The result of a series of studies conducted to determine the reasons for successful psychotherapy was the discovery that an attribute of the patient, regardless of the therapist’s technique, was the key. That attribute was found to be an internal, uncommon skill, called focusing. Once this skill was observed and defined, it was possible to predict therapy’s success by analyzing the early interviews. Focusing is not only useful in a psychologist’s office, but is a method of dealing with any problem or situation, and - more importantly - it is a skill which can be taught. Individuals can learn to do it for themselves as well as developing interaction with others. It enables one to live from a deeper place than just thoughts and feelings.

While there is a natural tendency for people to prefer an authority figure who knows their problems and how they should be dealt with, the wise and totally self-assured psychotherapist exists only in the movies. No serious practitioner would claim the ability to explain how therapy works. The research has shown that therapy doesn’t teach the patient how to make it work. Heretofore, it has only been successful with the client who already knows how to make it work. Studies, which have been devised to teach the method with specific directions, have been revised and conducted over a period of years. Those instructions have become specific and teachable. Expert help will always be needed, but with this revolution in self-help, the duration of therapy will be sharply reduced. By having the unmistakable physical experience of change, which is the result of focusing, people can use the body’s natural positive direction and force.

One of the major principles of focusing is that it feels good, like inhaling fresh air. When it fails to do this, one must stop and back up a bit. The skill is not easily explainable, but is much easier than struggling with old troubles for years with little or no change, perhaps unable to move or resolve the feelings discovered in therapy.

In learning to focus, one can experience and recognize when there is actual change, which produces a distinct physical sensation: a body shift. Having once experienced this shift, one is able to judge his/her own changing, possibly finding a step toward resolution of a problem discussed, without change, for years with a therapist.

This inner act may be quite unfamiliar to you, and although the internal equipment necessary is in everyone, it has largely been unused. Occasionally, it may have been used intuitively, but rarely deliberately. Put aside what you know of inward processes for a while. The skill is not the familiar "getting in touch with your feelings", nor is it meditation. Some people may learn quickly, while others may require patient listening, but any person can learn and use this internal process for one’s own benefit or for helping others and building the change process into society generally.

The natural process which I call "focusing" enables one to become aware of an internal change: a body shift. The process consists of six movements which I will explain later. Only your body knows your problems, and your body’s sense of a problem, I call a "felt sense". This is not an emotion, it is something unrecognizable at first. It feels meaningful, but vague; a body-sense of meaning. A therapist or friend can be helpful to the one who is focusing if they simply keep the focuser company as the problems change with each body shift. Examples of some people’s experiences in focusing will illustrate these changes.

An attractive young woman was thinking of suicide because life seemed too difficult. Several years earlier, she had broken up with a young man whom she loved, and now feared pregnancy after spending time with a succession of men. Under my direction on the phone, she began the first movement of focusing, which is to clear a space for oneself - pushing all problems to one side - and then looking at them one at a time. She found that the two major problems were that she missed the first young man, and that she was afraid of being pregnant. When she became agitated as she discussed her problems, I interrupted her, since she had focused before, and reminded her to remain quiet for a while, to go down inside to get the sense of it all. She began the second movement, which is making contact with "all that" - sensing the quality of it, and got a "handle" on it. (third movement) Then she checked the words with the feeling,( fourth movement), and found that they fit. The words were concerned with anger, and by asking herself what the anger was about, she accomplished the fifth movement. I then heard her sigh and knew she had experienced the sixth movement: a body shift - a physical loosening or changing. As she decided that the anger she was feeling was the result of sleeping with men she didn’t love, she went back through the focusing movements again to discover that she was discouraged, although this word didn’t quite fit. Suddenly, with relief in her voice, she said, "Weary! What a load to get rid of." Obviously, she had not rid herself of anything, but she had changed inside. Many more cycles of focusing would be needed later, but she had rid herself of despair by localizing the problem.

Fred, an interesting sales executive, had developed a detailed plan for reorganizing the sales force, since the company was not doing well. The plan involved drastic change and had caused an argument with his boss. Fred experienced a familiar knot in his stomach which he was unable to analyze away. After a few drinks, he felt better, but the knot was still there. Later, he began focusing, asking himself what was the worst of it - where it hurt the most. The words "out of place" and "off" were tried, but didn’t quite fit, and then "inappropriate" came to him and he felt the knot loosening. At times the focusing movements flow into each other. In this instance, the body shift and release came along with the word. Because Fred would have been thinking about details of the plan and people on the job, he would have been unable to discover, analytically, what he had now learned from the word "inappropriate". He discovered that the job itself was the real problem, that he really wanted to change his life. This took more focusing inside and practical steps outside, as well as time, to make these changes. In Fred’s case, it was a new life; to someone else, it might have simply been relief in altering the plan or accepting the boss’s changes.

