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Step 2
As one feels a whole problem area, usually some specific feeling quality, feeling tone, stands out. It may not have a name (or it may. It might be " scared" or " ashamed, " but then again it might just be THAT funny feeling, there. )
If you didn't get a specific feel, standing out from the whole, chances are you did some thinking and talking to yourself, too soon. Feel the whole, and wait.
Should this not work, you can try taking a thought which you think is most important, or new, and say it to yourself asking yourself, " What does this make me feel? "
Once you get a feeling, just try to feel it again and again, as sharply as you can, trying to get what it is. Don't tell yourself what it is. Instead, ask it. Say, " What is that feeling? " and then keep verbally quiet and try to feel it again, to sense into it.
When you can feel it, just stay with it. Observe it, see what it does. You don't do anything beyond trying to have a hold of it in a feeling way.
Step 3
As you got into the feeling you may have started to think from whatever you first found. Or, you may have gotten carried away with one image stimulating another. Soon you have again only words, or only images. In that case, WAIT. Let how it now feels come to you again. Chances are it is somewhat different now, and will give you new words or images. You can't get the new ones by pursuing your train of thought or the images. It takes waiting, and letting them form fresh, from feeling, at every step.
Step 4
It is important to let feeling do whatever it does. Don't be annoyed at what feeling comes. Sit, as it were, in your neutral seat, and let whatever comes before you, speak to you and tell you its side of the story.
This applies also to what the feeling does: if it opens up into several facets, that's OK. (If your mind wanders and you are thinking about related things, and then still other related things, that's different. Bring yourself back, gently, by asking yourself what it was you were feeling, and sense the feeling. Mind steps get you off. ) Any steps of feeling, or shifts in how it feels, are OK and you just follow whatever the feeling does.
If you lose hold of the feeling try to recall it, and feel it again. If you can't get it back, come around again. What was the problem? - Oh yes, that one. What were you doing? - Oh yes, letting it all come home to you. What comes there now?
THAT feeling is the one now to follow, whether the same or not.
Don't go for long with only words, or only images. Stop, see what you now feel, sense into that, let fresh words or images come now from that.
If the last mentioned doesn't work for you, you can also stop some image, or set of words·, and ask yourself, “What does this image make me feel? What does this sentence make me feel? ’ Then wait and let the feel it gives you come to you.
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Step 5
Of course, in a few minutes, you may or may not have arrived at something really new. You may or may not have experienced a shift in the feeling. Even if not, and certainly if there is anything fresh, try to match words freshly. Take wherever you have arrived, the last way it feels, or perhaps, the feeling that seemed most important or most alive to you. Phrase that one. (Or, if you are good at getting images, let there be a fresh image for that one. ) Even if what you feel has an old name, let fresh words come for it now.
This is like making a place to which you can return. If the words or image you form is really apt, really “gets” the feeling, you can remember it and find this feeling again later.
Getting it just right should also make your body relax a little, like having this exactly placed. However good or bad it is, it is just this, and you have that located.
Only just certain words feel related to your feeling, most words float over the top of it. You want words that ease your feeling, words that make you say, " Oh, yeah, that's what it is, all right. "
Step 6
After you get a phrase or image to say what the feeling is, go back to the feeing and check your phrase or image. " Is this really exactly right? " (Ask this, then wait and feel the feeling. ) Sometimes it pays to go back and forth several times, each time letting the words change so they match the feeling again.
To make this clearer: take an example. Suppose you think of some friend of yours, and get a sense of your impression of the person. If you know this person well, there will be several such feelings. lf you put one of them into words, these words might do the job. Yet you can still ask yourself, " Does this exactly get my feeling? " You might sense that the words are poorer than the feeling, and you can wait and see if words don't come to capture the rest of the feeling.
In trying to do this example some people say they get only words, or only self-evident feelings that need no focusing into to explicate. Think of meeting someone you know but for the moment you don't remember who they are. Don't you find then that you have a feeling about the person? It's like that. You also have feelings of people, when you know who they are. You can try, now, to sense your felt sense of people you know, and see what it's like to let words come to say the feeling, and then go back and forth to get the words exactly.
If the feeling changes somewhat as you do this, let it change. Just see what it does, and let words come always from the last feeling (or the most live feeling; if further steps lose the feeling, go back to the last point where you had it).
This was an example. In focusing you would let words form from the feeling you are focusing into, and then go back and forth between the feeling and the words until there is an exact fit.
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