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Example one. Example two. Example three. Example four
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Example one
I felt unhappy. My job won't let me go. I didn't think anything good could happen for me tonight because I was so tense. I couldn't relax during the relaxation period. When you said to ask, " What do I want to work on? " I didn't know. I had tried to think before I came what I wanted to work on. I couldn't think of anything. But when I followed your instructions and asked myself, ’'What do I want to work on? " what came was, " I want to be able to ask for what I need! "
I was surprised, but it felt good to get that. Then right away three images of three situations in which I need to ask and feel I can't came to me. Then, when you said to ask ourselves, " What needs to happen for this to shift or open up? " I tried asking in fantasy for what I need in each of these situations. And you know what happened? Nothing! No-one got upset. Now I feel like I can go and try it. For instance, I can say that I need to meet once a week with this person instead of twice, that it’s too fast for me. The outside instructions were very important. I couldn't have done it if left to myself.
Example two
There were too many words. I didn't listen to the instructions. I stayed with my feeling. I got an image of what on the outside could make the feeling change. Then as the image came, tears came. Then anxiety, a wanting it to go away. The feeling started with a place in the body, my chest, and a tightness in the throat. Then words came, " Oh, it's a sadness. " I spent a long time feeling that sadness, I never did feel it as parts. It was one big feeling and then the image came of what would change the feeling.
Example three
My mind kept wandering. I decided to focus on my breath. It was hard to get into a feeling. The instructions seemed too vague. When you said, " Let yourself have a feel of the whole problem" that seemed vague. I didn't know how to do it.
Example four
When I asked myself, " How am I now? " I immediately felt anxious, slightly nauseous. Then when you said to let a phrase or image form from the feeling, I saw myself as a scared little girl wanting to hide. When you said to see what was in that feeling or image, I couldn't get anything because there were too many reasons; I didn't know what to attach the feeling to. But there was a shift in that it felt good to get to the place where I really was rather than the social " out there" place.
When people are able to share their process exactly as in these examples, their difficulty can be worked with precisely. From this sharing, I would make up simple exercises to address a given person's difficulty with the instructions: How to discriminate a felt sense; how to let words/images form from it; how to ask oneself open-ended questions, etc. Different people have trouble with different steps. For instance, the person in Example Three above was not yet able to get a felt sense of a whole area. I made up exercises by saying to myself, e. g., " Oh, I see, she's having trouble with getting a felt sense of a whole. What would be another way of letting her have that experience so she'll know it? " Or, often you can see the person already has the experience of a particular focusing step in a different context but hasn't discriminated it as being something. People were supported in saying, " I didn't get anywhere”, " Nothing happened when you said …” Describing with internal precision is the point. What actually happened specifically is what is interesting and can be worked with.
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This sharing at the end was in a " go around" format. Each person who wished said what they wanted. I might reflect in a client-centered fashion what was shared, but there was no other interaction. Each person's sharing was received, not judged, sympathized with, argued about. This was part of the norm of not having to mobilize to deal with people's reactions to one's inner process. Silent attention combined with lack of external consequences makes a large, free space in which inner creation can take place. When something is just trying to emerge into articulate form the concentration required is often shattered by external input and response. (Later one wants input, feedback, but not at this stage. )
This no-response format was difficult at times for some people. Some people need more interaction out loud than others at a given time. Several times someone wanted an encounter group. However, helping each person into their own private space by the support of others doing the same kind of process is different than an interaction group. When someone was more in need of interaction, they were referred to another group for a while.
During the go-arounds, I often would go first, sharing my exact process steps. For example, " When I asked myself, ’What do I need to do to center myself? an image came of me sitting in meditation. When I said, ’If something came, see how it makes you feel, there was a sad feeling. When I said, ’Gently ask yourself, What is this feeling, welcoming it’, what came was my longing to be who I am, and how hard it is to sometimes be apart from myself. ” I went first to model discrimination of inner process. I sometimes said I didn't want to share my process.
As people became more capable and confident about their focusing, after the first two months, this " teaching" format shifted to a sharing circle at the end. During one session at this time, a focusing instruction came up in my process, " What could I do here, in my few minutes at the end of the evening, that would be actually taking a life-step on this issue I've been focusing on? " I added this instruction out loud, and in the sharing circle, those who wanted, each took the step that had articulated in their focusing. This was so powerful, I often included it in the instructions.
As we gathered in the circle, I would divide the remaining time by the number of people and say how long each person could have (usually 5 minutes). A lot can happen in 5 minutes. Anyone was free to not use the time. I or someone would time keep and hold people to the limit. Each person would do as they wished with the time, sometimes sharing the steps of their focusing process; sometimes if a life-step had come, they would do that. Some examples of life-steps people took were: doing yoga for 5 minutes instead of only wishing she would do it; making up and singing a song, letting herself be the pied piper she only dreamt herself to be; asking to be massaged to release a tense back or neck or be healed by touch; standing at the pulpit preaching, claiming the power and authority to speak that he felt but was embarrassed to show; turning her back on us and screaming at her mother to get out of her way so she could have room to live; bursting into tears and crying with no words. A lot of discharge would happen, because when one takes a life-freeing step it releases feeling. As you move forward, you cry, laugh, take a deep breath, your body lets go, changes. It helps one's own courage to see another's moment of conscious life-forwardness, to see a shy person
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stand up and say, " I want you to like me. "
Instead of being given a sentence to elicit discharge by a Re-evaluation Co-counseling teacher, or being touched on pressure points at the judgement of the bioenergeticist, people in this group derived their own discharge sentences, discriminated where they needed to be touched, etc., out of their own structure making process. This derivation capacity must be a dimension of self-healing process. (Probably the more information - already existing structures - available to a person, the more creative their own structure-creating can be. This was mostly a psychologically sophisticated group, some of them psychology graduate students who had experience in various therapy modalities. )
As each person's time was up attention moved to the next person. Again, there was no discussion, challenge, attack, but only silent empathy or regard. One's few minutes belonged entirely to the self, made safe in the circle.
When I focused on the right way for me to leave the group (to work full-time on something else), what came was to give each person a chance to work out how they would lead a focusing group. During the last months, some people focused on what doing a focusing group would be for them. As they felt ready, they led the group for a number of sessions trying out their own focusing instructions and structures. Most of the people in the group have since done their own focusing groups and focusing teaching in a variety of contexts and places in the country. I have since modified this structure for use in doing therapy groups with medical students wishing help with their own stress.
This paper has described a group in which a particular kind of inward-directed attention, focusing, was maximally facilitated. Obviously, there are other ways to do this, and other valid concerns (confrontation, contact, support, drama) which group settings address.
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