Evelyn was an overweight, dull-eyed, sad, quiet young woman, who felt no purpose in life and no goals. She attended the meetings of a group called "Changes", people who practice focusing and attempt to help each other in various ways. Several therapists had tried to help her with no results, but two young women in the group persisted in their efforts. After several months of focusing, a different Evelyn began to emerge. She became brighter, able to differentiate her feelings. In a key focusing session concerning her education, she begins by mentioning that everyone thinks she should go to college, but she doesn’t want to. She talks of the difficulty of finding the time, money, and energy , and then - realizing that she is just talking around the problem - becomes silent and waits quietly to see what will emerge. She begins to cry as she achieves her first shift by understanding that she feels it would take a lot of faith for her to believe herself capable of serious study. A second shift causes a complete change in direction. Now, she realizes that she needs teachers to reinforce her ideas, but she has never had that experience and has always hidden her creative endeavors. More tears - another shift - "it’s not just the teachers, I keep myself inside because there’s something that I don’t want to see." The heavy, hurting place was now localized, the rest of her body was released, and she could now proceed with the practical steps of allowing herself to attend college and enjoy it. She had to work hard because the issue was not resolved in one step, but the more she allowed her creativity to emerge, the more she was able to believe in it. Evelyn’s story shows the important characteristic of focusing: even when what is learned doesn’t rationally sound encouraging, one feels the release of the bodily sensed knowledge. It is transformed to the mind, and one’s shut-in part is at last heard. At a later time, Evelyn learned that the terrible thing that was wrong had been sensed from her mother’s feeling that Evelyn wasn’t like everyone else.

George, a college professor, was having a lot of trouble finishing a book he was writing. He seemed to be stuck. Focusing brought forth a sense of contempt, a feeling that everything he was doing, except for his writing, was insignificant, and that his writing was contemptible because it was all in his head. Just a mental endeavor. Yet, he felt it would be awful not to write. I asked him to find the whole sense of what this "awful" was. It is important to accept your feelings, not to react as an angry parent demanding justification for the feelings. Yet acceptance is not enough. One must allow a wider sense to form. George focused on the felt sense and discovered that it would feel immoral not to write, that he would have nothing important to do. There would be a "big blank". I encouraged him to investigate the blank to determine its quality. He found that there were things he wished to do but felt he was not allowed to do, because of the need to write. With this feeling came the awareness that, as an adult, he could do whatever he wished to do - including writing. This realization freed him to write with new energy, for it could now be done from desire rather than need.

The discovery of a bodily awareness, which I call a felt sense, and the fact that the bodily awareness will shift if approached in the right way, are the two chief propositions upon which focusing is based.

It is necessary to understand that a felt sense is a purely physical experience, an internal aura that includes everything you feel and know about a particular subject at a given time. It does not come to you in words or thoughts, but as a complete feeling. To understand this feeling, think of two people whom you know quite well. I’ll call them John and Helen.

Think of John and notice your feeling "all about John". In thinking of John, you do not think of each of the millions of bits of data that you know of him - physical characteristics, talents and aptitudes, likes and dislikes, how you met, the argument you had with him last week - instead, everything you know of him comes to you all at once in a single sensed feeling in your body. All of the information you have of John is stored - not in your mind, but in your body - in your biological computer, and this is all delivered to you instantly when you consider him.

Now think of Helen, and feel the internal aura "all about Helen". You will experience a whole complex sense of recognition. Your thinking is not capable of relating each detail of your knowledge of her so quickly, but your body instantly reflects all the relevant facts and feelings.

Consider your reactions when you talk privately with Helen, and now notice the change you would feel if John should join you. Your felt sense of John is now with you as well, and you have changed inside to reflect this. Only your body knows why you are this way with Helen and that way with John.

Be aware that your felt sense is not an emotion. There are emotional components, but the felt sense is more complex and less easy to verbalize. Suppose that your dominant emotion toward Helen, at this moment, is anger because of a recent disagreement. This is not the felt sense "all about Helen", which is larger and more complicated and seldom easily named. Or consider a tenseness you may feel when you are with John. Your mind has no answers as to why the tenseness exists, for if it did, you would be able to rationally resolve the difficulty. No matter how hard you think, the same tension is felt whenever you are with John, but when you let the felt sense form, you are able to work with more than you understand. This book is about approaching these problems via the special through-the-body route called focusing, which allows the felt sense to form and change. Let’s look at some of the common, unfortunately futile, ways of approaching these problems.

You can belittle the problem, trying to convince yourself it doesn’t matter or is trivial. This changes nothing. The next time you are with John, you are just as tense. You can analyze endlessly, but the feeling will still be in your body whenever you see him. "Facing down" the feeling by gritting your teeth and attempting to stand up to it or ignore it is useless, as is lecturing yourself to stop the nonsense. Equally ineffective is sinking into the emotion in the hope that it will change.

All of these attempts fail because they do not touch or change the physical place from which the discomfort arises. The process of focusing which will be taught in Part Two of this book is the process which will change and relieve the discomfort.

To best describe the felt sense, consider the familiar experience of knowing you have forgotten something but can’t quite recall what it is. You are troubled by this nagging feeling which your body is fully aware of. Your mind casts fingers of thought here and there, fastening on one possibility after another. None quite fit until, suddenly, the light dawns and you know what it is. There is no doubt because you experience a sense of sudden physical relief. Somewhere in your body - something tight lets go. Whew! It feels good. No more worry over this problem. Since there are no words to describe the felt sense and its physical shift, I call it the body shift. This term is chosen to indicate that it doesn’t happen in the mind. It may occur all over the body or in a loosening of the chest, a relaxation of the throat and is usually expressed with a long audible sigh of relief.

