Felt Sense Introspection, popularly known as "Focusing," is a powerful technique for understanding, articulating, and sometimes resolving your own feelings. In this workshop we will learn the theoretical basis for the technique and how to apply it.
Note. There is no pre-workshop assignment, except for the reading.
Instructional Material
Focusing, by Duncan Sabien, is an excellent and complete summary of the technique and its application. This is a dense article, and it is worthwhile to read it attentively in order to absorb the contents and their implications. Thus, this is the only preparation material for the week.
Cohort Activity
[15 minutes] Doing Felt Sense Introspection can and probably should be practiced on relatively neutral targets before it is used on traumas. Anything which you have feelings about by definition has a Felt Sense that can be investigated and articulated.
Each cohort member will select their favorite book or film. Then, use the Focusing technique to try to find where in your body you feel the emotions concerning your favorite book/film, and further, what it feels like.
It is recommended that everyone take ~2 minutes at the start of this exercise to silently explore their feelings. Then, take turns trying to articulate those feelings, starting with where in the body the feelings manifest, to the rest of the cohort, to whatever degree you feel comfortable.
[15 minutes] Each cohort member should state which part of the Focusing exercise they found most unintuitive, difficult, or unclear. The other cohort members should then provide whatever insight they can to help resolve the difficulty.