- Bridging between the physical and emotional realms of our reality.
- Bridging between mind, body, and spirit.
- Bridging between the Tree of Knowledge (the source of dualities) and the Tree of Life (which symbolizes the unity of all beings).
- Bridging fragmentation, particularization and isolation of individuals by introducing the concept of "wholeness" - i.e., the dynamic interplay of opposites balancing one another both internally and externally.
As human beings we share an innate perception of the distinctive ways in which our bodies function. Bodily awareness is a kinesthetic understanding of the way in which our five basic senses merge with our muscles, tendons, and joints in order to reveal our body's life history to us. Bodily awareness can be attained through the development of healthy bodily consciousness which inevitably leads to a genuine appreciation of our physical bodies. Reconnecting to the primal source of our existence calls for continuous displays of grounding and absolute embodiment of our inner being.
If we are un-attuned to our emotions by not allowing them to be expressed in a conscious and healthy manner, our bodies will inevitably react to these dysfunctional acts of 'covering-up'. One of the ways that we can clearly see what our bodies are hiding and holding on to is by mindfully observing the sense of motion and movement that our bodies naturally tend to assume-i.e., posture and stance; points of muscle tensions and spasms; coordination, equilibrium and motor skills. While we may believe that we have the capacity to dissociate or leave our bodies when the emotional realms of our reality become too difficult to cope with - this rarely succeeds. Instead, we condition our bodies to resist to the waves of emotions that often flood us by trying to cover them up and bury them deep inside. So, while we may genuinely believe that we are leaving our bodies so that we may avoid the waves of feelings that have overcome us we are in essence inhibiting our bodies of their basic nurturance elements.
Our bodies are driven and motivated by four main sources of energy: food, liquids, sleep and caring touch. Without the creation of a healthy integration of these four drives our bodies can never learn to embody the bodily awareness they need in order to thrive and flourish. If we are those kind of individuals who tend to avoid feeling their emotions, we are literally choking the flow of energy between our heads and our hearts. At times, it is our inner persecutor who feels the urge to conceal raw and candid emotional expressiveness by constraining and constricting our kinesthetic movements. We choke or cut off our feelings, thus restricting self- expressiveness. As a result, our throats and necks become our narrow straits of self-oppression. With the flow of energy cut off between our first five chakras and our sixth and seventh chakras we begin to function at a shallow, superficial and one-dimensional level. It is at this crucial stage where we begin to lose our sense of bodily awareness. Once this begins, we become engulfed in a loop of bodily dysfunction and physical stagnation.
Before we dissociate or leave our bodies we need to listen to our bodies and learn how they have been conditioned to resist to feeling our emotions. By identifying the place of resistance in our body and focusing on the bodily felt sense of our emotions we can learn to allow the true and genuine feelings that we carry inside us to emerge, to unfold and unravel before us. Once we are able to reconnect with this bodily sense of our emotions, we can then begin to verbally express what we feel inside our inner-being. In doing so, we allow a continuous flow of energy to flow between all of our seven chakras.
Human scientist Eugene Gendlin was the first researcher to name and point to a bodily felt sense, which he described as "a body sensation that has meaning." A felt sense can often be subtle and as you learn to pay more attention to it you discover that it is intricate. There is always more to it than what may seem. We experience many emotions over and over again, but every felt sense is different and distinct. We begin the process of 'felt sensing' by connecting with an emotion, and then invite ourselves to feel the 'felt sense' of how this specific emotion unfolds in our body. This dimension of experience resonates not with emotional or cognitive awareness, but with the subtle yet concretely felt, and sheer physical-bodily reality. This quality of inner bodily awareness is one of the three main components of what Gendlin refers to as 'Focusing'.
The second component of Focusing is our ability to engage in a "special quality of attention", or what Gendlin refers to as "interested curiosity." By bringing our interested curiosity into a relationship with the felt sense, we become open to a level of kinesthetic awareness which is tangibly there but is not yet available to us in words. This process of felt sensing takes time-it is not instant. So ideally there is a willingness to take the time, to wait, at the edge of not-yet-knowing what this is, patient, accepting, curious, and open. Slowly, our body will allow us to sense more. Wanting to get to know and acknowledge this felt sense is what brings about a further and deeper sense of inner wisdom. In doing so we are not trying to change anything. We accept that the felt sense is here, just as it is. In this state of 'interested curious inner attention', there is a confident expectation that this felt sense will change in its own way and at its own pace., It will eventually do something that Gendlin calls "making steps." Because our inner world is never static, it organically unfolds, unravels and moves into motion as we bring about new and conscious modes of awareness.
By creating steps of change, in which each one brings fresh insight, and a fresh body relief, we create new behavior and beliefs. The third key aspect of Focusing is what Gendlin refers to as "a radical philosophy of what facilitates change". This approach embraces a Being/Allowing philosophy that assumes that change and flow is the natural course of things, and when something seems not to change, what it needs is attention and awareness and not fixing or doing. It teaches to develop an attitude of allowing it to be as it is, yet fully open to the next steps that will organically evolve.
When individuals begin to bridge between the physical and emotional realms of their reality they develop an inner "wisdom of the body" , which can be described as the felt sense of knowing what needs to come next without having to make the change. We need to provide our body with the surroundings that will allow change to organically emerge. So when we learn to become physically at ease with our bodies, allowing the ebb and flow of our emotions to wash over us like gentle waves, our bodies soften, and we begin to release the rigid resistance that has kept us stuck and stagnated for so long.
Excerpts taken from Estelle Frenkel, 2003, Sacred Therapy and Eugene Gendlin, PhD - www.focusing.org