The example of something forgotten is, of course, trivial, but there are, undoubtedly, stuck places inside you that spoil parts of your life. No one can intellectually discern the details of a personal problem. Neither you nor a therapist can, but the details are in your body, and focusing is the way to find them.

There are two sources of the physical relief. The knowledge gained is now available for the use of the conscious mind to resolve the problem, and the body shift makes the whole body different.

Although separating the inner act of focusing into six movements makes the act seem more mechanical than it is, it is the most effective way to teach focusing.

1. Clearing a space

The first movement of clearing a space is achieved by relaxing and directing your attention inwardly with the question, "What is going on in my life right now?" When you find a problem, acknowledge it, but stand back from it and see if there are others. There are often several.

2. Felt Sense

From the problems that arose, select one, but again - stand back from it. Try to feel a sense of all of the problem. It will be an unclear sense.

3. Handle

In the third movement, try to determine the quality of this unclear sense. Allow a word or phrase to come from the felt sense. It may evoke an image. Often an adjective like tight, sticky, scary, heavy seems to fit.

4. Resonating

Allow yourself to go back and forth between the word, phrase or image, and the felt sense. There may be a little bodily signal to let you know they fit. To do this, you must feel the felt sense again as well as the word, and in going back and forth, each may change until they feel just right in capturing the quality of the felt sense.

5. Asking

Now, question what it is about the problem which gives it this quality. Sense the quality again, vividly. If you get a quick answer - put it aside - and ask again. Stay with the sense until you feel something give or release.

6. Receiving

Be friendly to whatever comes, stay with it a while even if it is only a slight release. There will be others.

Here is an example of the focusing movements in operation.

The young woman who reported the experience, Peggy, lives in a suburb with her husband, John, and their five-year-old son. Peggy only works part-time as a teacher, in order to care for their son. One night, John arrived home from his job at the bank elated over some expansion plans at work in which he was considered a key element. In his excitement, he broke a china dish. Peggy flew into a rage and ran upstairs in tears.

Surprised by her own outburst, she sat alone in the bedroom and tried to "reason" it out. Since that didn’t work, she tried focusing. Often, as in this case, the focusing movements occur almost simultaneously. The "worst" seemed to be anger at John, followed by the knowing that the broken dish had nothing to do with it. Patiently waiting for the felt sense to form yielded the "handle". Jealousy. Asking produced sort-of-jealous, which evolved into, Aha! Left behind! This was the tip of the iceberg, but the following session which lasted twenty minutes, produced a change in the shape of the problem, and Peggy and John were able to talk calmly about their lives and futures.

This chapter will take you through the movements more slowly. At the end of the reading, try to focus on a personal problem, paying attention to your bodily feelings at each stage. As you perform the act of focusing more often, it will become easier and more natural.

Sit quietly for a while. A friend may sit with you if he/she is willing to simply listen and will offer no analysis or assessments. "Yes, I hear" or "I understand" is sufficient. Try to find a sense of general physical comfort.

First Movement: Clearing a space

Ask yourself how you are feeling or what may be bothering you today. Listen. You will probably find major problems as well as some relatively trivial ones. Let them all come in but do not stay with any of them. Simply stack them, step back, and look at them from a distance. Keep stacking them until you hear yourself admit that, except for those problems, you are fine.

Second Movement: Felt sense of the problem

Choose one problem or ask yourself which seems the worst just now. Continue to stand back from it and ask what it feels like. Don’t answer in words. Try to feel the whole sense of "all that" . You must get past all the self-lecturing and analytical theories and general noise about the problem. This will require patience. Be firm and polite as you find yourself saying, "Here I go again finding some dumb way to screw up" or "I’m basically scared of people, so I cover up and....." You’re trying to get to the feeling of the whole thing. It is a matter of learning what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

You want a single feeling that surrounds "all that about my relationships with..." or "all that about quitting my job". It is a single great aura that encompasses all of the problem. It may not be easy, at first, but don’t try to decide anything, just let it be felt. It may feel murky or vague, but stay with the feeling, because it is the sense of the problem that your body is experiencing.

Third Movement: Finding a handle

You want to determine the quality of the felt sense. A word or short phrase may fit, or a picture, like "a heavy leaden ball". The quality may be sticky or restless, or a sense of helplessness. Don’t force words into the felt sense, let them come, or try one word gently. In this movement, the problem may seem to change or be something you did not expect. The difference may be small or puzzling at first.

When a word or picture is right, we call it a "handle". As the handle seems to fit, the whole felt sense stirs and eases a little. This is the signal, as in remembering what you forgot, that "This is right." The right handle gives only a slight body shift and is reached in much the same manner as the old children’s game of hide-and-seek in which someone indicates that the searcher is "warm, warmer, hot" or "cold as ice". Your attention must be in your body to feel the relief that comes with a good fit.

Fourth Movement: Resonating handle and felt sense

When you find a word or picture that fits, ask yourself if it’s right. There should be a response, a confirming sensation or a felt release. To feel this resonance, you must be in touch with the felt sense. Occasionally, the sense disappears and only the words remain. In this case, allow the felt sense to come back. It may have changed somewhat. Say the words that have come to you gently over and over in an effort to feel what they are about. In attempting this match between words and feeling, allow them to change until they feel just right. Take a minute to allow the feeling to just be. This will allow your body to change. Don’t rush. It is important to be here now.

