Third session

If people are still struggling with the basic ideas and still have trouble hearing clearly, repeat Session Two until they improve. Otherwise, you can start Session Three with focusing instructions. Begin by explaining focusing simply and then give the instructions (see section of this book entitled " A Focusing Group" for suggestions about doing it yourself while you are giving them). Then go around the group, hearing from each person about how the focusing went for them. This can be done without the person talking about the content of what they focused on - instead they might talk about whether they got in touch with their feeling, or got somewhere, or had trouble with different parts of the instructions. The goal here is to learn how to focus, about what it is like to get in touch with experience. Of course, it is really all right to talk about the content if that's what seemed important.

Next, there are several options. If you want to stay in the large group and learn more about focusing, you can give the instructions again, and again go around to each person to find out how it was for them. Or, if the people are pretty good at listening and focusing, you can split up in three's after the instructions, with persons taking turns being listener, talker, and observer. If you stay in the whole group, go around to each person and listen to them about how it went. Get them to describe as accurately as possible so you can see what their process is like. Some people think they are focusing when they are not. You can tell if someone focused by how alive and energetic they are when they talk about their experience. Share with them your experience of their focusing in terms of how alive it felt to you. Then hear how they felt it. Others just get lost, give up, get angry, or space out. At some point, here or in the next session, you need to give some individualized attention to each person, explaining to them what focusing is and what it is not. This can be done the same way as teaching listening, by taking examples from someone's experience, saying something like, " That's what it means to get a whole sense", or “That’ s what it means to get words from (or make words for) a feeling. " Sometimes people need special exercises to get a felt sense (see section in this book on difficulties with focusing) or need to be given relaxation instructions. If some people have a lot of difficulty, you may have to spend a whole session, or many sessions, working on focusing, depending on the needs and wants of you and your group.

If your group splits into threes, first make sure people understand the roles they will have. They will take turns being listener, talker, and observer, with time being divided equally. The observer should be a listener after each person has a turn, doing what the leader usually does, listening to the listener and talker about how it was to be in each of those roles. The observer can also check out things that he/she heard the talker saying which the listener may have missed, or parts which got passed by because a different theme was followed. The observer can make comments here too about the interaction, about reactions the two people had toward each other while listening. (This is also a way of beginning to show people how it feels to teach listening, so that they could later lead groups themselves. )

A common problem which occurs at this point is that the observer can become opinionated and pushy about his/her insights in a way that excludes or denies the experience of the listener or talker. The listener or talker may also become defensive about what the observer says. In this case, the leader may need to help out by patiently hearing out each side until communication becomes clearer. People usually become opinionated, pushy, and interpretive when they are upset. It is difficult to hear them out because there is usually something right about what they are saying mixed in with a lot of anxiety or irritation. Try to hear both the specific observation and the feeling or experience that goes with it. Help the person learn to separate these and see them clearly.

The post-interaction listening helps people get in touch with the experience of helping and being helped, generates issues useful for teaching purposes, and eventually teaches people to check internally about these important’'meta-issues”, the vaguely sensed interpersonal " vibes" which make up any interaction. It is important to get out both how the talker felt about the listener's responding, and how the listener felt about the talker. The process between the two can get very stuck if these feelings are not brought out. For example, the listener may get " clogged" by all of his/her reactions to the talker, and need to get them out. Or the talker can get pulled away from going deeply into him/herself because of something annoying the listener is doing.

The leader should be a roving consultant here, helping the different triads. People often have trouble being specific about feedback and need careful listening help to get to it. The leader should help the observer listen to the listener­talker pair, and should in general be available for any group which is having trouble. People can be told to ask for help when they feel that listening is not happening, or things are getting stuck or bogged down.