"Can I use my Focusing skills with the sensations stimulated in an acupuncture treatment?"
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Pamela writes: "I recently had an acupuncture treatment and was surprised to feel a bit overwhelmed by the sensations and feelings stimulated in my body. Could I use my Focusing skills to help if I have another session – or the next time I have some dental treatment?"
Dear Pamela,
Yes indeed you can. One of the great uses of a Focusing type of awareness is to help us handle and be more at ease with strong feelings of any kind, whether they are emotions or sensations.
So you were lying on the table at the acupuncturist's office, and you started to feel strong sensations and feelings in your body… surprisingly strong, it sounds like. Something in you began to feel overwhelmed by how strong they were.
The first moves of Inner Relationship Focusing are typically very helpful in this situation:
(1) Pause and notice. "Something strong is happening. Maybe I can be with this in a Focusing way."
(2) If there's a "feeling about the feeling," you could acknowledge that, using Presence language: "I'm sensing something in me that's worried about how strong this is."
(3) Now bring awareness to the sensations themselves. Rather than inwardly pulling away, sink into how they feel, with an interested "what is this like" kind of attention.
I'm assuming you already checked with your health care practitioner, and such strong sensations are normal rather than a signal of something needing attention.
If so, you can trust your body and the process you are going through… which I believe will be facilitated by being accompanied with your Self-in-Presence awareness.
Dental work is another good place to give yourself this kind of attention
Even if you are just having a cleaning at your dentist's office, there may be physical and emotional responses that can be strong or scary or both.
It's great to consciously bring a Focusing awareness with to those feelings right in that moment.
I once had a dentist who brought in an assistant to give a foot rub during dental procedures. I'm sure he found that many people appreciated it — and was surprised when I turned it down! If the sensations were in my mouth, I wanted to concentrate my attention on my mouth. My feet would have been a distraction.
In cases of pain and injury, whether caused accidentally or from a medical procedure, I have found that healing is greatly speeded up when I bring this non-judgmental, curious sensing to the sensation that is here, right now.
