Focusing Tip #527
“When you start a Focusing session, is it possible to pick up where you left off at the end of a previous session?”
Judith writes:
At the end of a Focusing session, we ask our bodies if there is something that wants to us to come back to it later. If the answer is yes, how do we do that? Do we at the next session ask that particular thing to come back up?
Dear Judith:
It’s such an interesting question!
Yes I do suggest that you say, at the end of a Focusing session, “I’ll be back.”
But we can’t ever be sure that we can come back to the same process. Process — like a river — flows on. We may not be able to step twice in the same river.
So what are we able to come back to?
Two things:
(1) We can come back to Focusing. We can come back to the inner process of contact and awareness, and an openness to whatever within us is wanting our attention.
(2) We can come back to a particular issue, a life situation, if it still feels relevant at the start of a later session. What works for me is to invite the issue, but sense freshly, and be open to the possibility that the aspects of the issue may not be at all the same as they were the last time.
If at the end of a Focusing session you are feeling something tender and small and in need of your care, you don’t have to wait until the next session to come back to it.
You can say at the end of a session, “I’m sensing what kind of company this would like from me after the session is over.”