What About Feelings in the Face and Neck?
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Paul asks, "I understood that for Focusing and finding a handle you should especially give attention to the middle of the body. What about the face? When I’m Focusing I may feel my mouth and eyes which feel a little sad and vulnerable as if looking at a world where something painful can happen. Then I feel something in the shoulders and the neck as a wanting to hide myself perhaps."
Dear Paul, Yes, of course, all that is welcome, the face, the mouth and eyes, the shoulders and neck. Of course you would spend time with those places, especially when you are already feeling such emotional connection there. (Not just "My neck is sore," but "I feel something in the shoulders and neck as a wanting to hide myself perhaps.")
Clearly, there is much richness there! And there is something–our special "something"–that is calling for attention and company.
We cast our net wide, as we sense for what in us wants our company now. Anywhere in the body, and even sometimes a little way outside the physical body, there could be "something" that is coming and asking for attention. In fact we don’t even have to use the word "body" as we make this inner invitation: We could be saying, "What in me wants to come into awareness now?"
Yet the middle of the body does have its special position in Focusing. We do bring awareness there especially–not because that is the only place that something worthwhile can be felt, but because the the felt sense is more-than-physical, and that more-than-physical sense can usually be felt most easily from the middle of the body.
Yes, that’s right, I said "from the middle of the body."
Notice this difference:
"I feel it IN the middle of my body."
"I feel it FROM the middle of my body."
Interesting, eh?
It’s almost as if the body is a sensitive field for picking up that subtle, hard-to-describe felt sense.
A Process of Body-Sensing
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I like to start my Focusing by sensing my whole body and the outer area of my body: arms and hands, legs and feet, that whole larger me. Lately I’ve even been sensing the room around me, the space I’m in… finding how my awareness of me is even larger than my "skin envelope."
Next I’ll bring awareness into the middle area of my body, that area that includes my throat, chest, stomach, belly. I don’t mean the stomach as an organ, but rather as an area of the body. And I mean the larger area that includes the throat, chest, etc. The whole thing, rather than the specific places.
Once I am there, I invite: "What in my life wants awareness now in my body?" or "What situation I’m living wants to come to awareness here?"
I wait… and I’m open to being aware of something that might be anywhere… and that’s the time when, if I were you Paul, I might be aware of my face, or my neck, something about me in my life wanting my attention there. It matters that I first sensed my whole body and my inner body: that lets me sense what comes in a specific place also in a holistic way.
(It’s hard to talk about these things! The inner experience doesn’t lend itself easily to description in words. Remember, if Focusing is going well for you, then your way is as good as mine!)