Do you get stuck just feeling sensations and describing them, nothing more? Read on…
A Reader writes:
I get stuck at the sensing the body phase. I find myself just feeling sensations, describing them, being with them, etc… but nothing else really happens. I understand that we don’t want to place an expectation on how the process should evolve, but I just find myself sitting with the emotions and that’s it. There’s still a part of me that wants to experience some type of transformation. After all, isn’t that why we are doing this? At the end of the day, we hope to feel better in some way, right?
Dear Reader:
Of course! Definitely we want to feel better. We should feel better!
Here’s an idea for you. Start your Focusing there: with the hope to feel better, the longing for transformation. How is it that you most want your life to change?
Now bring awareness into your body … take your time, get settled, connect with your breathing … and invite the body feeling of what you most want to change.
You could invite the positive vision, “This is how I’d like my life to be,” and get the feel of that.
Or you could invite the frustrated, discouraged, “I keep trying but nothing changes” feeling. One or the other of those feelings is likely to come.
Now turn toward the “something in you” that feels that way. Take time to sense where you feel it in your body. Then describe it freshly, just as it is right now.
Say to this “something” that you know it is there. You are beginning a relationship with it… a relationship of curiosity. That means we know there is more to it than how it looks and feels right now.
How will the “more” emerge? Perhaps you’ll start to get an image… or an idea will pop up… or something hard to define will come into view. One tip I especially like is to sense for its emotion, from its point of view.
I love this quote from Gene Gendlin:
We think more than we can say
We feel more than we can think
We live more than we can feel
And there is more still…..
