Category: Creativity

HARD-WIRED FOR COLLABORATION: PHYSICAL TOUCH INCREASES PERFORMANCE

By , March 1, 2010 1:23 pm

In Born To Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life (Norton, 2009),  Dacher Keltner of UC/Berkeley discusses the relationship between physical touch and performance: a supportive touch on the shoulder can increase participation in classrooms, and new research by Michael Kraus and co-authors Cassy Huang and Keltner, soon to appear in the journal Emotion, shows that basketball teams where players touched each other, in a supportive way, performed better than those with less touch. Highest performing players were also those giving the highest number of supportive touches. As summarized in a recent article by Benedict Carey of  The New York Times, “Touchy-feely sports teams have edge, evidence suggests,”:

“A warm touch seems to set off the release of oxytocin, a hormone that helps create a sensation of trust, and to reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol. In the brain, prefrontal areas that help regulate emotion can relax, freeing them for another of their primary purposes: problem solving. In effect, the body interprets a supportive touch as ‘I’ll share the load.’

‘We think that humans build relationships precisely for this reason, to distribute problem solving across brains,’ says James A. Coan, a psychologist at the University of Virginia. ‘We are wired to literally share the processing load, and this is the signal we’re getting when we receive support through touch.’ ”

More evidence for the assumptions of Creative Edge Focusing (TM)’s model for Creative Edge Organizations, where more “feminine” values of support, empathy, listening, colleagiality, and attention to relationships feed the bottom line, encouraging creative problem solving through collaboration.

Free Downloads: 

Complete Focusing Instructions Manual (17 pages)

“Ajas” Instantaneos Mini-Manual

Creative Edge Focusing (TM) (www.cefocusing.com ) teaches two basic self-help skills, Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening, which can be applied at home and at work through The Creative Edge Focusing Pyramid.

Based upon Gendlin’s Experiential Focusing (www.focusing.org ) and Rogers’ Empathic Listening, our website is packed with Free Resources and instructions in these basic self-help skills. Learn how to build Support Groups, Conscious Relationships, and Creative Edge Organizations based upon these basic skills of emotional intelligence.

Resources: Free Articles, Training, Classes

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

The site of new insights and creative solutions is at the edge of what is already known. This edge, The Creative Edge, holds implicit within it all past and future knowing about the problem, more than could ever be put into words in a linear way

Focusing and Architecture: Designing From The Inside Out

By , December 14, 2009 7:17 pm

In The Not So Big House and Creating The Not So Big House books, Sarah Susanka (amazon link) advocates leaving the vaulted-ceiling mansions that have become the hallmark of house design and returning to designing houses that are specifically tailored to the very personal and unique needs of the homeowner who will live in the architect-designed home. Quality replaces quantity; intimate detailing replaces square footage.

Recently, as my husband and I hired an architect and began the schematic design process for our future retirement home, I found myself in the midst of an “archetypal” battle. I see it as defined by the clash of “masculine” vs. “feminine,” “Thinking vs. Feeling” modes of being, based upon psychiatrist C.G. Jung’s descriptions and psychological tests such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Keirsey Temperament Sorter (see “Jung, MBTI, and Experiential Theory”  for explanations and Creative Edge Focusing Personality Tests for links for some free versions of these tests).

My husband and I had agreed, after seeing the book New Minimalist Houses (this is Amazon link for great bargain price, $50 reduced to $15!), that Minimalist could describe the kind of house we wanted — lots of glass/concrete/steel, as little as possible between us and the surrounding nature of our 20-acre forest on a ridge. But, it turned out, this was about all we agreed on!

Mind you, both the architect and my husband are feminist, egalitarian, good listeners. And I am a Ph.D. scholar.Yet, there was something about this opportunity to design from a blank slate that engaged all of us in visions to which we desperately wanted to cling, making it almost impossible to “hear from” the opposing view .

The architect followed a method he is known for, going to the home site, hiking for hours, sitting for hours if needed, until he came up with an inspiration for the design of the house, knowing some about us but a lot about the site and location. He ended up discovering a totally different and much better site location for the house, in our twenty acres of forest, and offering creative and striking designs for a one- and two-story version of our house.