Fifth Movement: Asking

If you have experienced a big shift or bodily release, proceed to the sixth movement. Usually, a handle that fits produces only a tiny shift which does not yet change the problem.

In this movement, ask the felt sense directly what it is. Repeat the handle several times and stay with the felt sense for at least a minute or so, which seems like a long time. At first there may be chatter which should be put aside. Your mind rushes in and breaks your contact with the felt sense. Repeat the handle, returning to contact the felt sense often.

It is important to ask "open questions" about your felt sense. Refrain from answering through any conscious thinking process. We often decide what an answer should be before we have made an attempt to "listen" to our feelings. Ask an open question and then wait. The words and images that flow out of the feeling produce the good "Aha" effect. "Yeah, that’s what it’s all about!" If the felt sense doesn’t answer immediately, that is all right. Spend a minute or so with it. If you have spent time sensing something unclear that seems meaningful to the problem, then you are focusing. It may help to ask a question, such as "What is the worst of this?" or "What would it take to make this feel OK?" Focusing is a friendly time within your body. If it still seems unclear, approach the problem freshly at a later time.

Sixth Movement: Receiving

Welcome whatever comes - it is not the last word. If you receive each message in a friendly way, others will follow. You need not agree with, believe, or do what the felt sense says - simply receive it and another shift will occur. You might encounter a need from deep within to do something which is quite impossible at this time, e.g. a need to quit your job or change your life direction. Protect this first form even though it is unrealistic. This is only one step as your body is changing. You aren’t going to go out and do something wild. Simply keep the sense of the right direction and permit it to develop. You can stop focusing at any time, and will still be able to return to the same place. You are not running away or falling into your problem. You have it , but you are not it. Imagine a door between you and it. You may open or close it at any time.

You may feel that your body wants to stop focusing. Does it say, "Wait, I just got here" or "I don’t want to be left here." If you decide to stop, take a minute to recall the step or the handle that brought you to this point so that you can pick up where you left off. You may prefer to sense the whole problem freshly, asking your body if it is all solved or what the new sense of it is. Be gentle and understanding. There may be many cycles or steps before a problem is resolved, but you will feel a body shift with each step. A shift will feel like a release. The steps may take many months and seem to alternate between focusing and outer action.

Focusing is a skill which requires practice. The odds are that inner change will elude you at first, but the remaining troubleshooting chapters will review the common problems encountered.

Focusing is neither the common practice of lecturing yourself, even if you are using sound inferences and assumptions, nor the usual habit of insulting yourself, producing no usual change. Instead of talking at yourself, from the outside, focusing allows you to listen to what comes from inside. In asking your body what is wrong, refrain from answering - allowing your own inside feeling person to give you fresh answers from the felt sense. We are all familiar with the analytical process, which can be fun at times, but analysis tends to emphasize the "stuck" quality of "that’s the way I am." Focusing expects continual change and forward motion. It allows you to feel the sense of "all of the problem" without the need to consider all its myriad details. Resolving a problem is very different from understanding it. Focusing, with its attendant body shifts, may bypass your analytical mind completely, although understanding may be a result. The shift which occurs in focusing cannot be rationally perceived, but does happen.

A felt sense is the body’s physical sense of a situation - a sense of meaning - it is not purely bodily sensation. It is a broad, unclear discomfort felt in the body. To permit it to form, it is necessary to stand back from the familiar emotion and notice how the body feels the " whole problem." Words like "heavy", "tight", "jittery" help one experience the quality of the unclear felt sense.

Clearing a space, the first movement, derives its importance from putting you into a state of mind which allows freedom for the subsequent movements. Many different approaches are possible. You may feel that you are emptying a cluttered room in order to find the proper distance from your problem. You do not want to fall into your problem, although you may want to walk up to touch them. You simply step into a sheltered space where you cannot be hurt for awhile.

If you feel guilty for seemingly escaping your problem, be assured that it is only a brief respite. You are only making yourself able to handle them more effectively. Many people feel it necessary that their bodies express their emotions. When the body is tightly feeling the problem it is unable to approach it in a fresh, coping manner. There is often an impression that the only choice we have is to avoid the problem and feel good or accept its burden and feel terrible, but it is possible to allow your body to feel good and still have the problem in front of you, but not overwhelming you.

You could consider the first movement as setting down a burden. You may recall waking in the morning, peaceful and relaxed, until you become aware of all the problems you had yesterday. Unload the heavy pack so that you can take one problem out at a time to look at it. If you prefer to approach your problems in the manner of making a comforting list, you are better able to stand back to consider them individually.

Trust your body in its natural perfection, to feel at ease. This little bit of good feeling is just a beginning; as you start to work on the stack of problems you will feel much better. Your body wants to feel good, this is its natural life-maintaining system. "Every bad feeling is potential energy toward a more right way of being if you give it space to move toward its rightness."

When you feel bad, your body expresses it, because it wants to feel right. It is an incredibly fine natural system, and holistically senses more than a thought or emotion can. In using the word "body", I mean much more than the physical machine. You physically live not only the circumstances around you but those you think of as well. When something goes wrong, your body is aware of it and immediately begins the attempt to correct it. Medical help aids the body in healing itself. Taking time, through focusing, to listen to your body allows you to do likewise.

