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Part Three: About Focusing. Kristin Glaser, Introduction. Eugene Gendlin and Mary Hendricks, Focusing issues: guidelines, steps, additional aids, problems, feelings and felt sense, alternate instructions, self-attitudes, and when to stop
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Part Three: About Focusing
Kristin Glaser, Introduction
Although we have talked about focusing a little before, in this section we want to give you a much more detailed idea of what that process is about and how to do it. Focusing means sensing into one's as yet unclear feelings and allowing them to shift, release, and open. Some few people may do this naturally all the time. Maybe you know someone who can dip into herself, inquire into her feelings and then really know how it is with herself. This is the person who in a confusing situation will take a private inward minute and really be able to check with how she feels about what is going on. This is the person who can be in touch with the complexity of her feelings, not in an analytical way, but with a clear sense of the whole. Although a few people can do that, there are more of us who can do this in some partial way. l can always be in touch with the fullness of hurt, but never when there is anger. I can get in touch with feelings, but then I can't just let them come to me; I immediately grab them and start analyzing and being intellectual. I can check inside with how I feel, but not get down too far.
This section describes more clearly what that focusing process feels like, how it can be used, and also gives some different instructions of how you can do this process. People who can do it naturally may not find these instructions useful, but for most of us there is a real skill to be learned. Once you have acquired the skill, the instructions may no longer be that relevant. You will be able to focus whenever you want to. There seems to be some contradiction in having formal instructions for a very unshaped, internal process, but like listening, our natural way of doing things does not usually support the focusing process, so we must learn new ways.
This section will have the following parts:
l. Trying to give you a sense of what it is all about. Here some people will describe their focusing experiences - both unstructured and following the directions.
2. We will then give you some guidelines and
3. a clear set of focusing instructions so you can try and do it yourself.
4. Then will be a detailed discussion of each step in the instructions.
5. A number of additional aids or explanations follow.
6. Next come some problems that most people run into when first focusing and suggestions we have to meet these problems.
7. Some people have real difficulty getting to their " feelings, " we have some ideas of how to begin to do that.
8. We then say more about what a feeling, or “felt sense" is in the focusing process. 
9. Another side to the problem of getting feelings is people 1s difficulty getting " inside" themselves. Here we suggest ways to do this and have an alternative set of focusing instructions.
10. Then we talk about the attitudes toward self that facilitate good focusing.
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11. We then give guidelines for when not to focus, and
12. try to talk about why we focus and what it is useful for.
We hope you will take our specifics here very specifically. Everyone knows some inward processes, good or bad. We aren't putting down or being against any other way, but think this one to be quite special. We feel that focusing is a very important process in which difficulties within us can be resolved. Although it may seem awkward to try to learn this process from a book, we feel it is worth the effort. The only way to learn, though, is to try to follow the instructions step by step. We know there will be difficulties and that is why we have written so much - hopefully somewhere in this section there is something written which will speak to your particular difficulty in doing this.
Eugene Gendlin and Mary Hendricks, Focusing issues: guidelines, steps, additional aids, problems, feelings and felt sense, alternate instructions, self-attitudes, and when to stop
Guidelines for focusing
It has often been helpful to say something like the following before asking a person to focus:
The method of focusing is a bodily method.
First, the method involves a sharp and complete shift in direction. One must cease talking to oneself inside; one must ask, " What's wrong? " and then keep quiet, and refrain from answering oneself. Everyone knows a great deal about what is wrong, but it is different to wait and listen than to tell oneself about it. Usually one thinks from the outside in, at oneself. In " focusing" one shifts to " from the inside out, " from oneself. Rather than trying to say or think what the trouble is, what the answer is, one must keep quiet and listen. Then the bodily felt version of what the trouble is makes itself felt.
Secondly, one needs to understand before one starts, that words can come from a feeling. Words come anyway, one can't shut up for long. But there is a way of letting all words that come go by, except for such words as “come from" the feeling. Another way to phrase this (since " come from" is mysterious), is that some rare words have an experiential effect. We call it a felt shift. As these rare words come, one senses a sharpened feeling, or a felt relief, a felt shift, usually before one can say what this shift is. Sometimes such words are not in themselves very impressive or novel, but just these words have an experiential effect, and no others do. For example: " I'm scared… " might not be new, but when the words arise from one's quietly listening, they often have the effect of: " Yeah, that's what it is all right (long exhale breath, shakes head). Yeah, boy, I didn't know how true that was. " You may have been saying at yourself for days, among other things, that you are scared, but there is a release when the words come directly from the feeling. Here is another example: When you don’t like someone, there is what you criticize objectively, but that may be different from what you say from your feeling of not liking. That might not be objective, but it's from what you feel.
Thirdly, it is possible to sense a problem as a whole and let what is important come up from that bodily sensing. People rarely let the crux of the problem come freshly to them from their feel of the problem as a whole. They already know the crux (they remember what it was the last time they worked on this problem), or they decide now, in their head, what it is. One can step back and have a feel of the whole problem as it is now. Don't " decide" what is important about it. Feel it all and wait. Let whatever aspect of the problem that needs release right now come to you freshly.
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Fourth, focusing instructions involve a series of questions. They are open-ended, e. g., " How am I now? " " How do I feel? " " What words or pictures come from this feeling? " The broad openness of the question is part of what permits a complex, whole sense of something to form. If instead of “How do I feel? " one asked oneself, " Am I angry or excited now? " one may be neither - and no new step can form because the alternatives have been pre-structured. This question form is important because it permits change to happen - something new to take place. If one " asks" already assuming they know how this problem goes, what this situation feels like, then nothing new can happen. To ask is to not yet to know. If one asks without already knowing the answer, this automatically entails the kind of " waiting" or " keeping quiet" we speak of in focusing. When focusing works people often are surprised by what forms. It helps to have this set before beginning.
In summary,
1. One must wait about 30 seconds without talking at oneself, letting words go by if they come, until one freshly senses one's bodily feeling of the problem.
2. Words can come from a feeling and such words have a special power, a sensed effect which other words don't have.
3. When you have a feel of the whole problem, don't decide what's most important about it. Ask, " What's the crux of it? " and don't answer. Let that come freshly to you.
4. At each step have the set of an open question - that you don't yet know what will come.
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