The architect’s proposed one-story design was much like The Air House in the Minimalist book — a long rectangle of glass, spread along the ridge, with views and light from North and South. My husband fell in love with it, as it let light enter every room from both north and south.

Okay, I thought, I can live with that, but I want the Guest Area/Project Room/Full Bath closer to the rest of the house, not across a breezeway, I said. I said the Garage and Shop can go across the breezeway. I knew that, at a distance, I would not use the space for Projects, and it would be empty, wasted square footage except when Guests came.

I also wanted the Full Bath to be shared with the two Studies at that end of the house, so that the three spaces, Guest/Project, Study, Study could function as bedrooms, if our future aging needs or future buyers needed such a constellation. I thought my husband would be happy with the striking southern views and light he could have from his shop. And he was okay with this compromise.

And here the epic struggle began. The architect would come back with his original design, saying “the house” needs the Guest/Project/Bath across the courtyard, or “there needs to be a living space across the courtyard to balance the design.” I would counter with “I” need them on this side of the courtyard, so they can function together as three bedrooms, if needed.

And yet his design would come back again, modified some but still with Project/Guest/Bath at a distance from the rest of the house (given geographical distance, we were communicating by email, not ideal!). Finally I said, “You keep trying to ISOLATE this space, and I am trying to CONNECT it.”

I also mentioned casually to my husband that I would like a Front Porch, where I could sit and watch nature go by, and where visitors could find a sheltered entry.

Reading Susanka, I also found some confirmation for my wish for some bay windows to serve as alcoves at the edges of the minimalist open floor plan. I was afraid that flat, rectangular expanses of glass wall would not “draw us in” to the view, would seem cold and distant.

And my husband, usually very mild-mannered,  freaked out: “No! No bumps! The house is to be sleek, sleek, not full of bumps and lumps.”

It seemed to me that each of them, husband and architect, were quite comfortable with accommodating the needs of the residents to the needs of the design, the conceptual needs of “the house.” They could look at a floor plan and fall in love with it.

I however, could not imagine living, feeling alive, in a house that was like a shell laid over and against my actual living, constraining me into a particular shape.

Through an epic struggle coming close to divorce and firing of the architect, we have come to an understanding, a compromise which I call “cozy minimalism,” incorporating Susanka’s sensitivity to the human longing for enclosed, sheltered “alcoves” at the edges of open floor plan spaces with the flying visions, open spaces, and angles of minimalism.

We are entering a period of design where the architect will mainly LISTEN as my husband and I articulate our intuitive sense of our own wants and needs, and then come up with creative, unique ideas and methods for incorporating, aned compromising, those needs.

Out of this new dialogue, already a possible “roof garden” and “sunroom/breakfast nook” alcove have arisen to soften The Air House into an individualized home, yet keep the soaring aspects of the architect’s inspiration.

For more on The Not So Big concept, designing from “the inside out,” from careful attention to the unique needs of the homeowner, see the Susanka books cited above.

For more on learning to Listen To Yourself through Intuitive Focusing and Listen to Another through Focused Listening, see the many resources and free downloads below.

CREATIVE EDGE FOCUSING(tm):  SELF-HELP SKILLS FOR HOME AND WORK

Free Downloads: 

Complete Focusing Instructions Manual (17 pages)

“Ajas” Instantaneos Mini-Manual

Creative Edge Focusing (www.cefocusing.com ) teaches two basic self-help skills, Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening, which can be applied at home and at work through The Creative Edge Focusing Pyramid.

Based upon Gendlin’s Experiential Focusing (www.focusing.org ) and Rogers’ Empathic Listening, our website is packed with Free Resources and instructions in these basic self-help skills. Learn how to build Support Groups, Conscious Relationships, and Creative Edge Organizations based upon these basic skills of emotional intelligence.

You can try out    “Focusing: Find Out What Is Bothering You.”

Click here to subscribe to Creative Edge Focusing(TM)’s  Instant “Ahah!” e-newsletter and get the latest exercises first!!! 

