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This page provides answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Focusing: The Gentle Power of Deep Listening.
What am I looking for in a Listener?
It is hard to go into those preverbal places on your own. The Listener’s presence helps you stay with it. The Listener must understand that it is his or her job just to accompany you while you explore.
What you’re looking for is a friend, relative or colleague who is willing to listen to you without giving advice, or trying to resolve your situation–someone who is not going to want to finish your sentences for you.
And, of course, you will do the same for them, when it is their turn to explore and be listened to.
How long does a listening partnership take?
Because people are usually not brought up to understand the value of listening to what can’t yet be put into words, you might think that this process takes a lot of time.
Actually, 20 minutes of being listened to can produce breakthroughs that are difficult to reach on your own. The thing is to make regular appointments with your listener.
What does the Listener do?
A mindful listening partnership is based on spacious, silent, but receptive listening. The Listener occasionally reflects back the essence of what the Explorer says.
It’s as if the Explorer discovers something and hands it to the Listener in words. The Listener receives it (says it back), and that allows the Explorer to go deeper, to see what is underneath what was said. You can ask your Listener to take notes for you.
Can I learn to listen to myself in this way?
You can learn to listen to yourself in this way if you cultivate an attitude of openness and interest in your inner world. Welcome the uncertainties, the gaps when there are no words.
For instance:
“I feel something very strongly, but I don’t know what it is.”
“I feel something subtle but it feels like it is important and wants to be known.”
Over time, you will get used to listening to these “felt senses”. You might start noticing that there are subtle sensations in your body that correspond to the gaps. For instance:
“It feels like the whole situation is behind glass.”
“It feels like my chest and head want to go along with it, but something in my solar plexus says “No.”
The “feel” of these moments can take you to other moments in your life that somehow have something to do with the situation.
How can I know when I’m thinking “inside the box” as opposed to “outside the box”?
You might notice a stale and static inner feeling when you are still thinking “inside the box,” or when you are closed to new ideas.
Or maybe you’ve been trying to move forward on a creative project but for some reason you are stuck.
When you notice feelings like that, you can shift gears. Usually, there is something complex and wordless behind that stale, static, stuck feeling.
At that moment, try relaxing into curiosity and openness to what is there. Sense into the complexity. If you give it space, its meaning will come up to consciousness. There will often be a sense of understanding of what has been going on, and a sense of something fresh and new.
I have read that the process of Focusing includes 6 steps. I don’t see that in the tutorial.
In Gendlin’s book, Focusing, he says that Focusing involves six steps (or stages, or movements). So why don’t you see that here? Essentially, this is because our understanding of mindfulness has tremendously grown in the decades since Gendlin wrote his book.
At the time, the notion that one can process information by just sitting with it, as opposed to analyzing it, was not something that made sense to many people. Thinking of Focusing as a process that followed a roadmap, with specific steps, made sense in that context.
The widespread practice of meditation, as well as the influence of Focusing, have contributed to making much less outlandish the idea of “just” staying with information, containing it, letting our whole being process it organically.
At this point, many Focusing teachers and Focusers see the benefit of approaching Focusing as an organic process rather than a linear sequence of steps. In other words, we are now able to apply the philosophy of Focusing in the way that we teach and learn Focusing.
The above questions refer to the free, self-paced tutorial Focusing: The Gentle Power of Deep Listening.