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As a champion of self healing over the years, I’ve learnt technique after technique in the hopes of finding “the” method that works for everyone that I can tell others about. Everything I’ve learnt has contributed to my own healing, and has been something I’ve been able to share with others. But recent events in my life have all been teaching me that finding the one technique that enables me to become self reliant in my healing is not actually the best end goal at all. I’ve had a powerful lesson in how no man (or woman!) really is an island, and the benefits of two people coming together to do some healing. And I’m not talking about a paid healing relationship between professional and client, I’m talking about learning the power of coming together with a fellow human who simply wants to heal.
After doing an 8 week Focusing course with my teacher Suzanne via Skype, she contacted me to say that she had just finished working with someone else on the course who was interested in forming a Focusing Partnership with someone. She asked whether I might be interested in giving it a go. When I first learnt Focusing I was determined to be able to do it on my own, and not be “reliant” on having someone else to assist me with it. As the weeks went by, I discovered that while I was able to use Focusing for simple things in my life, I just never seemed to get forward movement on the big issues, and regularly found myself completely avoiding Focusing on them at all. So I decided it would be crazy to look a gift horse in the mouth, and said “yes please”!
My new Focusing Partner and I know very little about each other. We’ve never met in person, and know only the sketchiest details about each other. We are both relatively new to Focusing and were a little nervous about just how much spending an hour on Skype with a stranger could actually help us. But that didn’t last long – an hour after starting our first session, we had both experienced the magic of having someone ‘sit’ with us as we went inside to find our own answers, and we decided that it was too good an opportunity to miss, and scheduled to have a session a week from then on.
The benefits to me from that single session to date have been extraordinary. Focusing is being with someone while they process. In sitting with someone in this way, I’m experiencing how powerful it can be, and it’s proving to be an invitation to me to find within me the ability to be with my own feelings in the same way. As I sat on Skype, simply listening and reflecting back the key content of what my partner was saying, initially I felt disempowered, and wondered how on earth he could possibly resolve the issues he was facing in his life. I just kept on listening and reflecting back, and by the end of the 25 minute session, I had tears come to my eyes as I listened to my partner enthuse about how amazed he was at what he had learnt about himself, how the process had unfolded, as someone simply listened to him and reflected back some of what he was saying. Later it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps this could be a model of how I can get through one of the biggest challenges of my life – the tendency to want to fix everything. Perhaps if someone else could find their answers simply through being listened to, I can find my own answers by learning to listen to myself!
Here is some of what I wrote in my diary after that first session, before going to bed:
What a relief. A recovering technique junkie, I’m learning that the only ‘technique’ needed is to just shut up and listen!!!! A huge weight lifts off my shoulders as I truly realise that I don’t need to resolve anything! Wow!!!! I’ve long been aware that I’m a helpaholic when it comes to others, but it only just occurred to me that I do the same with myself.
And just when I think that the insights have been fully harvested, it hits me – whammo – maybe life is the same. Maybe I just have to watch what is happening and acknowledge it. Yikes this is huge – the whole issue that I worked on today centred around my trying to control everything. This Focusing Partnership has already turned out not only to help me to go within and find my own answers for a major issue for me, but the actual process is turning out to be a model of how life can be left to unfold without me making it happen!!!!
I believe that the Focusing Partnership model is one of the most sustainable models that can help us to move forward in our lives. After completing a simple course and learning how to Focus and how to be a Focusing Partner, you can form a partnership with someone that doesn’t cost a cent, and gives you ongoing support to go within and find your own answers for the rest of your life. In this world of high tech, fast moving, specialisation, it’s a relief to find that we all have the ability to help each other to move forward, not by offering advice or trying to help them to resolve their issues, but by doing something any human can learn to do – shut up and listen!!!!
When I sent a draft of this article to my Focusing Partner, he said he’d like to add how the session was for him. This is how he experienced the session:
As soon as I dove in to my self and my inner sensings, I noticed Jo on the outside mirroring my words back in a committed way - I just knew she was there for me and that is a nice feeling - someone is actually listening - I get the image of being a diver with a cord going up to the surface where there is air - I'm safe and Jo's voice is there.
I'm also a student of focusing and find it very exciting that this is all I need - Skype and a friendly listener. I like to think of focusing as a dream I can get into while I'm awake - maybe this dream is what is really going on and Focusing is getting me there or should I say it is letting me into the Oneness state that's always there but often goes unnoticed.
A teacher I once had experienced that he made genuine contact with a severely autistic boy that no one ever had been in real contact with before. All he did was, while the boy lay on top of his belly like a vegetable, - maybe because he was a little bit bored - was to try to focus like he had read in Gendlin’s book - and "pop" the boy suddenly looked at him and began communicating with presence!
I can only express gratitude when something like this happens as I experienced doing my first shared focusing session with a partner.
If you would like to learn more about Focusing Partnerships, you can read the details on the Focusing Institute website. If you would like to learn Focusing, the most affordable and best training I have found is one-on-one training with Suzanne via Skype. For more details about this, check out www.innerwisdoms.com. Here’s something Suzanne wrote recently about Focusing to give you an idea of her approach:
“To me, focusing partnership is about returning to our natural sense of aliveness. Focusing with another and listening to a focuser creates a space that allows our blocks to simple happiness to be gently opened up so that they can reveal their deeper meaning and then be released.
Keeping someone company as they learn focusing is such an honor for me – it’s like following someone as they journey into their deepest self, a space of not only aliveness, but creativity as well. I only hope more and more people are able to fully experience the power of focusing partnership, this unique relationship with ourselves and with another that redefines authentic intimacy and may be the next evolutionary “carrying forward” of human beingness.” |