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When to help a person let a place form
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When to help a person let a place form
When people talk around and around a subject and never go down into their feelings of it;
When people say things that are obviously very personal and meaningful to them, but then they go on to something else, and again to something else, and don’t get into any one of these things;
When people have said all that they can say clearly, and from there forward it is confusing, or a tight unresolved mess, and they don’t know how to go on;
When people can't get out of just describing the situation, what one could have seen from the outside, and don’t go into what it adds up to, in them, or how they feel it, where it gets them;
When a person tells you nothing that seems meaningful, but seems to want to;
When there is a certain spot that you sense could be gotten into further.
How to help a place form
There is a gradation of how much help you have to give to enable the person to get a place: always do the least amount first and more only if that doesn’t work.
1. Some people won't need any help except your willingness to be silent for a minute now and then. If you don’t talk all the time, and if you don’t stop them or get them off the track, they will feel into what they need to feel into. Don't interrupt a silence for at least a minute or two. Once you have responded and checked out what you said and gotten it exactly right, be quiet.
2. The person may need one sentence or so from you, to make the pause in which a place could form. Such a sentence might simply repeat the last important thing you already responded to, it might just point again to that spot, it might be just one important keyword. (In our earlier example, you might just repeat " put down" slowly, letting yourself feel what it might have in it, and letting the person do the same inside them. ) Or you can make a simple global sentence, like, " Yeah, that feels heavy, " and then stay quiet.
Whatever people say after you attempt to enable them to form a place, say the crux of it back. Let them and you go on as usual, and try again a little later. If you, in this way, don’t get hung up on the fact that you hoped and tried for a silent deeper period, your efforts have cost nothing. You can try again soon. Therefore, don't refuse to go with whatever comes up, even if the person didn't do what you said.
3. If, after quite many tries the person still isn't feeling into anything, then, the next time you try, say explicitly, " Sit with it a minute and feel into it further. " Say something like, " For the next minute don't say anything to me, or to yourself either. I'd like you to just hang on to that one spot and keep quiet and let the feel of it come to you, see what’s in it. It takes a minute of keeping quiet to let that come in more. "
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4. You can also make a question for the person, and tell them to ask this question inwardly, to ask not the head but the gut or feelings, " Stay quiet and don’t answer the question in words, just wait with the question till something comes from your feeling. "
Questions like that are usually best open-ended. The following examples are all the same: " What really is this? " “What's keeping this the way it is? " " Why is this still the way? " " Just where is it really hung up? " " Why am I still hung on that? " " If it's still not OK yet, why not? " (These questions refer to the specific thing or place just talked about. )
Another type of question applies to the " whole thing"; use it when everything is pretty confused, or when a person doesn’t know how to begin. Tell the person to feel the whole thing, let the whole mess come home to them and ask (but not answer in words) the question, " Where is this really at? " or, " Where am I really hung up in this whole thing? "
5. Some people won't know what you mean by " let yourself feel it" or " let the feel of it come home to you and just see what it feels like. " They know only about words. In that case, repeat the person's last most meaningful words, and ask them to say this to themselves again and to sense what they are feeling when they say these words. In this way, they can notice the fact that there is something there besides words that they can let themselves get or have.
Usually, if the person has a felt place, by sensing into it and letting it be, a next step will come, some aspect of it not had before will emerge, and the whole thing will shift a little, and then more. The deep kind of process will go forward.
6. If nothing like that is happening, and a person has let a felt place form but is stuck, it may help to ask the person, " How would it be different, if it were all OK; what ought it to be like? " Then, after that, tell the person to ask inwardly, " What's in the way of that? " and to not answer the question, just to get the feel of what's in the way, and let that talk.
All these different ways need the person to stop talking out loud and inside, and to let the feel of whatever it is get sensed.
This stopping of deliberate talking, inwardly as well as out loud, is a sharp change. One stops what one was doing. One does nothing further. One lets come, instead of doing it oneself. One keeps only the focus, the topic, or question.
Even more globally, one can use this way to ask oneself, " Where's my life still hung up? " You can ask yourself this now, and see how fast it gives you the places, if you ask and don’t answer with words but wait for the places to come to you in a felt way.
You can also pick the two or three most important things the person said, if you feel they go together into one thing, and tell the person, " When l say what I'm going to say, you don’t say anything to me or to yourself, just feel what comes there. ” Then, say the two or three things, each in one or two words.
7. These ways could help when a person doesn’t want to say some private or painful thing. They can work on it with you even without your having to know what it is; they can get into it, and say how it is·, without telling you what it is about.
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