Can you facilitate Focusing without mentioning the body? Read on…
A Reader writes:
I’m working with a client who is very sensitive, and I can tell she is having emotions as we work together, but when I invite her to notice how her body feels, she gets confused. I’m stumped about how to bring Focusing into our sessions without talking about the body.
Dear Reader:
This is a lovely question because it reminds us that there are so many different ways of being human, and so many types of process.
Your client can get emotions but she is not helped by the invitation to feel them in her body. Very interesting! Based on my experience, I’m convinced she can still get felt senses and do Focusing.
But how?
The problem is with the word “body.” That word means different things to different people. For some, “body” is physiology — muscles, bones, tissue, etc. For others, “body” is the felt experience of being alive. And there are many other ways of understanding “body.”
The good news is that we can invite a Focusing-type of inner attention without using the word “body.”
For example, instead of saying, “Notice how that feels in your body,” we might say, “Notice how all that feels, inside.”
Instead of, “Let your body get the whole feel of that,” we might say, “You might let the whole feel of that come.”
There are many roads to the same place. That’s the fun of it!
