FOCUSING with Eugene T. Gendlin Ph.D.

FOCUSING is a mode of inward bodily attention that is not yet known to most people. It differs from the usual attention we pay to feelings because it begins with the body and occurs in the zone between the conscious and the unconscious. Most people don't know that a bodily sense of any topic can be invited to come in that zone, and that one can enter into such a sense. At first it is only a vague discomfort, but soon it becomes a distinct sense with which one can work. Small steps of change emerge directly from this bodily sense. Gene : I also want to tell you Focusing is not something that I invented. All I did was make little steps so that people could find it. It's there and when you get it, then if by next year you need Gene, something’s wrong. It doesn't work like that. You find it inside you and then it's yours and doesn't have anything to do with Gene. So first I want to introduce Focusing a little bit. Some people are new and some people want to see how I introduce it and that’s always fun. We're going to work with it and we find that, even though we all do it very often alone, it works better when you have another person with you. We all know that, because we are inherently interactional creatures. I can get into myself much more easily. Because of the kind of theory that is around seemingly mysterious things, is that we're inherently interactional and when we’re alone then we have to interact with ourselves.