Click here for a free Intuitive Focusing Mini-Course

Click here for a free Focused Listening Mini-Course

 See  Core Concept: Conflict Resolution to find a complete mini-course on Interpersonal Focusing and Conflict Resolution, including Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication, Blanchard’s “One Minute Apology,” Patricia Evan’s books on Verbally Abuse and Controlling Relationships, McMahon’s Beyond The Myth Of Dominance, and much more.

See  Core Concept: Intimate Relationship to find a complete mini-course on increasing intimacy and sexuality, including the “Sharing Your Day” exercise, Listening/Focusing Partnerships for The Way of Relationship, untangling and equalizing desire, tantric sexuality, and much more.

Download complete Instant “Ahah!” Mini-Manual, in English and Spanish, from CEF Website, or download from links at top of this blog.

Find links to free articles, personality tests, multi-media Self-Help training, Classes and workshops

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

 

 

 

MICHAEL JACKSON: CREATIVITY AND BIPOLAR DISORDER

By , August 24, 2009 4:26 pm

In her book, Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and The Artistic Temperament , Kay Redfield Jamison researched the relationship between creativity and madness. Looking at Poet Laureats of England, and their family histories, she found that, yes, there was a statistically significant greater incidence of institutionalization for mental illness and suicide in these highly creative people and their ancestors.

Jamison concluded that manic-depressive disorder, unless treated with medication and/or psychotherapy, was a TERMINAL ILLNESS — e.g., highly likely to end in death from direct suicide or the slower suicide of alcoholism and other addictions.

In her next book, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, Jamison, a neuro-psychiatrist, presented herself as suffering from manic-depressive disorder (recently renamed as “bipolar disorder”) of an extreme form, including psychotic hallucinations. When depressed, she saw blood streaming down her windows; when manic, she bought all the snake bite kits in her city, fearing an overrun of snakes.

Jamison describes the difficulty in giving up the manic state, giving up the poetic, mysterious, depressive boyfriends, the heightened sense of aliveness. But she also describes the final pleasures of stable relationship and stable moods. She also sees psychotherapy as a viable option to long-term medication.

I did not know Michael Jackson. I cannot diagnose him. But I wonder when I see “super-human” people, many of them performers, crash and burn. Jamison says, “Manic-depressive disorder is a terminal illness.”

Manic-depressive, or bipolar, disorder comes on a continuum of severity, from the mild ups and downs of mood to more pronounced cycles of mood to the extremes of psychotic hallucination. It is not uncommon for great artists to wake up with a whole symphony written in their head, to stay awake for several days writing it all down, to be bursting with energy. This can be a manifestation of mania.

Does that mean the person is mentally ill, and not creative? Not at all. The creations stand as authentic. It is only the ravages of such creativity on the physical body, and the effect of its cyclical aftermath of depression upon the creator that is of concern.

I hope that, using Jamison’s wisdom and research and personal experience, we can help our “super-humans,” those with monstrous creativity, to receive help that might stabilize their lives and help them stop self-medicating with addiction and STAY ALIVE,  without putting out their mighty creative spark.

Creative Edge Focusing (TM) teaches self-help skills, Intuitive Focusing, which can be used for centering and unfolding one’s creativity by “listening” to the inner self, and Focused Listening, helping another to articulate their creative ideas and heal emotional stuckness and overwhelm.

Find free instructions and downloads as well as classes and Focusing-Oriented therapy below:

CREATIVE EDGE FOCUSING(tm):  SELF-HELP SKILLS FOR HOME AND WORK

Free Downloads: 

 

Complete Focusing Instructions Manual (17 pages)

“Ajas” Instantaneos Mini-Manual

Creative Edge Focusing (www.cefocusing.com ) teaches two basic self-help skills, Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening, which can be applied at home and at work through The Creative Edge Focusing Pyramid.

Based upon Gendlin’s Experiential Focusing (www.focusing.org ) and Rogers’ Empathic Listening, our website is packed with Free Resources and instructions in these basic self-help skills. Learn how to build Support Groups, Conscious Relationships, and Creative Edge Organizations based upon these basic skills of emotional intelligence.

