Group method

A focusing group is a structure in which an introverted, individual process can go on in the presence of others. (Most group situations demand extraverted process. ) This paper describes the structure and nature of this original focusing group. The group met in the context of Changes, a crisis­intervention, therapeutic community in Chicago. I invited anyone who wanted to do focusing with others during the Sunday night meetings to join me in a group. We met weekly for two hours, for one and a half years. There were from 5 to 12 people present at any given meeting. The group was closed to new people (to keep size down), but there were no agreements to attend regularly by anyone (including me). To require or pressure for attendance already violates the group as a structure that expresses an inner felt need. It makes it an obligation. If I didn't feel like coming I didn't and whoever wanted to meet anyway did. I was unwilling to make the group one more task to " get through" or " perform well. " There was no money involved. The point of the group was to focus - each person silently - but not alone. I gave focusing instructions out loud each time, but people were asked to ignore them if they didn't feel right or interfered with their own process.

The group was structured to facilitate each person's attention to their own inner process, through relaxation, silence, and focusing. Each individual was insured privacy and safety from external intervention. Within this context full attention to internal process can begin. When mobilized to meet responses (positive or negative) of others (as we usually are in group situations) one cannot focus. We met in a sanctuary of a church, quiet and candlelit. People would find a comfortable position in the room where they could feel undisturbed. Usually, people would take a mat and lie down. I gave relaxation instructions followed by a minimum of 10 minutes of silence. That's a long time to share silence.

People slept, dreamed, fantasized, thought, cried, as they were moved, with no instruction or response from anyone else.

lt came to be that as people came in, took their shoes off and lay down, they would sigh with relief, " This is the only place in my whole week where I can come and just be myself, with other people, but not having to interact and be mobilized. 1 can entirely go into my own space and see who I am, take time to catch up with what's going on in me. " Just entering the room became a powerful experience. The silence was a time in which one could disengage from being tensely involved in this and that, reacting to what one just had come from. One could get some distance from immediate concerns and find one's larger sense of center or balance.

At the end of that 10-minute period, I would give some version of focusing instructions, for those who found them helpful to their inner process of centering. In order to make the instruction-giving feel helpful for me rather than a burden, I needed to be free to make up those focusing instructions which seemed exactly right for me that evening, rather than memorize a standard set of instructions (Gendlin, 1968) and give them by rote each meeting. Near the end of the 10-minute silence I would focus on how to start the focusing instructions. I would do this by saying silently to myself, “What question feels most right to begin? What open question would center me the most deeply now? " Then I would wait and see what emerged from my whole felt sense. The starting question would come (usually with a felt shift impact in me just from getting the centering questions). Then I would ask, again, silently to myself, " Then what question next? " After I had the first several steps of the " focusing instructions" for the evening, I would tell people that after a few minutes (to complete their process if they wanted) I

would begin the instructions. As I gave them out loud, I also gave them to myself (which was the point of the group for me - to focus with others present). The rest of the sequence of questions would arise from my own specific process. For example, if I found my mind wandering, I would say, " If you find your mind wandering, bring it back. " Or, if I needed to sense what was in the way of this feeling or trouble shifting or opening, then I would say, " Ask yourself, ’What’s in the way of this feeling shifting or opening up? ’ “I generalized whatever instruction was arising for my process. If I got a sad feeling, my next step might be to ask myself silently, ’'What is this sadness? " I would then say out loud, " Ask yourself now, ’What is this feeling I'm working on, what’s in it? ’ Just wait and see what comes. " The content " sadness" was mine. The generalized spoken question was a process instruction, applicable to any feeling content.

I timed the focusing steps by how long it took me to get my bodily response, plus time to sense the next instruction and 10 or 15 extra seconds. If I got stuck on a step and it took me a long time, then that step took a long time. The instructions usually took 20 to 30 minutes, mostly of in-between silence. I and later others in the last months of the group felt safe enough to formulate instructions on the spot from our own process.

Often during the instructions people would cry or laugh or sigh as their process shifted, released, opened. But this was their private process and called for no response from another.

Certainly, the group was good for me (having made them up, l got exactly right focusing instructions each time! ). But the depth of my process helped deepen that of others. Especially in silence when one's pace slows, and inner sensitivity deepens, the inward-turnedness of another is keenly felt. Therapists often have the experience that when the inner world begins to open the silence of the client becomes richly textured, charged. The fulness of the client's silence is tangible.

l usually generated my focusing instructions by asking myself what would center me because the feeling I call " living from my center" was most important for me. Someone else doing a different group would find their own right way of generating instructions. Obviously, since my instructions arose from my process, they were often not right for others. And people often did ignore my instructions and made up their own to themselves. Still, the minimal provision of structure in my instructions seemed helpful. l don’t think out loud instructions would be necessary if everyone knew focusing well.

I stress a reflexive principle, focusing on how to focus with others, focusing to get focusing instructions, etc., because I think many shared steps of this kind of structure-deriving process made the powerfulness and creativity experienced by each of us in the group.

In the first weeks, after the focusing instructions, I would invite anyone to tell me what had happened for them at each step of the instructions. This was both a way of verbally sharing what had gone on in the silence for those who wished (this can often sharpen one's own sense of what one's experience " was" ), and a way of working with specific difficulties in focusing.

Here are some examples of sharing in the first sessions: