Focusing Level 2 Week 4 Notes

Focusing Level 2 Week 4 Notes The Living Forward Energy ● Living beings are life forward energy. Spring is a great 6me to appreciate this! We humans have this no less than plants do. It’s in the nature of life itself to live forward.’ Focusing Tip #504 Ann Weiser Cornell ● In Gendlin’s view we do not need to do anything to our process to make something happen, there is a natural life movement. Everything that is alive is both what it is now in the present moment, and what it is becoming as it con>nues to form. ● ‘Living is a kind of fresh forming’ Gendlin ‘Carrying Forward Steps’ You tube ● During the 1950’s Gendlin studied under Rogers, at the University of Chicago. Perhaps you can see a connec>on with Carl Rogers’ ideas about the ‘actualising tendency’ and the ‘fully func>oning person’. ● In my early professional years, I was asking the ques>on: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the ques>on in this way: How can I provide a rela>onship which this person may use for his own personal growth? Rogers, C.R. (1961) On Becoming a Person London: Constable p.32 ● Ann and Barbara write Living forward energy is Gendlin’s term for this tendency for the process to move in the direcon of fuller life. It is possible to sense for the living forward energy in any felt sense, any stuck situa6on. When it comes it is almost always surprising’ The Focusing student’s and Companion’s Manual 2002. Ann Weiser Cornell and Barbara Mc Gavin ● For Gendlin, ‘frozen process’ is a state from which we are gradually released through becoming aware of our ‘felt sense’. Which is on the ‘edge of awareness’. ● What that edge needs to produce the steps, is only some kind of un- intrusive contact or company. If you will go there with your awareness and stay there or return there, that is all it needs; it will do all the rest for you.’ Eugene Gendlin (In Cornell 2002 p44) ● For Ann and Barbara this type of gently curious, undemanding company is Self-in Presence. Wholebody Focusing power point ● Don’t just listen with your mind, listen with your whole body. Feel the energy ﬁeld of your inner body as you listen. That takes aRen6on away from thinking and creates a s6ll space that enables you to truly listen Ekhart Tolle. The Power Of Now(2001) London: Hodder and Stoughton p105 ● The exercise Allowing a felt sense to emerge is about listening with your whole body and being open to whatever wisdom comes to light. Perhaps a sense of your own living forward energy, or something else. ● The ﬁrst step in listening is to acvely give permission to this place to be there just the way it is. And not only that, but to also invite this place to become even more fully present in the way that it needs to, so that it can show itself to us in all its fullness. Focusing with your whole body by Addie Van der Kooy and Kevin McEvenue p25 ● It is not always easy to invite and to hold self-acceptance. ● During the exercise you might no>ce your inner response to having this accep>ng atude. ● You might also like to be aware of a bodily sense and any emo>ons that you experience around receiving and accep>ng whatever emerges. .

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