You can try out    “Focusing: Find Out What Is Bothering You.”

Click here to subscribe to Creative Edge Focusing(TM)’s  Instant “Ahah!” e-newsletter and get the latest exercises first!!! 

Click here for a free Intuitive Focusing Mini-Course

Click here for a free Focused Listening Mini-Course

 See  Core Concept: Conflict Resolution to find a complete mini-course on Interpersonal Focusing and Conflict Resolution, including Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication, Blanchard’s “One Minute Apology,” Patricia Evan’s books on Verbally Abuse and Controlling Relationships, McMahon’s Beyond The Myth Of Dominance, and much more.

See  Core Concept: Intimate Relationship to find a complete mini-course on increasing intimacy and sexuality, including the “Sharing Your Day” exercise, Listening/Focusing Partnerships for The Way of Relationship, untangling and equalizing desire, tantric sexuality, and much more.

Download complete Instant “Ahah!” Mini-Manual, in English and Spanish, from CEF Website, or download from links at top of this blog.

Find links to free articles, personality tests, multi-media Self-Help training, Classes and workshops

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

 

 

 

ADHD OR HANDS-ON LEARNING? “FOCUSED” TODDLER” BECOMES “ATTENTION-DEFICIT” STUDENT?

By , June 11, 2009 4:42 pm

This 18-month old toddler is intent about learning. He is hard at work, figuring out every task, every piece of equipment put before him. He practices and practices until he masters a task. He comes back week after week to try again. He watches intently, trying to figure out “the trick” of doing each thing.

This child is an active, “hands-on” learner. He learns by doing.

Try blowing bubbles with him. While another child might clap their hands and chase the shiny bubbles, this one must “do it himself,” even if, time and again, he puts the blower into his mouth and ends up with a soapy taste. One day the wind helps him out, blowing bubbles out as he swings the wand. He is so ecstatic he almost falls out of the chair, and he repeats this magic time and again, laughing with joy: “I can do it!”

Months ago, he brought pop beads to me, over and over again, watching intently: how did they come apart? How go back together? Now, he has mastered the pulling apart, but not the putting back together. He stares and stares as I perform this magic: how do you do it?

Same with stacking blocks, placing rings on pegs, opening and closing small doors and windows, getting puzzle pieces to fit. He will practice over and over until he can do it, then move on.

The first day of kindergarten, he might be practicing standing on his head while the other children sit in a circle and listen to a story. First day of first grade, he is over trying to figure out how the pencil sharpener works while the others sit in a circle and listen while the teacher sings songs.

By fourth grade, when “academics” (reading and writing) thoroughly replace hands-on learning through manipulation, he will possibly be diagnosed as ADHD, “attention-deficit disorder,” and given medication so that he CAN sit still like all the other children while the teacher teaches.

Who is the real learner here? The passive recipient of information or the active, “hands-on” learner? Why does our education system place so much more emphasis upon “passive” learning, the absorption and reporting back of information? How can we justify that academic skills/college education will demarcate who will succeed and who will fail in our American society? There is no “equal opportunity” here!

Some children, some people, will never be “academically” inclined, in terms of enjoying reading literature and poetry, dealing with abstract similes and metaphors more than working with their hands. No amount of “equal opportunity” to a college education will allow them equal access to the rewards of our society, if their learning style is cut out of the curriculum starting in fourth grade, insuring their failure. Yet why can we say that their learning style, their skill set, is any less worthy of the extra funding that we give those who can make it into “college?”

We say these hands-on learners are unmotivated, not trying hard enough, “unfocused,” unable to concentrate, while we force them to learn in OUR style, sitting still for reading and writing, day after day.

And, when they fail, we shunt them into low-paying jobs or, most shamefully, fill our armed forces with them, their best option for hands-on skill training, only including that they risk their lives for their “higher education.”

This is not equal opportunity!! It will never be resolved by more chances to go to college. That door, the academic door, is firmly shut to them, as long as interest in reading and writing is the skill needed for getting in.

