-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Below is a description of a short and powerful process designed to:
1) Deepen your connection to and appreciation of "something" that calls to you
2) Develop the intricacy of this calling, in a way that can be shared with others
3) Find ways to apply these gifts to other areas of your life
4) Lead others through this process, even if they don't know Focusing
5) Deepen your personal relationship to Focusing (if you choose to apply this process to your sense of "Focusing as a personal calling"By way of introduction, we wanted to share the story of how we discovered this process.
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For me (Bruce) it began with a sense of frustration. The more I was Focusing, the more difficult it was becoming to share insights and understandings which arose from experiential perceptions. My descriptions could be confusing to others who had not had the experiences I was referring to.
One day a focusing partner asked me to explain a complex paper I had written. I decided to try something different - instead of explaining the content of the writing, I wanted to try sharing the process I had used to arrive at the content.
I explained that most of my writing had arisen from asking myself two questions in a Focusing way. "Instead of giving you my answers, let me share the questions with you, and see where they take you," I said.
My Focusing partner agreed, so I shared the following questions with her:
a) What is the essence of Focusing for me?
b) What is the relationship of Focusing to my life? (why does it matter/ how does it support and quicken me?)I expected that, in answering these questions for herself, my focusing partner would come up with something similar to my own understanding. Then it would be easier to explain my writing to her, by connecting it with her own experience.
To my surprise, something quite different happened. The "answers" that came for my Focusing partner in response to the above questions were quite different than mine, yet they were equally rich and powerful.
I began to see that sharing this process could be more valuable than sharing the answers that came for me from doing the process. Shortly afterwards, in sharing these questions with Rosa, another new area of richness emerged.
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When Bruce shared this process with me (Rosa) I was startled to realize that I had been asking myself a very similar set of questions. However, I had not been asking myself these questions with regard to Focusing, but with regard to another of my main life practices.
The first question I had been asking myself was identical in form to Bruce's:
a) What is the 'essence' of xxxx for me?
My second question was somewhat different than Bruce's. It was:
b) How can I 'do' that essence, even when I am not actually doing xxx?
Asking myself these questions had been extremely valuable for me, as they had helped me to deepen my connection to my practice during a time that I was not able to carry out that practice in an 'external' manner.
We were very excited about the parallels between our two sets of questions. While Bruce had not included my second question as part of his "initial two questions", it was already a part of his larger process. In fact, he had written a great deal about how the felt connection with the "essence" of a practice could move and flow into other areas of one's life.
It was clear to both of us that these questions could be very useful for deepening our own relationship to our Focusing practice, and also, that they could be used to deepen our relationship with anything that we might feel as a 'calling'.
A few weeks later, I had the opportunity to try out the process with a group of people who did not have Focusing experience. People found it very worthwhile. Since then, we had the opportunity to lead this process during a workshop at the International Focusing Conference in Costa Rica, in 2004. We were happy to find that others found it valuable, and welcome this opportunity to share it more widely.
Focusing Shareware -
We offer this material for you to use freely in leading workshops, teaching Focusing, or working with clients. Please contact us with regard to any other uses of this material.
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Created on ... January 9, 2005