Oct 10, 2015

Why Focus?

I am often asked about the benefits of Focusing. And my answer always has a new twist because something new comes to my own or another Focuser’s awareness that I’ve talked with. This has inspired me to begin a list of how Focusing changes one’s life.  Some of these you would glimpse in a single Guided Focusing Session. Most of them unfold as you practice regularly, really giving yourself time to rewire and integrate your neural circuits to live more of your living moments from the power of Presence.

1. I Focus because it alters the way I perceive being here alive in this body – more and more my neural pathways are aligned with THRIVING. I experience my life as thriving and everywhere I look I see thriving or at least, the potential to thrive.

2. “LIVE CONNECTIONS” My ability to experience feeling open, flowing, alive, connected in any given moment has always been with me. NOW, because I understand how to regularly practice my Focusing skills in a partnership and in my daily life – this sense is with me frequently. Very nice. They say our bodies are more electrical than chemical – I get it!

3. We all get STUCK sometimes. Something in us stands firm and says “I’m not moving on this one!”. I had the honor of filming a local Focuser yesterday share a touching story of how she used her Presence skills so this part of her felt understood. What had been stuck transformed and immediately she had a sense of flow to her life again. Yay for her! And yay for our Focusing movement as we now have video as a teaching tool!

4. Focusing is the Essence of CHANGE. And, this change is always experienced as toward LIFE FORWARD MOVEMENT. Evolution does not happen randomly once at the time you were conceived. Every time we move forward, we contribute to all of humanity. We pave the way and it is easier for those who follow. Chew on this one a bit.

5. Focusing is a BODY AWARENESS skill. By practicing, we build our neural pathways to comfortably live more and more from our bodies. Our bodies are always in the present moment so this profoundly changes how we experience life.

6. To feel PEACEFUL. No more critical voices inside. A regular Focusing practice transforms our inner landscape to a place of respect, honor, trust and love. REALLY.

7. To resolve PHYSICAL PAIN. Physical pain is something in our body wanting our attention. When it feels understood deeply, like we learn to do when we Focus, it does not need to be that way anymore and the pain releases. Sweet.

8. To improve your RELATIONAL skills. Sensing what to do or say next in any conversation takes practice and access to the right words. We got that all in a nutshell and simple like.

9. Focusing invites our EDGES, whether these be creative, blossoming or rough edges. These are the places in us that are fuzzy, not quite known and by Focusing the edge clears. We now know what to create, which way, better who we are. We call this experience a FELT SENSE SHIFT and this is what makes Focusing unique from all other body or mind awareness techniques.

10. Learning to Focus is an investment in YOURSELF. Focusing is a skill that you carry with you every moment of your life. No matter where your skill level is when you start, practice improves it. Relational encounters with yourself, other people, animals, nature, all become easier and deeper. YOU’RE WORTH IT!

11. The experience of a Focusing PARTNERSHIP is priceless. I used to believe my inner world was something I had to navigate alone. Baloney.
    Focusing teaches us that 95% of what we can do for each other is Be Present and we ALL can learn to do that. Imagine living life knowing you can always access someone who says “I’ll go too”.

12. From Self-in-Presence, the state of awareness we practice while Focusing, you will experience that you are ENOUGH. You will know that you are loved and valued as is – with all your holes and imperfections. From here is how you move forward any feelings of low self-esteem or unworthiness from your earlier years. Now, you can authentically live from this knowing that YOU ARE ALWAYS ENOUGH.

13. To honor the SCIENTIST in you. Science as it is meant to be. Focusing involves a state of awareness that includes both compassion and curiosity. Imagine when your beloved family member begins to tell you that they totaled your car, that while feeling a tightness rising in your stomach, you are able to listen to their story with both curiosity and compassion. Curiosity and compassion for them, as well as for the tightness rising in your stomach.

14. To get past SHAME. Most of us carry shame from ‘something’ we did in the past. We typically push it way down there deep. It can create health problems. Focusing attention is just what is needed for that sense of shame to release you for good.

15. To CLEAN UP OUR CLUTTER. Old stuff clutters our head and body with repetitive thought patterns and disease. Focusing gently, gradually finds what is no longer relevant to our lives and offers it a way forward to a thought or action we’re happy to display on our shelf.

16. To differentiate TRUTH from STORY in my head. This is a real challenge for a lot of us. Until we experience how to differentiate the two and learn what it takes to reconfigure our neural pathways, we are puppets to our stories. This may not be so obvious to us and is often quite obvious to those around us.

17. To sense what FOOD MY BODY NEEDS right now. Very helpful each morning as I peruse the supplement cabinet. By dropping into my body, I hear YES, NO or MAYBE (won’t hurt, won’t help – ha!). By consistently listening, I’ve developed a stronger trust that I am taking good care of my body with the foods I chose to eat.

18. To FORGIVE myself and others for not being perfect. Forgiveness comes when you can really stay with and extend empathy as needed to whatever needs to be heard and understood within. Harder things often take another listener, right there with you, reminding you, yea, we’re all learners here.

19. To AVOID REGRETS like these. The practice of Focusing builds my ability to stay present in the moment with whatever is happening; relationships of all types improve. Every minute I spend practicing always moves me closer to my authentic self. That self is now always evolving and so I am continually moving farther and farther away from regrets like these.

