Experiencing life and belonging to nature with Focusing

Overview & Synopsis

We are currently witnessing a waste of life coupled with an extinction of experience. But in the midst of these afflicting times, have you noticed that life continues to manifest within you? Have you ever noted how your body reacts to the situations you experience? Have you ever remarked the precision with which it tells you what a situation means at any given moment? And what direction to take, integrating everything that makes you who you are and everything that is important to you as a person? Have you ever felt in your body the intensity and appropriateness of the contrast that arises when you think of a place in nature that you cherish, while evoking a place that repels you? Whether the feelings are localized or more diffuse, powerful or subtle, familiar or completely new, they tell us that our body ‘knows’ what's going on for us at any given moment and, if we give ourselves the means to listen, invites us to trust it and take action. This is the basic principle of Focusing, a mind-body approach to ‘problem solving’ based on the overall feeling produced by a particular situation, developed by philosopher and psychotherapist Eugene T. Gendlin. This approach builds on some of the foundations of ecopsychology, such as the primacy of lived experience and contact with living things in achieving health that connects inner and earthly life. In this paper, we argue that Focusing allows us to experience life and belonging to nature as a more-than-human world. As such, it is fully suited to fostering our first person understanding of the sentient, psychological, and spiritual interrelationship between us as human beings and the other beings of the natural world. In this article, we introduce Gendlin and Focusing, a meaningful approach that celebrates life and the vitality of each individual. We discuss its properties and strengths through the prism of ecopsychological concerns.