FOURTH MOVEMENT: RESONATING HANDLE AND FELT SENSE

Take the word or image you got from the third move­ment and check it against the felt sense. Make sure they click precisely into place—a perfect fit. Ask (but don't answer): "Is that right?"

There should be a felt response, some deep breath inside, some felt release again, letting you know that the words are right.

Sometimes, instead, this confirming sensation -- this feeling of just right -- doesn't come. Then try to sense more accurately. Wait again and let more exact words come from the feeling.

To do this resonating, you must experience the felt sense again. You must touch it again as a feeling. Many people keep hold of a felt sense quite well until they get the very first words for it. Then, somehow, the feeling disappears and they have only the words. If that hap­pens, obviously you cannot check the words against the feeling directly. So you must let the felt sense come back -- not necessarily the same feeling as it was, but the felt sense as it now is (perhaps a little changed). You say the words to yourself gently over and over, in the spirit of trying to feel directly what the words were about. Usually, after ten or twenty seconds, the feeling -- as it is -- is back.

It is all right if, of its own accord, the feeling changes, too, as you perform this matching procedure. Let both sides -- the feeling and the words -- do whatever they do, until they match just right.

When you get a perfect match, the words being just right for the feeling, let yourself feel that for a minute. You may feel impelled to say something like "Yes... oh yes ... that's right..." and just allow it to be.

It's important to spend this minute. The sense of Tightness is not only a check of the handle. It is your body just now changing. As long as it is still changing, releasing, processing, moving, let it do that. Give it the minute or two it needs to get all the release and change it wants to have at this point. Don't rush on. You just got here.

FIFTH MOVEMENT: ASKING

If a big shift, an opening, and a bodily release have already come during the earlier movements, you go right to the sixth movement, receiving what has come along with the shift.

For example, you might have gotten such a shift and change in the problem already, when you sat quietly with the felt sense, sensing its crux and its quality. Or it might have come along with a handle word or image. It might have come while you resonated the handle with the felt sense.

But more usually a well-fitting handle gives you a little tiny bit of a shift, just enough to know it is quite right. You feel its rightness several times over (resonat­ing), until there has been all the bodily effect that this rightness can make. Now you need a shift, and there has not yet been one -- at least not the kind that changes the problem.

Now comes the fifth movement, asking.

In this movement you ask the felt sense, directly, what it is. Usually this consists of spending some time (a minute or so, which seems very long) staying with the unclear felt sense, or returning to it again and again. The handle helps one do this.

You use the handle to help you to make the felt sense vividly present again and again. It isn't enough to re­member how you just felt it moments ago. It needs to be right here, otherwise you can't ask it. If you lose hold of it, present the handle to yourself and ask, "Is this still here?" After a few seconds it is there again (as before, or slightly changed).

Now you can ask it what it is.

For example, if your handle was "jumpy," say "jumpy" to yourself till the felt sense is vividly back, then ask it: "What is it about this whole problem that makes me so jumpy?"

If you hear a lot of fast answers in your head, just let that go by and then ask again. What comes swiftly is old information from your mind. At first the question to the felt sense may not get down to it, but the second or third time you ask, it will. The felt sense itself will stir, in answer, and from this stirring an answer will emerge.

You can tell the difference between the merely men­tal answers and those from the felt sense. The mental answers come very fast, and they are rapid trains of thought. The mind rushes in and leaves no space for you to contact the felt sense directly. You can let all that go by, and then recontact the felt sense, using the handle again. When the felt sense is back, you ask it.

One of the most important procedures in focusing is this asking of "open questions." You ask a question, but then you deliberately refrain from trying to answer it through any conscious thinking process.

People usually think they know the answers to such questions, or they decide what the answer should be. They ask themselves closed questions—in effect, rhetor­ical questions that they themselves answer immediately. Don't do that to your felt sense. Asking a felt sense is very much like asking another person a question. You ask the question, and then you wait.

There is a distinct difference between forcing words or images into a feeling and letting them flow out of it. When you force them into it, you effectively smother it and prevent it from showing its real nature. You tell it, "Oh, I already know what you are. There's no sense wasting time on you."

The words and images that flow out of a feeling, by contrast, are the kind that make a freshly felt difference. They are the kind that make you say, "Hey! Hey, yeah, that’s what it's all about!" These are the words and pictures that produce a body shift.

The body shift is mysterious in its effects. It always feels good, even when what has come to light may not make the problem look any better from a detached, ra­tional point of view.

If the felt sense does not shift and answer right away, that is all right. Spend a minute or so with it. We do not control when a shift comes. (That is "grace.") What is crucial is the time you spend sensing it (returning again and again to it). If you spent time sensing something unclear that is right there, meaningful, about this prob­lem, and you don't yet know what it is, then you are focusing.

Sometimes it helps to ask one of the following two questions; first try one, then later the other. With each you will need to make sure that the question reaches the felt sense. At first, usually, your mind will answer. Just repeat the question until the felt sense stirs.

1. "What is the worst of this?" (Or, "What is the 'jumpiest' thing about all this?" if your handle word was "jumpy.")

2. "What does the felt sense need?" (Or, "What would it take for this to feel OK?")

If you have contacted the felt sense in the usual ask­ing, and then have also asked these two questions in turn, and spent a minute or so sensing the unclear felt sense each time, it may be good to stop focusing for the moment.

Focusing is not work. It is a friendly time within your body. Approach the problem freshly later, or tomorrow.

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