20. To make DECISIONS that feel good NOW & LATER. This is the immediate version of no regrets. If you have two choices, one at at time imagine they are true and listen to what your body tells you. The phrase ‘your gut knows’ comes to mind. Your body has been with you from the beginning of all your choices and will be with you where you are going next – might be worth your time to improve your ability to communicate with it!

21. To RESOLVE PAST TRAUMA including PTSD. If at any time in our past, we did not have the emotional resources to deal with a situation, a stopped process occurred. This is held in our bodies. Eugene Gendlin’s “Process Model” explains this and the complexities of how our bodies interact with our environment in any given moment. Much more is happening than we are normally aware of. The deepening skills and partnership support of Focusing empower our bodies to gently unwind any stopped processes we still carry forward to FREEDOM. We can ALL learn this and be this support for each other. The impact of this is BEYOND HUGE. Please help me spread this awareness.

22. To move through BIG TRANSITIONS with EASE. Job changes, loss of loved ones, moves, etc. bring stress for most of us. When I am Self-in-Presence, I trust myself, my choices and I feel supported by the universe. Without careful listening during these times, we miss clues and limit the scope of our creative potential.

23. To shift our thoughts from fear-based (all those things you are really NOT WANTING to have happen) to the dynamics of what you ARE WANTING, love, thriving, open, accepting – thoughts that describe your passions and desires for your life at your highest level. Oh what a world this will be!

24. To make friends with my TO-DO LIST. The pace of my life is truly a delight these days. I pause to hear all the options. I make the choice freely. Amazingly, I do not have to do everything that I care about, things get taken care of quite well without me trying to do it all.

25. Focusing is an integrative process. PARADOXES of all sorts that we naturally carry inside of us such as how we all carry and express BOTH MALE & FEMALE energies are able to find a peaceful co-existence. You will no longer feel tugged in one direction or the other depending on where you are, who you are with or what you are doing.

26. So you can GROUND yourself in HIGHLY EMOTIONAL situations where overwhelm, anxiety or anger might take over. As we practice Focusing, we learn to distinguish 3 states of being: Presence (the ability to be with our emotions calmly – we get better at this) versus either Merged (as in I am my anger and everything around me now knows it!) or Exiled (I refuse to accept that I can be angry and I’ll hide that anger deep, deep down there where even I cannot find it!).

27. To step out of the BLAME GAME. Focusing occurs from a state of being we call Self-in-Presence. From here, we experience relationships without judgment. Hallujuhah! The Blame Game loses its punch, we’re playing life in a different ballpark now.

28. To catch the SUBTLE CUES. Every moment in life carries so much more than we normally notice. The practice of Focusing opens our body awareness up so that we catch more, miss less.

29. To END ADDICTIONS once and for all without forcing yourself. Addictions are attempts to distract us from getting close to an old emotional issue. We learn here how to give ourselves the type of Presence we were looking for at the time and the whole thing dissolves to no urge no more.

30. To tap even deeper into your CREATIVE POTENTIAL. The skill of Focusing moves within us like a spiral, the better we get at Focusing, the more expansively we reach the furthest edges of the potentials of human creativity. And always, we move from the center of our unique truth.

31. To TRUST YOURSELF. From deep, deep within. This is huge. Big. Words cannot describe how life changing this is…

32. Because we are ready for a life of EVASION NO MORE! This benefit of Focusing is inspired by this T.S. Eliot quote: “Poetry may make us…a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.”

33. To lose the DISTRACTIONS. Be Focused. C’mon y’all – let’s do this!

34. Has life become stagnant? Focusing brings more FRESH AIR experiences into your life. Pausing to Focus invites something fresh to be here now and you are taking time to really breathe that experience in.

35. To HEAL quicker from illness and injuries. Our body’s circumstances are uniquely ours and our body knows intricately what is going on and what we need to heal. We need only ask, take some time to listen deeply and then be skilled enough to understand what is being communicated to us. This works so much better than relying on the opinion of others, even ‘experts’. There is a lot less maybe, a lot more clarity and we move forward quicker.

36. Focusing is like meditation in that there is often SILENCE. This is not the silence of being with stillness, more like the silence of growth and movement.

37. To hold GOOD BOUNDARIES with grace, ease and also, with an awareness for what is needed for your growth now in this environment.

38. BEYOND WILLPOWER lies Presence. Focusing works in situations where willpower alone won’t cut it.

39. To clearly and compassionately COMMUNICATE YOUR NEEDS. Naturally find yourself using invitations and suggestions with others. This skill helps you avoid being interpreted as telling others to do something.

40. To understand how one can experience EMPATHY for another person’s experience WITHOUT JUDGING that experience as good or bad. If we are not judging, then we are also not weighted down by the sorrows of the whole world on our shoulders. Radical? Yes.

41. To move past FEELING ALONE or DEPRESSED. Focusers know how to be with something in themselves that is lonely or depressed and over time, it will not need to be that way anymore, evermore.

42. To be FEAR NO MORE. The potential of failure is a perception you can move past. As a Focuser, you can find forward movement in everything.

43. To feel eternally SUPPORTED and BE HAPPY, no matter what challenges life brings our way. Happiness lasts when we build our structure from the inside out.

44. Those who PIONEER living a Focused life now pave the way for future generations. It is our YOUTH that will keep the evolution train moving forward. Those who come after will do what we can and more. YES.