What if they were allowed hands-on learning opportunities throughout their school years, equally to reading and writing. What if by grade 12 they left school with skills in electrical wiring, welding, cable laying, construction, wood working, plumbing, website design, fashion design, horticulture, emergency medicine, and all the other hands-on things they could learn in twelve years! And what if these skills led to equal-opportunity higher education and high paying jobs?

The Career Academy model, which includes hands-on learning of specific job skills in high school learning communities, steps in this direction. Beginning in elementary school, Howard Gardner’s model of Multiple Intelligences shows how to incorporate all learning styles into education.

There is a huge inequality if reading-and-writing, academic preference for learning style, becomes the hurdle that learners have as the only path to equal opportunity education.

See Creative Edge Education, Creative Edge Parenting, and Dr. McGuire’s paper, “Don’t Fight Them, Join Them: Community-Wide Intervention for ADHD, School Drop Out, and Juvenile Delinquency.” You’ll find links to Gardner and other multi-modality models for education.

Find a variety of Personality Tests at our Creative Edge Focusing (TM) website, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and Keirsey Temperament Sorter, both of which give information about different kinds of learning style leading to differing career skills and preferences.

CREATIVE EDGE FOCUSING(tm):  SELF-HELP SKILLS FOR HOME AND WORK

Free Downloads: 

 

Complete Focusing Instructions Manual (17 pages)

“Ajas” Instantaneos Mini-Manual

Creative Edge Focusing (www.cefocusing.com ) teaches two basic self-help skills, Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening, which can be applied at home and at work through The Creative Edge Focusing Pyramid.

Based upon Gendlin’s Experiential Focusing (www.focusing.org ) and Rogers’ Empathic Listening, our website is packed with Free Resources and instructions in these basic self-help skills. Learn how to build Support Groups, Conscious Relationships, and Creative Edge Organizations based upon these basic skills of emotional intelligence.

You can try out    “Focusing: Find Out What Is Bothering You.”

Click here to subscribe to Creative Edge Focusing(TM)’s  Instant “Ahah!” e-newsletter and get the latest exercises first!!! 

Click here for a free Intuitive Focusing Mini-Course

Click here for a free Focused Listening Mini-Course

 See  Core Concept: Conflict Resolution to find a complete mini-course on Interpersonal Focusing and Conflict Resolution, including Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication, Blanchard’s “One Minute Apology,” Patricia Evan’s books on Verbally Abuse and Controlling Relationships, McMahon’s Beyond The Myth Of Dominance, and much more.

See  Core Concept: Intimate Relationship to find a complete mini-course on increasing intimacy and sexuality, including the “Sharing Your Day” exercise, Listening/Focusing Partnerships for The Way of Relationship, untangling and equalizing desire, tantric sexuality, and much more.

Download complete Instant “Ahah!” Mini-Manual, in English and Spanish, from CEF Website, or download from links at top of this blog.

Find links to free articles, personality tests, multi-media Self-Help training, Classes and workshops

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

CREATIVE EDGE LISTENING: ACTIVE, EMPATHIC, FOCUSED LISTENING ALLOWS CREATIVITY TO EMERGE

By , April 11, 2009 2:30 pm
Listening for More Than Words

Listening for More Than Words

Creative Edge Listening goes beyond active or empathic listening, where the goal is communication. In Creative Edge Listening, the Listener is actively helping the speaker to pay attention to and to articulate The Creative Edge, the right-brain, “something-more-than-words” from which truly new solutions,  ideas, innovations, and action steps can come.

Also called Focused Listening, in Creative Edge Listening, the Listener pays attention to nuances that the speaker may not be aware of, the “something-more”  behind surface communications. The Creative Edge Listener uses Focusing Invitations to invite the speaker to sit quietly for a moment and “sense into”  The Creative Edge underlying surface words: “You keep mentioning ‘consumer interface.’ Could you say more about what you mean by this?” “Would it be okay to  sit quietly for a moment and ‘sense into’ this ‘gut instinct’  you are having — let new words come directly from it?”

