In yesterday’s article, we learned an interesting thing about focusing on the body from Dr. Eugene Gendlin.
In today’s video, Dr. Eugene Gendlin explains how to learn focusing.
There are six steps to focusing:
- Clearing a Space: How are you? What’s between you and feeling fine? Don’t answer, let what comes in your body do the answering.
- Felt Sense: Pick one problem to focus on. Don’t go into the problem. What do you sense in your body when you recall the whole of the problem?
- Get a Handle: What is the quality of the felt sense? What one word, phase, or image comes out of this felt sense? What quality word would fit it best?
- Resonating: Go back and forth between the felt sense and the word, phrase, or image and feel how they resonate with each other. See if there is a little bodily signal that lets you know there is a fit.
- Asking: Now ask: what is it, about this whole problem, that makes this quality from the word, phrase, or image? Make sure the quality is sensed again, freshly, vividly, and in the present moment.
- Receiving: Receive whatever comes with a shift in a friendly way. Stay with it a while, even if it is only a slight release.
Focusing and mindfulness meditation have a lot in common. When we learn focusing, we are working on a specific problem.
When we do mindfulness meditation, we usually have an object of meditation such as our breathing, a mantra, or a teaching of the Buddha. What happens in mindfulness meditation if we take a specific problem as the object of our meditation?
Isn’t that like focusing? What do you think? Please share.
