Topic: Adding Focusing to Empathy Circles

10:50 am Speaker: Annette Dubreuil  (10 min)

Summary

Annette Dubreuil, an embodied creative facilitator, discussed integrating focusing into empathy circles. Focusing, developed by Eugene T. Gendlin, is a six-step practice that involves being in the body, clearing a space, and listening to body wisdom. Dubreuil used the metaphor of dancing to explain the process, emphasizing the importance of heart energy and non-judgmental presence. She led a practice session, guiding participants to notice physical sensations and use them to capture feelings about a favorite person. Dubreuil also mentioned innovations like interactive focusing and case clinics, and shared her experience of applying these techniques in empathy circles to foster deeper connection and self-awareness.

Transcript

https://otter.ai/u/L05Y69BeCuzQQSfBFS-uBir9Pjc?view=transcript

Action Items

• [ ] Explore the resources Dubreuil shared in the chat related to focusing and empathy circles.

• [ ] Consider incorporating focusing practices into empathy circle sessions.

Outline

Introduction to Annette Dubreuil and Focusing

• Speaker 1 introduces Annette Dubreuil, highlighting her role as an embodied creative facilitator and her focus on transforming individuals to create a more caring world.

• Annette Dubreuil begins by explaining the concept of focusing, mentioning its connection to Carl Rogers and its creator, Eugene Jenlin.

• Annette describes focusing as a six-step practice that involves being in the body and listening to body wisdom, using the metaphor of dancing to explain the process.

• She emphasizes the importance of clearing a space in the body and activating heart energy to be non-judgmental and receive empathy.

Explaining the Felt Sense and Heart Breathing

• Annette explains the concept of the felt sense, which involves physical sensations that can turn into words or images, and the idea of getting a handle on these sensations.

• She mentions that Jenlin referred to the client's client as the body's physical sensations, emphasizing the importance of listening to these sensations.

• Annette describes the process of heart breathing, where participants imagine breathing in and out of the heart space to create a calm space in the body.

• She guides the participants through a practice of noticing their body, possibly moving or stretching, and then focusing on their feet or sit bones to create a sense of grounding.

Practical Exercise: Felt Sense and Heart Breathing

• Annette instructs participants to place one hand on their heart space and the other on their cheek, leaning over to hold the vagus nerve and other nerves connected to the social engagement system.

• She guides participants to imagine breathing in and out of the heart space, doing a few more breaths to create a sense of calm.

• Annette asks participants to imagine a favorite person knocking at their door and to notice physical sensations in their body in response to this visualization.

• She encourages participants to describe these sensations in terms of size, shape, movement, color, or texture, and to ask their body for a word or phrase that captures these feelings.

Sharing and Reflecting on the Exercise

• Annette invites participants to share their experiences and the words or phrases that came to mind during the exercise in the chat.

• Participants share words like "joy," "happy," "openness and warmth," "calm," "peaceful," "filled with light," "life and love," "relieved," "compassionate," "embrace," and "beautiful."

• Annette explains that focusing is a six-step practice that can be done in peer-to-peer settings or in therapy, and mentions innovations like interactive focusing and case clinics.

• She describes how she has experimented with bringing focusing into empathy circles, using larger groups and specific topics to explore common humanity.

Conclusion and Resources

• Annette mentions that focusing is a peer-to-peer practice that can be blended with other methods like empathy circles to enhance the experience.

• She emphasizes the importance of letting body wisdom have a say and incorporating pauses to allow higher self to emerge.

• Annette thanks the participants and provides resources in the chat for further exploration of focusing and empathy circles.

• She concludes by highlighting the flexibility of focusing and empathy circles, encouraging participants to experiment with different approaches to suit their needs.