Creative Edge Listening is most powerful when the speaker has also learned Creative Edge Focusing. Also known as Intuitive Focusing, in Creative Edge Focusing, the speaker, known as the Focuser, even goes as far as closing his/her eyes in order to give full attention to the “not-yet-known” which comes as subtle nuances, intuitions, gut instincts, The Creative Edge.

The Focuser learns to look carefully for exactly the right words or images to capture these “bodily-felt” nuances, the true hotbed of creativity and new solutions. When words and images are finally found that are “just right: in capturing The Creative Edge, the speaker experiences an “Ahah!”, a paradigm shift. The Gestalt changes. The kaleidoscope turns, and new possibilities become clear.

Creative Edge Focusing and Creative Edge Listening can be used for problem solving at home and at work, alone, in parenting and relationships, during interpersonal conflict, and in group or community decision making situations. The Creative Edge Pyramid describes applications from Focusing Alone to Creative Edge Organizations.

For application in business settings, see my article, “Creative Edge Organizations: Businesses and Organizations As A ‘Kind’ Of Focusing Community” from The Folio: Thirtieth Anniversity Tribute edition at The Focusing Institute, www.focusing.org .

You can learn all about Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening with the many resources listed below:

CREATIVE EDGE FOCUSING(tm):  SELF-HELP SKILLS FOR HOME AND WORK

Free Downloads:

Complete Focusing Instructions Manual (17 pages)

“Ajas” Instantaneos Mini-Manual

Creative Edge Focusing (www.cefocusing.com ) teaches two basic self-help skills, Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening, which can be applied at home and at work through The Creative Edge Focusing Pyramid.

Based upon Gendlin’s Experiential Focusing (www.focusing.org ) and Rogers’ Empathic Listening, our website is packed with Free Resources and instructions in these basic self-help skills. Learn how to build Support Groups, Conscious Relationships, and Creative Edge Organizations based upon these basic skills of emotional intelligence.

You can try out    “Focusing: Find Out What Is Bothering You.”

Click here to subscribe to Creative Edge Focusing(TM)’s  Instant “Ahah!” e-newsletter and get the latest exercises first!!! 

Click here for a free Intuitive Focusing Mini-Course

Click here for a free Focused Listening Mini-Course

 See  Core Concept: Conflict Resolution to find a complete mini-course on Interpersonal Focusing and Conflict Resolution, including Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication, Blanchard’s “One Minute Apology,” Patricia Evan’s books on Verbally Abuse and Controlling Relationships, McMahon’s Beyond The Myth Of Dominance, and much more.

See  Core Concept: Intimate Relationship to find a complete mini-course on increasing intimacy and sexuality, including the “Sharing Your Day” exercise, Listening/Focusing Partnerships for The Way of Relationship, untangling and equalizing desire, tantric sexuality, and much more.

Download complete Instant “Ahah!” Mini-Manual, in English and Spanish, from CEF Website, or download from links at top of this blog.

Find links to free articles, personality tests, multi-media Self-Help training, Classes and workshops

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

THE CREATIVE EDGE FOCUSING PYRAMID IN BUSINESS SETTINGS: FOCUSING, LISTENING, AND COLLABORATIVE EDGE MEETINGS

By , March 15, 2009 6:07 pm

In the Creative Edge Focusing (TM) model, The Creative Edge is the bodily-felt, intuitive “something-more-than-words” that anyone can find if they simply pause, for at least a minute, paying attention in the center of their body for the “intuitive feel,” the “bodily-felt sense” of any issue or idea or problem to form.

The PRISMS/S Focusing Process  shows how Intuitive Focusing, often coupled with Focused Listening, can allow this non-linear, right-brain, intuitive knowing to unfold.

