Each Newsletter will explore an aspect of the Focusing World you may not be familiar with. In this edition we will explore the world of Whole Body Focusing.
We are delighted that WBF Trainer Addie Van Der Kooy, took time to write a piece on Focusing with your whole body.
This writing starts with a deep appreciation for Kevin McEvenue, who about 45 years ago, intuitively began combining his work as an Alexander Technique practitioner with his work as a Focusing trainer. He called it Wholebody Focusing (WBF).
For instance, the observation by F. M. Alexander that the body has to come alive as a whole in order for change to happen in a part of the body, has deeply shaped an emphasis in WBF on taking time to become aware of your body as one breathing, living whole, earthed and energised by your larger physical surrounds (ultimately Mother Earth). This then allows your body to become a safe, well-resourced holding space in which to welcome any part needing your Focusing attention.
So, let me briefly take you through what a WBF session might look like.
See yourself as a host preparing yourself before opening the Focusing door to any guests. You first of all take some time to let your body and mind unwind any tensions.
By letting yourself be completely as you are, your mind can come to rest in the Is-ness of each moment.
By simply allowing yourself to feel held by the chair and the ground beneath your feet, your body can also unwind and in that new-found space, it can come alive to its natural energetic connection with the Earth beneath your feet - a ‘six sextillion (that’s a six followed by 21 zeros!) metric ton battery. Not a bad energy supply!
You may also want to welcome a felt sense of anything supportive and nourishing in your surroundings, e.g. day light streaming into your room, a plant or a painting, whatever speaks to you in a supportive and connective way.
If you wish, you can also unwind and resource by felt sensing the flow of your breath, noticing the rhythmic release and ‘emptying out’ (exhale) and the body being re-filled with fresh, new energy (in-breath).
And, given some time, you may also begin to felt sense the ‘Hum of Life’ inside you, a natural sense of aliveness subtly vibrating as an inner energy field throughout your body - a felt sense of being alive and present in this moment, separate from thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and underlying any “packages” that may want some Focusing attention.
You’ve now let your whole body come alive in a new, resourced way; by doing so, you’ve come into a felt sense of You as Alive Presence, an embodied sense of Self in Presence.
You and your whole body are now ready to begin to host any guest that may knock on the Focusing door. There is an embodied sense of You in Presence and there is the alive, whole body into which a felt sense of your guest can be safely welcomed.
There is the fully embodied ‘You’ and there is ‘It’, the Felt Sense, and between the two there is a little distance, space. And in that space a natural interchange may occur which we call Focusing.
Quite often, deeply stored and painful places, like unprocessed trauma, need to feel the aliveness of You in Presence directly within your body. These un-processed ‘felt memories’ are stored in our bodies like time-capsules, carrying the painful ‘unfinished’ past with us into the present moment. And from their past they are reaching out for a body ‘scent’ of the aliveness of You in the Here & Now; it was exactly the absence of Presence at the time of the trauma that caused the overwhelm and subsequent need for ‘freezing over’ of the trauma.
And when you can become aware of a felt sense of the trauma place alongside a felt sense of You in Presence, a special dynamic emerges in which deep healing shifts can take place. In WBF it is called Holding Both with Equal Positive Regard. A previously disconnected trauma wound can now begin to feel itself safely held in relationship to your embodied Presence. This sets in motion a process of Homecoming or Rejoining in which the suffering place can open up and awaken to its own knowing how to move forward in its healing journey.
“When a part of me feels loved, it awakens to its own healing”
- Kevin McEvenue, founder WBF
