to this inner experiencing so that our innate impulse toward growth, or transcendence, can carry forward.

Adapted by Shulamit Day Berlevtov based on Elfie Hinterkopf*.

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I offer holistic psychotherapy with a spiritual focus grounded in the process described above at $75/hour.

I also offer guided Focusing sessions in person or by telephone at the rate of $75/session. You can save $25 when you buy a 3-session package for $200.

For more information, see www.shula.ca.

*Hinterkopf, Elfie. (1998). Integrating Spirituality in Counseling: A manual for using the experiential focusing method. The book was first published by the American Counseling Association in 1998 and may now be ordered from The Focusing Institute, 34 East Lane, Spring Valley, NY 10977. The book may be ordered in the UK and Europe only from PCCS Books Ltd., 2 Cropper Row, Alton Road, Ross-0n-Wye, HR9 5LA, UK.

Kripalu Gentle yoga class series starting April 20, Tuesdays 6 - 7 p.m.

Kripalu Gentle yoga class series at Blue Crane

Starts April 20th. 10-week session, Tuesdays from 6-7 p.m. $120. To register, contact Shulamit by e-mail shulamit@shula.ca or 613-868-YOGA.

Location: Blue Crane Yoga and Wellness, www.bluecrane.ca, 202B Main Street (above Wheatberry)

Kripalu yoga is a compassionate approach, emphasizing respect of self in the postures as well as transformation that overflows into daily life. In a Kriplau class, each student learns to find their own level of practice on a given day by looking inward.

Gentle classes begin with stretches that are followed by a series of individual poses and a final relaxation. The viniyoga approach of combining breath and movement is an integral part of this class.

No previous yoga experience is required to attend this class.

Shulamit is a multiply-certified and registered yoga teacher. For information about her, see www.shula.ca.