The Creative Edge Focusing Pyramid shows how these simple self-help skills of Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening can be incorporated into all levels within a company or organization, as well as for stress relief, conflict resolution, and emotional problem solving at home:

Focusing Alone for Personal Growth
Focusing Partnership for Ongoing Creativity
Interpersonal Focusing for Conflict Resolution
Focusing Group/Team for Innovative Problem Solving
Collaborative Edge Focusing Decision Making for Win/Win  Meetings
Focusing Community To Facilitate Diversity and Mutual Support
Creative Edge Organization To Motivate People For Collaborative Action

Creative Edge Organizations  benefit from the innovation, creativity, commitment, and collegiality which come when each person is engaged at their own Creative Edge and sharing and supporting Creative Edge exploration in others. Read Creating At The Edge: The Culture of Creativity

Here is feedback from a Certified Focusing Professional teaching Listening, Focusing, and Collaborative Edge Decision Making (CEDM) in two companies:

“I am teaching two small companies focusing and I also have workshops and individual sessions for everyone interested. I have also done a few talks on focusing, and I want to develop that more. I want to develop everything more!!!
 
I just want to tell you that the people at the companies, were really amazed about your method for decision making. I translated it all and made sheets for them to work with and it all went so well. We have done it twice in two different groups, and the next two weeks we will try it again.

Afterwards one woman said: “I feel like I have a lot of energy after the meeting, usually I am all tired and out of energy.”

Another one said: “I am a slow person, and have often been told, just hurry and pick the word and say what you want. But I don’t feel like doing that, it just makes me feel so stressed. I rather just stay quiet.” And she really enjoyed this kind of meeting.

I could “feel” the stress disappear when everybody understood that they were going to have their piece of the time for saying what they wanted.

And when I told them that they all had the same responsibility for creating a meaningful meeting, it sort of started twinkling in their eyes.

Most amazing of all was that the ones that volunteered for the timekeeping both times we did this, were two people that usually have a hard time being on time (according to the others in the group). Strange, isn’t it?

And more:

“Thank you for the links you gave me here. I am thinking about translating both “5 minutes of grieving” and “Active Listening: Short-Circuit Angry Confrontations”, they are so good, and the people I work with do need something very “resolute” to get started with Focusing in their daily work … there is really a need for a tool that is respectful and very human. (that’s a need everywhere of course!)”

“The staff that I am teaching Focusing are more and more getting it in to their daily routines. They all say: When we start the morning with some Focusing, there is a calm feeling throughout the day! No matter how much stress they are facing.

So now they are trying, at least in one of the companies, to have at least 10 minutes each in the morning, just Listening to what is inside them right now. And at least once a week they do a longer Listening/Focusing turn two and two. And their meetings have really changed!”

See my article, “Creative Edge Organizations: Businesses and Organizations As A ‘Kind’ Of Focusing Community” from The Folio: Thirtieth Anniversity Tribute edition at The Focusing Institute, www.focusing.org .

You can learn all about Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening with the many resources listed below:

CREATIVE EDGE FOCUSING(tm):  SELF-HELP SKILLS FOR HOME AND WORK

Free Downloads:

Complete Focusing Instructions Manual (17 pages)

“Ajas” Instantaneos Mini-Manual

Creative Edge Focusing (www.cefocusing.com ) teaches two basic self-help skills, Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening, which can be applied at home and at work through The Creative Edge Focusing Pyramid.

Based upon Gendlin’s Experiential Focusing (www.focusing.org ) and Rogers’ Empathic Listening, our website is packed with Free Resources and instructions in these basic self-help skills. Learn how to build Support Groups, Conscious Relationships, and Creative Edge Organizations based upon these basic skills of emotional intelligence.

You can try out    “Focusing: Find Out What Is Bothering You.”

Click here to subscribe to Creative Edge Focusing(TM)’s  Instant “Ahah!” e-newsletter and get the latest exercises first!!! 

Click here for a free Intuitive Focusing Mini-Course

Click here for a free Focused Listening Mini-Course

 See  Core Concept: Conflict Resolution to find a complete mini-course on Interpersonal Focusing and Conflict Resolution, including Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication, Blanchard’s “One Minute Apology,” Patricia Evan’s books on Verbally Abuse and Controlling Relationships, McMahon’s Beyond The Myth Of Dominance, and much more.

