“Is a squeezing feeling two parts or one?”
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Josh writes: “I often become aware of a sense that has both an interior and exterior component. For instance, I might feel a pressure in my chest, and I could look at it as a part of me being squeezed, or as a part of me doing the squeezing. Which perspective should I take? Are there two parts or one? If two, which should I focus on?”
Dear Josh,
I like to start a Focusing session with my favorite word: “something.”
Whether I have started the session with an issue that I want to focus on, or whether I am open to whatever my body wants to bring up, in either case I am inwardly attentive, open to what comes into awareness in my body about my life.
Often what comes first is something unclear, something hard to describe. I have learned that this is good. I have learned to be patient. But it can be hard to be patient when I have no word for what I am feeling. That’s why I like the word “something.”
“Something is here,” I can say, or “I feel something.”
Next, the task is to describe it. I want to describe it in a way that matches how it feels, that ‘gets’ it. I want to stay very close to the actual feel of it. A helpful description helps me stay with it, makes it less likely I will lose it. A description says what it feels like.
Josh, I have said all of this, which I am sure you already know, just to make sure we are on the same page about descriptions… because I am going to say that the answer to your question is: The correct description is the one that fits it and helps you stay with it.
There is more… but I wanted to get that out there first.
If the felt sense needs more than a simple description…
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Often what comes first in Focusing is a simple description… a description that only takes a word or two. “Tight,” perhaps. Or: “Tight and shaky.”
Let’s say that word is “squeezing.” If the word “squeezing” really fits, then you need no more, and you are on the the next stage, which is usually being with it with interested curiosity, perhaps sensing its mood or its emotion.
But perhaps right there, when you are sensing if the word “squeezing” really fits, you can feel that there is more than that. The word “squeezing” alone doesn’t get all that you can feel. There is (let us say) something like “being squeezed by something.” That’s a bit more than just “squeezing.” Great! We are happy when more comes, and the coming of more is a natural process in Focusing.
So then you check the words “being squeezed by something.” Let’s say that feels more right than “squeezing.” OK, so it feels like being squeezed by something. THEN I would check if it would be right to say, something is being squeezed, something is doing the squeezing. And really check… because although that is a logical deduction, it might or might not be how it feels.
We are led at every stage by sensing how it is, describing, checking that description, sensing if there is more. This process that seems so simple contains enormous potential for the change we have longed for, to move forward in us.
