Focusing requires a lot of patience and listening to what’s going on inside.

Patience and Listening is really what is needed when you are Focusing. In our culture, we are not used to slowing down and taking time to really listen. (It helps that we arrange 20 – 30 minutes for a Focusing session, so that we already have that time set aside.) Focusing is counter-cultural, at a time when we are speeding up, getting more done, being busier. Focusing is about being much slower than usual, and I am not a speedy person.

Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes to get a felt sense about something, and sometimes it is there immediately. But then what happens? It’s so easy to straight away jump into thoughts about it. Light bulb! Ah, so that’s what it is about, and why I am feeling that way. Of course! Now it makes sense. It can be so easy to scoot onto the next stage of Focusing; acknowledging it and letting it know you are hearing it. But do we really hear it? Are we ready to settle down with it in an accepting, open and patient way, without trying to fix it or find the solution? Are we really able to give it more patience and listening?

Can we wait a few minutes for the dust to settle, so we can see it more clearly, like sediment settling in a glass. If we rush on too quickly, we’ll get a partial view, a ‘pretty good’ shift, insight or understanding. I’m not dismissing that; even that can make a difference, and bring an easing in your life. But if you stay with it some more, or return to it, after acknowledging the thoughts and insights you have about it, you may sink into an even deeper body awareness. This is where it has a life of its own, and your good attention and listening to it is the catalyst for its living to move forward and to unfold, without you trying to make something happen.

I am adding a few pertinent words that I found on my colleague Judika Healy’s web site that points to this deep listening. ‘Learning Focusing brought about the change that was needed. It was as simple (and as difficult) as learning to be interested in what my actual experience is without fixing it. This learning to listen to myself has had a huge impact on my life, allowing change to come from below rather than trying to impose it from above, so to speak.’ This is how patience and listening really helps.