What is an egalitarian Focusing partnership?
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A Focusing partnership can help you think better
When you allow the bodily felt sense of a situation to form, you have access to a fresh source of information that is not available to your usual modes of thinking and speaking. A person who listens in a Focusing way offers you the space and time needed to access this fresh source of information that comes from your felt sense.
Focusing needs a special kind of listening
In order for the felt sense to unfold, a special kind of listening is needed. It is not only “empathic listening”, though that can be helpful. Listening in a Focusing way means providing the space for you to feel free to explore without being interrupted or judged, directed or corrected. It’s a wonderful feeling of freedom, support and accompaniment.
Sometimes the Listener listens in silence, writing down verbatim what you say, so that the new things that come in the session will not be lost. In the special space of listening to the felt sense, you’ll say things that are different from what you would usually say, so taking notes or recording the session can be very helpful, if you feel OK with it. The Listener can also reflect back the essence of what you say. When you hear back this essential meaning and take it in, a characteristic silence follows. In this silence, you will be listening inside to the further unfolding of the felt sense. The Listener welcomes and respects your silence.
People who know how to listen in a Focusing way honor that silence, because they have experienced it for themselves as the source of inner knowing. They recognize the expression of inner attention that appears on a Focuser’s face. Often that expression turns into a calm smile of inner truth as the session comes to an end.
It’s important that it is an egalitarian partnership
In a Focusing partnership, the partners are equals. One is not there to help the other because the other needs help. They both are there because they need and want help. They both want to get in touch with the inspiration that comes from within. They both know that having a partner who listens in a Focusing way will help them discover their own right next step.
Focusing puts you in touch with the source of your own inner direction
This inner source of development and change can seem mysterious when one is unfamiliar with it. For both the Focuser and the Listener, it requires a letting go into what is unknown, unclear, difficult to put into words. The felt sense often appears as a subtle sensation in the body, or as a cottony feeling that isn’t easily identified. As you give the unclear bodily sense your gentle, non-judgmental attention, words and meaning arise from it.
The felt sense of a situation is intimately connected to our sense of being alive. Plants and animals find the elements they need, even though they don’t have the intellect we humans have. We need to balance our over-developed intellect with our very human sense of what is alive, growing, wanting to develop in us. The letting go into what is unknown, unclear, difficult to put into words, is an opening to that kind of knowledge. Learning to listen in a Focusing way puts you in touch with the source of your own forward direction.
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