FOT - ** Felt Sense, Body, Situation with Gene Gendlin

I think that we discovered something. And I would like to put it right in the center of what I have to say. We discovered that a very, very slight bodily feeling, we now call it felt sense and make a lot of that when people go looking for it they expect some dramatic thing. Actually it's so slight at first you don't even know whether you have it or not. That needs to be really emphasized. It’s so you know. I may be doubled over with anxiety about this and that and yet when I go find the felt sense it's so different. Then I have to say to myself, yeah yeah I know, you know it's awful but are you comfortable? And I think that's a funny joke because of when I'm doubled over with anxiety I know I'm not comfortable. But that's my way of asking for the felt sense. iI's so different it's this global sense underneath. And then I find it and it's very slight compared to my anxiety, or my anger or whatever. I'm into this very slight and then if I stay with that then it opens up and it goes through all these steps. And then it goes further and further there and then pretty soon I see this whole huge field or several fields of cognitive detail of thoughts of concepts of ideas of analyses of circumstances. ==== Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy (FOT) is an emerging family of experiential psychotherapies based on the pioneering work of Eugene Gendlin. In empirical studies, Gendlin and colleagues found that clients who succeeded in therapy were those who regularly paused and listened inwardly to a murky 'felt sense' of their situation, found beneath known feelings and thoughts. This process, which Gendlin named Focusing, is now considered to be the crux of therapeutic change and forward movement in psychotherapy.