The first movement is important in its own right, and you may feel content to stop in this clear space for a while. Ask yourself how your life is going right now. As you allow each discomfort to come into your awareness - important or trivial - greet it in a friendly way and place it beside you. Ask your body how it would feel if it were somehow all solved. Wait for an answer. After the five or six things that come in this way, there is usually a background feeling that is always with you, a quality like "always a little sad" or "always trying too hard". Put this aside as well. Ask again how your body would feel if it were all solved. You may sense a vast open space - a clearing. You will find that you are not any of the things you set aside. You are no content at all.

Now, gently ask, "What’s the main thing for you right now?" Don’t answer in words. Wait. Let the answer be the feelings in your body. You can always think of a list of things that trouble you. This is not the list we want. We only want to know what is keeping your body from feeling sound. We are often very unfriendly toward ourselves and insulting as well, but our bodies tell us what we need to know if we listen as a friend. Don’t reject the answers before they are even heard, like an angry teacher to a disruptive child. The first movement of focusing is a time to smile and hold out your hand to yourself. "Hello. there, how are you feeling now? Lots of problems? Let’s just clear a space for them so we can sit in peace." When you begin to focus, stand back from or next to what you focus on.

This chapter will offer ways of overcoming some of the problems you may have in finding the felt sense. Our lack of adequate language to describe it makes it difficult to know where to look for it or even to recognize it. Using golfers as an example, the felt sense is the many-stranded fabric of bodily awareness that guides them as they tee off. It isn’t possible to think of all the details of location, and body movement needed, but the single felt sense of the situation includes the problem and the bodily known solution. In observing a golfer preparing to swing, you can see the whole body taking aim. There may be a particular thought in mind like, "I want to keep my left arm straight", but all the other aim-taking motions take place without conscious thought. When a golfer feels right, the swing follows. The felt sense is found in the same place as the golfer’s "right feeling".

You may often have experienced the felt sense during a discussion in which you have a feeling of what you wish to convey but have not yet prepared the words. When the time for you to speak arrives, you must look within to find that sense of what you wanted to impart, and - like focusing - you must wait patiently until "it" is recalled. The physically felt release that occurs when you discover "it" is the same inner knowing that is achieved in focusing.

An exercise that will help you experience the felt sense involves four steps. First, select something you love or feel is beautiful. Second, ask yourself why you love it or think it is beautiful. Third, feel the whole sense of loving or specialness. Attempt to find one or two words that express the feeling. Fourth, let yourself feel what the words refer to - the whole felt sense.

Another way of letting the felt sense form is by telling yourself you feel fine, that all is well. Of course, you know you are not fine because you are focusing on a problem. If you put your attention in your body, you will quickly see that there is a specific not-fine sense and you will be able to feel the exact quality of this not-fine sense.

You may imagine the whole problem as a large picture on a wall. As you step back in order to see it all, pay attention to your body for the felt sense that the image imparts.

Often, words seem to get in the way of finding the felt sense and we feel stuck. Nothing can change when these words deny the possibility of change. "I’m scared, what else is there to say" or "That’s just the way I am - my life has made me this way." Take this feeling and allow it to broaden out into the felt sense by asking open-ended questions like, "What does this whole thing feel like?" Don’t fight your words but feel beyond them to widen your scope.

When there seems to be no feeling apart from the words, keep asking questions around the words. "What is this ‘scared’? Where do I feel it? What does it feel like inside?"

One of the best focusing teachers told me:

"At first, when I tried to focus, I could never get a felt sense. All I had were words that I could feel, but there was never any feeling except right with the words. My words were like definitions....I was only looking at the center of each feeling, and in the center of the feeling was what the words said. It took me three months till one day I noticed that there was more to the feeling. It had,sort of, fuzzy edges. That was the breakthrough for me."

To find the fuzzier edge of the feeling , it may help to repeat the most meaningful phrase, trying to grasp what it makes you feel. In a way this is focusing backward - starting with the words and going back to the felt sense of all that. Be sure that your inner attitude is one of asking. It does no good to repeat what you’ve been telling yourself for years. Repeat the words, but ask how your body experiences them, and let your body-feeling answer. Be sure that you are relaxed before you begin focusing. You may first need to recognize how ordinary emotions are really in your body, like your heart pounding or a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. Practice putting your attention on different parts of your body to feel them from within.

If your mind wanders, gently bring it back and remind it of your aim. You may have to do it often. You may feel that you are not very complex, that you do not have complicated feelings, but you are human. It is all there, inside. There are accustomed, simple patterns that we all recognize. If someone ignores us, we are hurt, but just how or where it hurts me is not the same as how or where it bothers you. To sense the "all that" about being ignored involves all-about-that person and all-about-me-with-that-person and all-about-what-it-means-to-me-to-be-ignored. Soon you will feel a mass of things not clearly known. Then you can focus on that felt sense. You may find it helpful to practice checking your feelings throughout the day as events occur. "How am I now? What am I feeling?" Don’t answer yourself, wait to see what answer comes. Don’t insult yourself over what you may find, simply become acquainted with your inside space. Often, when we give a label to a feeling - angry, scared, bored - we attach a well-worn sense to it, but it may be a different angry than the one we felt last week - or a different scared than yesterday’s. Welcome any no-name feeling, as fresh words flow from it.

