Focusing Tip #846 – Feeling Numb – “What if what I’m feeling is always the same?”

If you feel something that doesn’t change, even with patient attention, what can you do? Read on…

A Reader writes:

In most of my Focusing sessions, what I sense in my body is a part in my stomach that feels numb. I spend time with it, give it company, wonder what emotion it has and usually the rest of the session is spent there with not much communication from the part.

Having done this for a year now, I wonder if there is something I’m missing in my process. No matter what is going on in my life, as soon as I start my Focusing session, this part is what I notice the most.

Dear Reader:

Some body senses do need patient attention over time. But a year is quite long for nothing to change. I would expect at least subtle changes in a few weeks.

If something is not opening up or there’s not much happening at one stage, the likeliest possibility is that more attention needs to be given to an earlier stage.

So the part feels “numb.” Let’s take longer there. Sense if the word “numb” fits it well… or if that word is partly right, but there’s more. It’s very rare that something is describable by just one word.

Don’t say too quickly, “It’s numb.” That would be a lost opportunity… the opportunity to make more contact before going on.

I bet you’ll find that it has a particular quality of “numb,” that might even be a little different each time.

You can also sense the kind of “numb” it feels like. “Numb like frozen,” or “Numb like wooden.” Those are just some guesses. It will be unique.

The time you take to sense the subtle quality of what it feels like will be well spent, because the later stages of the session – being with it and sensing its emotion and so on – depend on you first having the kind of contact that lets you sense there is more there than the first word that comes.

There’s another possibility that occurs to me. It might be that this part that feels numb is hesitant to show more about itself because there’s another part it’s hiding from. I’ll say more about that next week!