“So What is Focusing Anyway?”
I used to dread that question.
For all my experience as a Focusing teacher, the one time I felt totally blank about Focusing was when someone asked me, So what is Focusing anyway?
Last night I had the experience again, out at a Thai restaurant with a group that included a bright 15-year-old. The question was inevitable — I was even wearing a Focusing t-shirt!
“Focusing is a process of awareness,” I said. “It’s a way of tuning in to yourself, knowing yourself better, listening to what you really know about how you feel and the next steps in your life.”
He nodded; he was in the process of picking a college; next steps were what he was all about.
“It’s based on research,” I continued, “that studied what people were doing when they were really in touch with their inner wisdom, and were changing successfully.”
“It’s something you can learn to do for yourself, and then you have it with you whenever you really need to listen to your own inner knowing.”
I Have a Right to My Own Voice
One reason I found it so easy to tell KJ about Focusing was that I was remembering being 15 myself. How I wish I’d known Focusing then! What a confusing time it was. I was nearly swamped by other people’s voices, my parents, my teachers, and of course my peers. As I look back, it feels like “me” was nearly lost among all those demands and assumptions.
When I did learn Focusing at age 22, it was like finding something inside me that had long been ignored, devalued, denied: my own voice. And it wasn’t waiting inside me strong and confident, ready to be released. What I found inside me in those first Focusing sessions was something wary, bruised, worn thin and hesitant to come forth. It needed time, and patient listening, to uncurl from its cramped place and become what it could become: my confident voice.
I wish all teenagers could learn Focusing! There are so many decisions to make, so many influences pulling in different directions. Wouldn’t it be great if they had access to that inner knowing about what’s right for them.
And it’s never too late. Those of us who are no longer teenagers need that inner knowing just as much, don’t we?
