Images and Focusing, Part Two
In response to last week’s Weekly Tips on Images and Focusing, I received a very helpful email from Dana Ganihar, a life coach and Focuser who lives in New Jersey. She is very familiar with images from her own process.
First, responding to what is commonly offered as a way to work with images in Focusing: “How does that image feel in the body?” Though often used, this may not be a good idea!
Dana writes: What I would usually get in response is the ‘feeling about the feeling’ – how something in me feels about that image (and of course it’s not the same as sensing the feeling of the image itself).”
Instead of that, she offers the following advice:
“When you are aware of the image in your body, you can treat it the same way as a physical sensation: you want to acknowledge it, say hello to it (and notice if it changes!), sense its point of view, sense what it wants and doesn’t want. You can work with the image, you don’t have to search for how it feels in the body – it has its own feelings.”
The Feeling of It – Not Its Associations
Dana goes on to talk about a common problem in working with images in Focusing.
“One thing that can be a problem for a new focuser (at least it was for me): when you start without a particular subject and an image comes, there is a danger of trying to connect it to one’s life through the association it brings and not through the feeling the image has.
“For example: if what came is an image of a toy that my son has, I would go astray if I follow the associations it brings (oh, it is about my son), but if I sense the feeling of the toy… IT feels lonely, and is connected to loneliness I feel in my life, and not to the toy, or my son. The image my body picks is just a ‘vehicle’ for the feeling inside it, and that is what we want to look for.”
So I’m appreciating how Dana is pointing here to a fundamental principle of Inner Relationship Focusing: that the “something” we are spending time with has ITS OWN feelings, its own life.
I remember a time when I was Focusing and I found a “lid” inside me. Something in me had put a lid on my feelings, and I could literally see (and feel) that lid, and nothing more. Where to go with this? I was baffled for a moment, and then I remembered that anything we find inside is something that can have feelings.
So I said hello to the lid, and stayed with it to sense how IT was feeling. It was angry! From my acknowledging and staying with that, the whole session opened.