Your whole body will produce the feeling differently each time it arrives. There are no new things within us, so there is no need to be wary of what may arise. There are no nameless, scary things inside us. The good-feeling focusing process changes the surroundings in which the feeling is produced.

Feeling blank or stuck or empty will pass in time, even the absence of feeling is a feeling. If something seems to get in the way of focusing, change your focus to that. It may be an obstacle that must be cleared first. If you are trying too hard, focus on what the "too hard" feels like. You may find yourself afraid to focus, and that’s all right, just focus on the fear from where you are. You need not go anywhere you do not wish to. The process of focusing feels good, as soon as it doesn’t, back up a bit and see what it is that doesn’t feel good. Don’t force yourself across barriers. Focus instead on the barrier. You will feel better, whatever you find within, when you allow it to name itself.

There are times when focusing seems difficult because feelings come too quickly and profusely. This can be counteracted be taking any one feeling and staying with it. Let the whole welter of feelings be there, and quietly let yourself go under it to see if there is one feeling underlying all. Take charge. Throw them all our, and then take one at a time.

Everyone has a nasty voice inside that plays the part of a critic. "You’re no good. You’re worthless. You’ve messed up again." Understand that the critic is not your inner voice. Do not respect your critic, send it out into the hall to wait. Your sense comes from within and is not constricting. All psychologists have found the destructive critic part of every person and given it various names. Whatever you call it, wave it away. You don’t have to listen to anyone who talks to you in that tone.

People sometimes skip the focusing directions and go directly to the familiar bad feelings. Stay out of the usual sinkholes, stand back and take in a wider sense of the whole problem area that the bad feelings are part of. Focusing is about feeling good. Try to get under the bad feelings. When people first hear of focusing, they sometimes think they need a free afternoon to privately go to pieces for a while. Focusing is not like that. The felt sense feels lighter then what you are already feeling. Why carry your tensions around all day? Focusing can take only five or ten minutes. Just ask what’s between you and feeling fine. A felt sense is not an emotion but may have emotions coming out of it. It is a sense of your total emotional situation.

The body shift usually occurs in the third, fourth, or fifth focusing movement. There are times when these movements happen in such quick succession that it is almost impossible to state when the shift occurred. This chapter will offer suggestions to help you if you seem to be stuck in any of those movements.

There are two opposite extremes in people’s attitudes toward feelings; one is strict control, with the head dominating the body and the other is letting images roam and feelings come and go. Both are equally ineffective in allowing a body shift. It is true that control must be maintained in bringing the mind back to its focus, but once you have attained a clear felt sense there must be a deliberate letting-go in order to allow its words, pictures and physical sensations to be known.

When you first begin focusing, there is a slight affirmative feeling when something is right. Learn to let your body take more of a shift. Exhale, nod your head, relax your body, allowing yourself to express more freely. For example, if you saw a frightened child and said, "Honey, are you scared?", you would get a tiny nod, but if you added, "It’s OK to feel scared, let’s see what we can do", the child might well melt into your arms.

Sometimes a small step has only a slight effect, but if you persist with the "yes" in your body, it may produce a major effect. When you find yourself stuck with the felt sense, you may need to phrase your questions differently. Be sure they are open-ended. Some of the questions that work best are: "What is this, really?", "What is the worst of it?", "What is at the center of it?", "What is under this? What is it doing?", "What needs to happen for me?" "What would it take to feel better?" It may even be helpful at some point to ask, "What would it take not to feel this way?"

Occasionally, you will find a handle and then become stuck by locking yourself into the emotion. Try to get a feel of the mass of feelings that arise with the emotion. It may be necessary to make a fresh start. Back away and consider the problem as wider or deeper than the handle. The problem is a whole slice of your life - your past, your future, other people, etc. What is the whole sense - feel it inside you.

Often times, a visual image will help you move forward. Everyone can use imagery, even with open eyes. Imagine your bedroom, and how you get from the bed to the door. In that same inner space, you can ask for an image of your feeling to form. This new image may give you a step forward.

It may be possible to work backward by asking your body what it would feel like if the problem were all resolved. Your body will shift and you can say, "It’s all settled, right?" Your body will answer, "Wrong! Sorry, you can’t feel this way all the time." Now, you may be able to ask what you must change in order to make it right. It’s like looking up the answer in the back of the book and working backward. Your body feels the answer and you can ask, "What’s in the way of feeling this way?" Now, you have a new opening. It is not possible to simply stay in the good feeling and ignore the problem, but you do have a new step to take.

A painful place may not shift immediately, but you can check back with it from time to time to see if there is anything new. Eventually, you will find a step or shift there.

Refrain from analyzing the problem, trying to figure it out. We all have a Sunday school list of admired traits with which we push our bodies around. You might find a felt sense of the whole problem and feel good for a second or two and then hear yourself saying, "Oh, sure, I know what this is about - it must be...." Whenever you hear phrases like "it must be", turn them off. You’re trying to tell yourself what is wrong instead of asking. Tell yourself nothing. Ask, wait, and let your body reply.

