"The Folio"
Just a quick explanation before you link to the article. This journal issue of The Folio (The Focusing Institute - New York) is a 30 year tribute to the work of psychologist and philosopher Eugene Gendlin. Gendlin is a protege of Carl Rogers. Parts of this article, as with all the articles in this issue, assume a working knowledge of "Focusing" which Gendlin described and writes about in the classic book by the same title (Focusing, 1978). So let me give you a quick way of understanding this.
"Focusing" is Gendlin's term for a precise, experiential self-awareness - other traditions have variously called this 'inner attention', 'self remembering', 'knowing thy self', etc. Gendlin's genius and contribution is that he has described an old, rare skill in a way that makes it actually teachable. This skill is tricky to explain because it is something we do inside ourselves and because we tend to intellectualize about it on the one hand or mystify it on the other. "Focusing" is a very useful kind of perceiving and understanding of ourselves from the inside. You might think of Focusing as a reasonably objective method for sensing and understanding your intricate subjective life. This kind of knowledge is often surprising and transformative. It is neither intellectual analysis of myself, nor is it emotional. It is a way of listening in on what is happening to me on the inside.
Gendlin has parsed this self awareness skill into 6 steps. "Clearing a Space" is the first step of the Focusing procedure. It has to do with taking an inventory of all your immediate concerns and then temporarily setting them aside. It's a clearing of your mind a little so that you can begin to see what is really happening around you and inside you. I also refer briefly to several other steps. The "Felt Sense" is any bodily sensation that seems pregnant with meaning. The "Handle" is a word or phrase that enables you to accurately recall a Felt Sense.
The first half of my article is a rambling explanation of my life and how I came to use Focusing in the workshop. The second half I think will give you a more specific description of how this plays out. The first link above will take you to my article as a PDF file on the Focusing Institute web site. The second link will allow you to look at the entire journal issue.