When to stop focusing

After ten minutes or so, if you have not gotten any release, opening up, felt shift, just note where you have come (like steps 5 and 6) and then stop. Don't make a work task out of it, this is time for your inner person, not a job. Do it again later, or tomorrow.

If you are terribly conscientious and usually won't let yourself avoid anything, and you happen to get the feeling that you'd like to not focus, for a change, and that feels freeing, then let yourself not focus.

When you have gotten to an important feeling but either there is too much of it, it is too heavy, or perhaps you have stayed with it and waited, but it did not move or release, " set up camp" next to it. Phrase it as much as you know of it, promise yourself that you will return to it, and do so later. Every so often, during the day, return to it just for a few moments. See if it has changed. If not, fine, just come back again later.

If the quality of your focusing process is heavy, sad, angry, or feels overall bad, negative, see if you can focus on what makes it so. If that releases and moves, fine. If not, go do something to make yourself feel a little better, then return later. (Make some coffee, give yourself some time off, read something you like, put on some music. Be nice to yourself. That is the right manner, and once you're into being nice to yourself outwardly, focusing will go better when you come back. )

If you have gone round and round and round and are worn out from grinding away on some problem or bad feeling, perhaps it has gone on for hours or days or nights, put the whole problem " on a shelf, " so to speak, and rest your body. Promise yourself to come back to it tomorrow at a certain time. (Going round and round isn't focusing, but it may all be too sore or worn, right now, to be able to focus. You can try once more for two minutes, exactly, to see if you can just get a hold of the spots that hurt the most. Then, whether that helped or not, stop for a time. ) Focusing itself never wears one out, it is energy releasing and one feels rested from it, but going round and round wears one out, and can then make it hard to focus, too.

The body should not be kept in constant tension. If something is very bad and very urgent, it won't leave one alone, and yet makes it hard to focus. That's a miserable condition. Best to promise really seriously to return to it, and see if you can't rest the whole thing on a safe shelf where you know you'll pick it up again tomorrow.

Sometimes there are certain situations that won't resolve, at least not now. It is best not to put one's body through the situation over and over, feeling it over and over. Admit instead, that for now there is no solution, and let that truth release

your body.

Every situation we care about is felt in the body, and bad situations are felt by the body making itself tight. This helps us find our way in situations. But if, for now, the situations can't get better, and if for now you aren't taking actions in it, there should be a way you can release your body from the job of holding itself as that situation directs. For now, you can let it go, and let your body live fully and at ease. At another time, you'll put the situation on again and see if you then can find a way in it.

Sometimes it is as if we had a rule: " You are not allowed to feel OK until this situation is OK, and it is not. " This rule is supposed to protect us from ignoring a danger, or from being ambushed by the situation when we're not on guard. Actually, it just wears us out, like standing guard duty all the time. We are afraid to feel good as if that would whitewash the situation, as if we would pretend that it is OK, and so this rule says: “No pretending. If it's not OK, you have to feel bad. " The answer to this is to agree not to whitewash, not to pretend about the situation. You'll remember all the while how bad the situation is. You won't forget it just because you are letting yourself feel OK in your body. Don’t worry that you will be making the situation seem better than it is, you promise not to do that. This leads to a funny sentence: " Don't worry, the situation won't be any better if you let yourself feel OK. "

This seems like advice to ignore and avoid anything that really needs working on, but we mean it only to free your body most of the time. At certain times, you will want to focus on the situation and what it makes you feel (as well as what to do) and at those times, of course, you will want the feelings to come to you. Even then, you won’t want to feel all bad, just each way it feels, one by one.

There are times when one needs to sit for a long time next to a feeling. Instead of its releasing and opening up, it is more a question of just gradually coming to bear it. Don’t drown in it. Rather, sit next to it, perhaps some yards away (so to speak). This lets it gradually become bearable.

Focusing is on feelings, and feelings are everyday plain kinds of things. They are not weird phenomena, not hallucinations, images, voices, etc. If you have those, or if the person you are helping focus has them, make it plain that feelings are welcomed. The other stuff at most, if it is there, can be used in asking oneself, “What does this make me feel? " And then, whatever the answer is, " What's in that feeling? ” Feelings are sane-making to have.