What do we mean when we say that the felt sense (in Focusing) is in the body? Read on…
A Reader writes:
I have been frustrated at not being able to contact or feel the felt sense. I hear it is supposed to be in the body. I have a lot of feelings and images but they are not in the body. My friend told me this is OK but I wonder if I am doing this right.
Dear Reader:
Gene Gendlin, the man who gave us Focusing, did say that a felt sense is experienced in “the body.”
But he also said that by “body” he does not mean only the physical body.
For Gendlin, “body” is experienced process. We feel our bodies from the inside. (We all do.) There is no one who doesn’t feel their body.
You can feel where your arms and legs are, even without looking. You can tell whether you have a sore throat and need a lozenge. You know if there is someone sitting behind you at the theater. All this is body, and all of us are feeling our bodies all the time.
My favorite thing to do, if someone says they feel “nothing” in the body, is to wonder what that “nothing” feels like… if it feels peaceful, or blank, or like a screen, or…
You see, even “nothing” feels like something.
And when images come, they are from the body too. (Where else would they come from?) Especially if they are surprising, not something we invented, but something that fits or points to a way that we are experiencing the world.
“I’m getting the image of a little mouse curled up under a leaf. Like there’s a shy part of me that wants to stay hidden.”
Other helpful articles and tips:
How To Tell If You’re Focusing
Focusing Tip #628 – How much time does it take to feel some difference from Focusing?
Is this tightness a felt sense?
