Eugene Gendlin and colleagues developed … The “focusing” technique
Just want to mention that this isn’t just important for therapy, it’s foundational to any sort of mindhacking or self-improvement technique that’s directed at internal self-modification (as opposed to environmental intervention). Indeed, Gendlin’s “focusing” is basically the same thing I’ve previously written about as “RMI”, or that Byron Katie describes as “thinking with the heart”, or that NLP calls “transderivational search” and many other people refer to as “the small, still voice”. It can also be considered as akin to fractionation in self-hypnosis, where you’re dropping in and out of a trance-like state, though it’s exactly the same kind of trance you go into when you’re say, trying to remember where you left your keys.
As Gendlin and co report, many people do this automatically and naturally, others have to be trained. And it makes a big difference in whether a given class of cognitive techniques will produce genuine behavioral change, vs. just intellectual insights and superficial agreement that one ought to act differently.
I think Byron Katie is quite able to distinguish the heart from the belly and when she says heart she actually means it. In Gendlin’s focusing you are welcome to think with all parts of your body.
I’m not sure where you draw the relationship to fractionation. I do know that from a hypnosis context but I wouldn’t use it with focusing.
When it comes to “the small, still voice”, people can have that without being connected to the felt sense.
Just want to mention that this isn’t just important for therapy, it’s foundational to any sort of mindhacking or self-improvement technique that’s directed at internal self-modification (as opposed to environmental intervention). Indeed, Gendlin’s “focusing” is basically the same thing I’ve previously written about as “RMI”, or that Byron Katie describes as “thinking with the heart”, or that NLP calls “transderivational search” and many other people refer to as “the small, still voice”. It can also be considered as akin to fractionation in self-hypnosis, where you’re dropping in and out of a trance-like state, though it’s exactly the same kind of trance you go into when you’re say, trying to remember where you left your keys.
As Gendlin and co report, many people do this automatically and naturally, others have to be trained. And it makes a big difference in whether a given class of cognitive techniques will produce genuine behavioral change, vs. just intellectual insights and superficial agreement that one ought to act differently.
I think Byron Katie is quite able to distinguish the heart from the belly and when she says heart she actually means it. In Gendlin’s focusing you are welcome to think with all parts of your body.
I’m not sure where you draw the relationship to fractionation. I do know that from a hypnosis context but I wouldn’t use it with focusing.
When it comes to “the small, still voice”, people can have that without being connected to the felt sense.