“I find Focusing difficult on my own.”
A woman said to Gene Gendlin:
“I recently read the book Focusing. I tried to follow the method, and I found it super-difficult on my own. Could we make a five minute attempt together?”
And Gene Gendlin said:
“So start by letting yourself have a minute where you see if you can find it directly in your belly. It’s not in your belly, it’s in your situation. It’s in the universe, but it begins very often by paying attention to what seems to be just in your belly, that’s disturbing.”
She said, “OK. So what I find there is a kind of…feeling there is no way out, something like that.”
He said, “Ah, something feels like there’s no way out.”
She said, “Yeah, and that is combined with sadness.”
He said, “Oh, there’s no way out and there’s sadness in this spot.”
She said, “And there’s a feeling that if I try to find a way out, I will be making…mistakes or harm…do something harmful, or hurting people.”
He said, “Oh! That’s a big addition. It says there’s no way out but if I do attempt to get out of this, whatever this is, then I will be doing something wrong.”
She said, “Yup.”
He said, “So we could say, no wonder there’s no way out, because it blocks any attempt to get out, thats going to be wrong, it’s going to harm or…”
She said, “Yup.”
He said, “Yeah. Can you feel a little step right there? That oh of course?”
She said, “Yeah, when you say that, the way you said it back, takes me already a feeling of a little more space.”
He said, “I’m glad.”
She said, “Yeah. Yeah so all of a sudden I see that my life space which is so narrow, grows a bit.”
This conversation still blows me away, as it did when I first heard it! We can talk about Focusing all day, but there’s nothing like actually doing it. And there is more…
