Focusing is paying attention to your body’s sense of a situation, and allowing that sense to guide you to your next right step. It is a gentle, respectful, yet powerful process. Focusing was discovered by psychologist Eugene Gendlin. He created a simple, step-by step-method to teach people how to listen to their mind/body wisdom. Gendlin’s 1981 book on Focusing is a classic which has been translated into 20 languages and is used all over the world.
Focusing and Emotional Intelligence: Self-awareness is the first step in emotional intelligence. Focusing provides an avenue into your own right answers for your personal, interpersonal, and professional growth.
Focusing and Spirituality: Listening to your body’s wisdom in the present is a way to “pray always.” Focusing allows you to find God’s presence and gifts in the very problems and pain that seem to block you from connection with God. Focusing prayer helps cultivate a basic acceptance of your self and others by dismantling illusions, or the “false self” programming. It brings you to what is real inside in the present moment, where God dwells.
Focusing and Medicine/Health: Focusing has been used in numerous ways in the medical and health fields. For additional information, please click on the Focusing Institute link, and go to “Focusing and . . .”
Focusing and Psychotherapy: Successful clients who show real change can be identified in the first few sessions. As they talk, they attend to how their problems feel in their bodies. This skill is natural to all humans, but it is not yet widely known. Eugene Gendlin invented a teaching method that helps anyone to access this skill, whether or not they are in psychotherapy. The Focusing process can be used with all psychotherapy approaches.
Focusing participants learn the following:
- Accessing the body sense of a situation or problem.
- Learning their own boundaries.
- Maintaining a healing attitude.
- Letting the bodily sense guide to the best next step, in therapy or in life.