Transcript

https://otter.ai/u/L05Y69BeCuzQQSfBFS-uBir9Pjc?view=transcript

thank you so much. So I'm going to begin by speaking a bit about focusing so you know what it is, and we'll do a little experiment experience of it. And before I say what it is, just wanted to say it's also something connected to Carl Rogers that we heard a lot about today. So the creator of focusing, Eugene jenlin, he was a student of Carl Rogers as well back in the day. So I'm going to share my screen and say a little bit about focusing. So first I would like to say that Eugene jenland, he says he, like he discovered or created this practice of focusing, that it was something that he was naturally seeing people doing, and that the people who did this embodied practice. They were really having change in their therapy. And so he came up with a six step or six movement way to understand focusing. And it's really about being in the body and and in fact, he Well, I'll get to that. So first two conditions and four moves. So I like using the metaphor of dancing to explain this practice. And so as you know, when we're dancing, we need some sort of space, maybe a dance floor or your kitchen floor. It can be formal or informal. And in for us, in focusing, it's about having some space in the body, feeling grounded and centered and and present. And then you usually have music when you're dancing, and that can be in your head, or it can be an actual, you know, a band or something like that. And and for focusing and being embodied and connected to empathy, that's our heart energy. And so we call that clearing a space. There's different ways of doing that, to come into the body and then activating heart energy really helps with this way of being receiving or welcoming, which some of you have already alluded to with being non judgmental, right? This kind of two sides of the same coin. And then once we're in the body in this way, then we can listen to our body wisdom, and gently, I call these the dancing moves, the things we can do once we're in the body. Um, so he called it the felt sense. And the felt sense is primarily physical sensations. And then once you have that, it can turn into something. And he he called that a handle. And getting a handle on something is getting the word or the image, something that really captures what that physical sensation is wanting you to know. And jenland called that felt sense the client's client. So car Roger said, pay attention to the client. Jenland said, pay attention to the client's client. Pay attention to what your body is telling you at the physical level. And this practice, by doing that, it's like an embodied thinking. It brings us, gentlemen, would say, halfway down, right? So we're not so oriented by the ego. We're allowing the embodied knowing to come through, which is more connected to our soul and the self transcendence we heard about earlier. Um, so as we do that, there's a resonating piece, which is just checking, is it? Is your body going Yes, yes, you're getting the message, or is it going close, but not quite, and you want to stay longer? And then when we do this practice, sometimes the body has more to say, and we have a whole host of questions to bring us deeper. So what I'm going to invite us to do is a little practice of it, because really, to know what the felt sense is, you need to experience that. So I'm going to invite you to just for a moment notice your body and it might want to move or stretch. We've been sitting for nearly two hours, so I'll just invite you to do that for a moment and maybe sigh or, I think, all muted, maybe taking a few slower breaths, extending your exhale especially and then if they're comfortable, either closing your eyes or maybe lowering your gaze. And I'll invite you to feel your feet on the floor, if that's where they are, your sit bones on your chair. We're creating that calm space in the body. And then I'll invite you to place one hand on your heart space, and then I like the other hand on the cheek, kind of on the jaw line, and you can kind of lean over, kind of holding your your vagus nerve. Nerve and your other nerves that connect your social engagement system, hmm, some self care here, and then inviting you to do some heart breathing. So this is where we imagine breathing in and out of the heart space. Imagine the breath comes in through the heart and comes back out through the heart. Do a few more like that.

And then you can stay that way. You might lower your hands. And I'm going to invite you to imagine that you get a knock at the door, and you open the door and one of your favorite people that you haven't seen in a while is there. Maybe it's a an elder, a favorite aunt or uncle or a favorite friend who's surprising you, they're from in from out of town, something like that. A favorite person is just there at your door. You just take a moment to land on who it is, and maybe for a moment know why you like them so much, and then I'm going to invite you to see what's happening in your body. Where do you feel physical sensations? Then it might be in your heart space, or it might be somewhere else, and you might see if the sensations have a size or a shape, or maybe they're moving, or still, maybe they have a color or texture. And then

I'm going to invite you to ask your body for a word or a phrase or an image that captures this feeling you have in your body now that you're noticing about this friend or person that you are surprised to have at your door right now, how do you feel about them? And it might come as a metaphor or an image. And sometimes it can be tricky to do this, so you could ask it maybe to come as a body of water, right, somebody you love a lot. Maybe it feels like a kid jumping in a puddle, or maybe it feels like a sparkling Lake, maybe like a rainbow in a waterfall. Just checking if one of those resonates or something else that came from your body, you might notice a little shift when you get something. Okay, so I'm going to invite you to gently round that off. And if you'd like, you can put what you got in the chat, what the image or word was of that person being at your door, how it feels in your body, and just give folks a moment to do that you

so we have joy, happy, openness and warmth, calm, very calm, peaceful, like a warm bath.

Filled with light, life and love, relieved, compassionate, embrace, being held and beautiful. Thanks for sharing so So focusing as you saw as a six step practice. It's also a peer to peer practice. It can also be done in therapy. So there's many ways of practicing it, and there's been a few innovations in it. Janet Klein created interactive focusing, where after listening to somebody, we pause and sense into the body what we have so like what we just did, but you would do it on what the person said, and see what comes and I was also influenced to share one more by theory you Otto scharmer's work in the presencing Institute, they do something called case clinics or coaching circles, where during a session, it's one person who would have a turn, and then people would offer their reflections. And so. So the various ways I've experimented with bringing focusing into empathy circles is at our changes groups. So the focusing community has these ways of coming together and and practicing in groups of two or three, and we started doing bigger groups where one will not fun. Usually two or three people would have a turn to share. So rather than having rounds, we would have one round per person who were we're sharing. And then whoever wanted to give an empathic reflection could do so. And then we started doing empathy circles that way on a specific topics. So there was that common humanity piece of of sharing similar things connected to a specific topic. I'm just going to put some resources in the chat that connect to those. And then, more recently, Edwin co hosted with me. We did a little empathy circle your way and bringing more felt sensing, focusing the felt sense into the practice. So So there's different ways to do this. You can be more on the focusing side or more on the round side, and blend it in different ways. And the main thing is letting that body wisdom, have a bit more say and bringing those pauses in, right? We can just pause at any point and just notice, Oh, is there something there in the body which allows that higher self to come out a little bit more and not be so led by the ego? So thank you. Thank.