Your effectiveness in focusing will improve with practice. It is not necessary to think of it as a six part exercise. It can become a natural, easy , everyday part of your life.

Very few people have someone with whom they can share inner experience, and then only up to a point. How well do you really know others? You may well know how they will respond in certain situations, and you can probably imagine a conversation with them, but do you really understand each other? Haven’t you even kept certain places dark within yourself? We have found that if listening and focusing are shared, we can come to know each other more deeply, more quickly. Being in contact is a human need, and too much privacy emphasizes isolation.

We tend to live in our routine roles without experiencing our inner richness, and often wonder if there is really any depth to us at all. Even at times of seeming openness, we tend to express the same torn, pained feelings. To speak openly often means repeating the same stuck feelings from the same stuck places. Using focusing and listening, it is possible to help closed, stuck relationships.

Try the steps presented here with someone other than those you are closest to.

Focusing and listening are like telling an exciting experience to someone who encourages you to express the richness of the experience. We have all saved thoughts or experiences to share with certain people. You will often want to focus alone, but also try it with someone else.

Suppose you find a friend who is willing to focus with you, and listen as you focus. Explain that the focuser is in charge and can say as much or as little as desired. It is necessary for the listener to pay attention to the focuser even though saying nothing. Few people are really good listeners, and this judgment includes professionals whose work requires them to listen well. The following " Listening Manual" may be helpful.

The first kind of helping will be called absolute listening. This involves repeating the focuser’s points, step-by-step, as you understand them. Be completely truthful. If you do not understand something, ask for clarification, but do not introduce comments or interpretations. You merely wish to reiterate what the focuser has said in order to express your understanding. People need to hear you speak and know that you relate to each thing they feel - good or bad. Don’t try to fix, change, or improve anything. Sometimes it may seem complicated and you may have to make a sentence or two to check the crux of the thoughts with them. If the focuser changes your words to correct your understanding, say their words back to them to be sure you agree on the meaning. Don’t say, "I don’t understand any of this", but rather,"I understand this is important to you, but I don’t get what it is yet." Try not to make the person waste time explaining to you. Just repeat back bit by bit. You will know you are doing it right when the person moves further into the problem. There may be a satisfied silence or a relaxing. Don’t destroy the peace by speaking needlessly.

If the same thing is said over and over, or the focuser’s face becomes tense, it may be that the focuser is trying to understand what you are saying. Now you will know that you’re not doing it quite right. Stop and ask the person to say it again. You can say,"I didn’t understand it right, but I want to." Repeat only what you’re sure of. It’s like a train on a track, it’s easy to know when you’re off. Everything stops. Go back to the last point that seemed to be on track and ask the person to go on from there. You will find that it is difficult to understand what a person is saying without putting yourself into it, adding to it or trying to fix it up. Stop, momentarily, and sense your own tangle of feelings. Clear this space so that you can listen from it. People seldom move over enough in themselves to really hear someone else.

Occasionally, people keep talking, running on from point to point. It may be helpful to have them stop in order to get the felt sense of a point before moving on. The focuser must keep quiet, inwardly, as well as outwardly, to get the sense of "all that". When the felt sense is formed, there is relief, and one can begin to feel around it and into it. If there is continual talk around and around a subject, it may help to gently point out the way to deeper levels. Do as little as possible to help people contact the felt sense. Repeat their words expressing the crux of the matter concisely. It may help them get back on track and move on. Don’t interrupt a silence for at least a minute. You might form a question or two helping them to ask their bodies inwardly. Go along with whatever arises.

Perhaps the focuser feels some private or painful thing, and it will help if you repeat two or three things and say, "Just feel what comes there."

If someone looks you straight in the eyes, or speaks immediately, you know that focusing hasn’t yet begun and they are not yet looking inside. When explanations or speculations begin, don’t criticize for analyzing, but pick up the last thread and keep pointing into the felt sense. If the focuser seems too tense or discouraged, lead him/her into that feeling. When one cannot understand all that is felt, you will know there is a felt sense still unclear. The groping for words should be welcomed.

The key to absolute listening is responding and referring to the focuser’s feelings exactly as they are felt. The presence and response of the listener has a powerful helping effect.

The second kind of helping requires listening as basic, but includes using your own feelings and reactions about the other person. Watch the person’s face to see their response to your input. Direct your questions to their feelings. You have no way of knowing their feelings but can ask wonderingly if they feel a particular way. Let go of your ideas easily if they lead to argument or speculation. Make sure there are periods of total listening; if you interrupt constantly, the focusing process can’t get started. The process may not move along as you think it should but as long as it stays on track and progresses, it is right for the focuser.

Nonverbal reactions are often good signals for helping people move into a felt sense. You may sense something, though you may not be right about what it is. Ask the focuser, and watch the reactions.

There are some questions which you might ask to help create movement, but there must be rapport between you. Private matters may be focused on without being openly expressed. You may remind the focuser that bad things aren’t all bad, or that sexual needs are not frightening. Anger may be the door to discovering a hurt or need. It is helpful to remind people that it’s good to have feelings - at least long enough to know what they are. If the focuser begins to feel weird or unreal, take a break, and recall the ordinary things around you. The focuser is in control and can decide when to stop.

