🌿 Overview: Focusing by Eugene Gendlin

Focusing is a gentle, body-oriented approach to inner listening and emotional healing, developed by philosopher and psychotherapist Eugene Gendlin in the 1960s. It is based on the insight that lasting change comes when we connect with our felt sense — the subtle, bodily knowing of a situation — and stay present with it in a compassionate way.

🧭 Core Principle

“What is split off, not felt, remains the same. When it is felt, it changes.”
— Eugene Gendlin, Focusing (1981)

At the heart of Focusing is the idea that the body knows more than the mind can say. Our unresolved emotions, conflicts, and insights live not just in thoughts but in our felt sense — a bodily awareness that is meaningful but often vague or unformed until we pause and give it attention.

🌬 What Is the Felt Sense?

• A bodily awareness of a situation, emotion, or memory

• Not a thought or emotion, but a felt meaning

• Often unclear at first — like a “something” you can feel but not yet put into words

• Located physically (e.g. a tightness in the chest, a knot in the belly)

• Carries insight when approached with presence and patience

🔑 The 6 Steps of Focusing

1. Clearing a Space

   • Pause and gently check inward: What’s here right now?

   • You don’t dive into issues immediately — you make space around them

   • Set aside distractions to find what wants your attention
     

2. Felt Sense

   • Let a body-felt sense of a particular issue form

   • It may come as a tension, heaviness, or a fuzzy “something”

   • You don’t rush — just wait for it to take shape
     

3. Handle

   • Find a word, phrase, or image that resonates with the felt sense

   • It should match the quality of the feeling (e.g., “tight rope,” “gray fog,” “sharp block”)
     

4. Resonating

   • Gently go back and forth between the word/image and the felt sense

   • Does it feel right? If not, adjust the handle

   • Wait for a bodily “yes” — a sense of matching
     

5. Asking

   • Ask the felt sense: What is this about? What does it need?

   • Don’t answer from the head — wait for something to arise from the body

   • Often, surprising or deep insights emerge
     

6. Receiving

   • Receive whatever comes with acceptance

   • Let the body know you’ve heard it — even if nothing changes yet

   • A shift may happen — a release, a softening, a breath

     
     

🌱 Why Focusing Works

• Encourages emotional regulation without repression or overwhelm

• Supports integration of split-off feelings or inner parts

• Deepens self-trust and inner dialogue

• Helps move through stuck places or inner conflict with compassion

• Often leads to a felt shift — a sense of release, relief, or clarity

  
  

📚 Background & Influence

• Gendlin developed Focusing after research with Carl Rogers, discovering that clients who made contact with their felt sense experienced deeper healing

• It is now widely used in psychotherapy, coaching, spiritual practice, and somatic self-care
  
  

📖 Reference:

• Gendlin, E. T. (1981). Focusing. New York: Bantam / Random House

• Cornell, A. W. (2005). The Power of Focusing. Oakland: New Harbinger