February 13 2007 – #98

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"How Do I Start with Nothing There?"
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Gisela writes: "When I WANT to focus, because I have
set a date with someone for Focusing, or when I
focus alone by myself because it is a good thing to
do, I often feel I do not know what needs my
attention  -- nothing comes.
 
"When I have something like a felt sense already,
this is another matter. Then, I know what needs my
attention, and I go further into it.

"But when nothing comes at first, and then something
enters my MIND, and a felt sense forms from THAT, I
sometimes have the feeling this is not really it, is
not really the carrying forward issue."

Dear Gisela,

I agree, this can be a difficult moment, when we
start to do Focusing and there is "nothing" there.
I've certainly experienced this myself many times!

As you say, we can start Focusing by having an issue
in mind, or we can start Focusing by having a felt
sense already there. For example, I might still have
an uneasy feeling in my stomach after a phone call
with my daughter earlier in the day. It's almost as
if this feeling is asking for my attention, and when
I sit down to do some Focusing, there it is.

But what about those other times, when I sit down to
do Focusing without something like that in my attention?

At those times, it helps me to remember two things I
have learned. One: We are always living all the
situations of our lives. My partner may not be in
the room with me, but my relationship with him is
here, being lived in my body. Likewise my daughter,
my nephew, my colleague... they are all here. So are
the dilemmas and stuck situations of my life.

Two: The body can always give a felt sense of
how it is to be me, here, living the situations of
my life.

So that is what I invite. When I sit down to do
Focusing, and there seems to be nothing inside me
clamoring for my attention, I take time to bring
awareness to my body, first the outer areas, then
throat, chest, stomach, belly.

Then I invite my body to give me a felt sense of how
it is to be me, right now, living the situations of
my life. Then I wait. Usually the result is not
dramatic. What forms in me is fuzzy at first, murky,
unclear. But it often surprises me. And when I
acknowledge it and spend time with it, the whole way
I feel in my life lightens up and feels better.

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"Regardless from where we start, it always gets us there."
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Gisela goes on to write: "On the other hand, I also
have experienced that
Focusing gets me to the crucial issue from a
starting point that seems very odd in relation to
the issue. From this I concluded: regardless from
where we start, it always gets us there."

Exactly! I've found that too, that the starting
place doesn't really matter... Because every felt
sense has a wholistic quality, it's somehow the
whole of what we are going through. So we can
indeed start anywhere, and by the time we are done
Focusing, it usually feels like we have worked with
something much larger that what we started with.