When someone seems very troubled, you may find it useful to talk about ordinary things, or listen to music for a while. There are times when just being with them may be of help. If a lot of strange material is expressed, your point of contact must be one or two things that make sense. If distorted facts are presented, respond to the feelings rather than the thoughts. If a request is made of you that you are unable to fulfill, you may respond that you are glad the person is in touch with his/her needs.

Some healthy, life-enhancing processes that you might suggest are: trying something new, defending the perception of a problem, exploring oneself, trying to meet people, seeking peace, telling people how you need them to be, taking charge of a situation, being able to ask for help.

The third kind of helping is interactive. Up to this point you have been saying back what the other has been saying and/or feeling. Interactive helping allows you to express the feelings you have in response. You must be able to focus into them for your response to be helpful. Don’t express your feelings from the point of view of what the other person said or did, but rather from what you are like and how you can be upset.

Sharing what is happening within you makes interactive helping more open and comfortable for you both. Share specific feelings- not generalities, and don’t expect immediate warm receptiveness.

It may be helpful to admit to feeling pressured or to talk about something you did that you feel was stupid or wrong. If it is painful to be honest, realize that others do not care how good or wise or beautiful you are. Remember that others can hear you better if they have been heard first, and hearing them may change your feelings. Don’t express yourself immediately if you are confused. Focus to learn what you feel.

The fourth kind of helping is group interaction. It can be a social group, a family, or a work group. It doesn’t help if people hurt each other’s feelings and no one is really listened to so that feelings can change. Focusing can happen in a group, even in a large one. Someone should read the instructions while everyone focuses within the silences in between. Afterwards, there should be time for each person to say something. Large groups may be divided into smaller ones. Allow each person two and a half minutes. If you take a few minutes in silence, people can then decide what they wish to say. Difficulties between people won’t impede the work of the group if each person can be fully heard. If someone is upset or upsetting, be sure this person is really listened to by someone who can interact with the rest of the group. Assume that everyone is trying to do some good thing. Try to find out what it is and say it. If you don’t agree, at least you can understand.

If two or more people are having trouble, and you are not too upset yourself, you can help each person to be heard. Respond to the first person as in the first stage of listening. The other will see the good results of the process, then you can turn and respond to the second person’s feelings. This allows the first one to listen.

Much can be achieved in a group if you listen, focus, say something of what you find and ask others to sense and express more of their feeling.

Relationships can become fuller and more rewarding when people are able to open up through focusing and listening.

Two college professors trying to work together had a disagreement twenty years ago that was never resolved. Each knows the other well - what each will say or do in most circumstances - but their relationship is stuck. Neither really listens to the other except to justify their opinion. A rich, human texture could emerge if either was able to move past the traits and habits which they find annoying in the other. This could be accomplished if they learned to focus and listen.

Or let’s examine the closer relationship of a couple. She wants more freedom, he is jealous and anxious. He was only aware of her withdrawal into silence and resentfulness when he questioned her activities with others. She was only aware of his possessiveness. After learning to focus, she was able to say, "What makes me angry is that when you ask all those questions, you turn into an unattractive, unromantic, scared man, and I lose my sexual turn-on to you." He was glad to hear how she really felt. This one focusing step did not solve their problem, but it had the effect of moving the stuck relationship.

Focusing is able to prevent wasting time and energy in old repetitious quarrels. Many work places are filled with bad feeling and bad relationships, and even in pleasant places, work could be accomplished more efficiently if people learned to listen.

Several groups called "Changes" have been developed in various parts of the country by people who know focusing and listening. Large groups break up into smaller ones so that each individual can experience being listened to. Often there is more psychotherapy going on in this setting than in formal therapy. Since no one is an authority, the focuser is not told what to do or interrupted. The body changes that are possible in focusing are the same changes that are experienced in effective psychotherapy.

In recent years, the nature of the human individual has developed to allow expression of inward feelings. Focusing allows even further development. It encourages formation of a holistic body sense, at first unclear, but from this sense a series of inward shifts arises. The contents of our experience doesn’t really have a fixed shape, it changes with each sensing. It cannot be figured out by others or even by oneself. It must be met and permitted to show itself.

Focusing allows experience to be unique as it unfolds. What may seem to fit a pattern at this moment may fit another pattern or none a few moments later. It is a new step in human development when we can not only get in touch with our feelings, but also move through steps of unfolding and change.

It has always been possible to exhibit non-conformity, but often those who have done so have found themselves without values or standards. Focusing gives us a way of making new patterns which come from inside each person.

Old patterns were once useful, giving us rules and routines with which we fitted ourselves into our roles, but through creativity, our needs have expanded and we have found our feelings to be more complex than our roles either required or permitted.

There has been little progress n the character of social and political structures because we know a lot about how social patterns change individuals, but little of how individual development can reach the level of social structure. Part of the answer to this dilemma can be found in focusing.

While our clear patterns are already formed, focusing permits our unclear feelings to create new forms of action to carry these feelings into daily life. This is the form-making process from which big change can come. Our bodies are continually absorbing new learning which enables the holistic felt sense to include the already formed thoughts, feelings and ways of acting as well as the direction toward what is not yet resolved. We are establishing new patterns for the resolution of social brutalities and oppressions, and the ability to change them.