See  Core Concept: Intimate Relationship to find a complete mini-course on increasing intimacy and sexuality, including the “Sharing Your Day” exercise, Listening/Focusing Partnerships for The Way of Relationship, untangling and equalizing desire, tantric sexuality, and much more.

Download complete Instant “Ahah!” Mini-Manual, in English and Spanish, from CEF Website, or download from links at top of this blog.

Find links to free articles, personality tests, multi-media Self-Help training, Classes and workshops

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

FOCUSING AND BUSINESS: BUILDING COMMUNITY AT WORK

By , January 30, 2009 12:14 pm

In Creative Edge Organizations, everyone learns Intuitive Focusing ( PDF: Focusing Intuitivo: Destreza Basica) to access the intuitive, right-brain Creative Edge of their thinking and problem solving, and everyone learns Focused Listening ( PDF: Destreza Basica: Escucha Focalizada)to help others articulate from the Creative Edge and to hear deeply the views of another instead of arguing.

The exchange of Listening/Focusing Partnership turns leads, not only to creative, innovative problem solving, but also to feelings of “buy in,” “loyalty,” and “collegiality.” The workplace becomes a community,  encouraging diversity and creativity rather than competition and backbiting.

Here is part of my recent article “Creative Edge Organizations: Businesses and Organizations As A ‘Kind’ Of Focusing Community“:

“— Businesses and Organizations ARE Communities

 

Doing my own Thinking At The Edge (TAE) process, I realized that businesses and organizations ARE communities. By their nature, coworkers are “trapped” in a face-to-face, interdependent situation which they cannot leave.

 

Some absolute essentials for workers:

 

• learning to work out their interpersonal conflicts

• having a successful model for making and implementing group decisions

• having a model for creative, innovative thinking and problem solving and for

 communication between themselves and their clients.

• For co-workers: the ability to work in teams, tolerate their diversity, and make

 the most of their “differing gifts.”

 

Businesses cannot afford the constant turnover and need for retraining that comes from irresolvable conflicts.

 

 The model I developed for Focusing Communities, articulated in the Focusing in Community manual (1981, 2007), included all of these things: not just Focusing Alone for creative problem solving, but also Focusing Partnerships in the context of Focusing Groups or Teams, Interpersonal Focusing for resolving conflicts, and Collaborative Focusing-Oriented Decision Making for task-oriented groups. Here was a “package” of skills and methods that could be brought into businesses and organizations.

 

At about this time, I gathered up some books at a kiosk at the Northwest Regional Airport near Bentonville, Arkansas — home of mega-business giant WalMart. Everyone who is a vendor for WalMart passes through that airport, so it seemed to me that the books sold there would be cutting edge —” 

 

Read the entire article “Creative Edge Organizations: Businesses and Organizations As A ‘Kind’ Of Focusing Community in the 30th Anniversary Tribute Focusing Folio online at The Focusing Institute.

 

CREATIVE EDGE FOCUSING(tm):  SELF-HELP SKILLS FOR HOME AND WORK

 

Free Downloads:

Complete Focusing Instructions Manual (17 pages)

“Ajas” Instantaneos Mini-Manual

Creative Edge Focusing (www.cefocusing.com ) teaches two basic self-help skills, Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening, which can be applied at home and at work through The Creative Edge Focusing Pyramid.

Based upon Gendlin’s Experiential Focusing (www.focusing.org ) and Rogers’ Empathic Listening, our website is packed with Free Resources and instructions in these basic self-help skills. Learn how to build Support Groups, Conscious Relationships, and Creative Edge Organizations based upon these basic skills of emotional intelligence.

You can try out “Focusing: Find Out What Is Bothering You.”

Click here to subscribe to Creative Edge Focusing(TM)’s  Instant “Ahah!” e-newsletter and get the latest exercises first!!! Today’s blog is part of the year-long e-course offered through the Instant “Ahah!” e-newsletter.

Click here for a free Intuitive Focusing Mini-Course

Click here for a free Focused Listening Mini-Course

 See Core Concept: Conflict Resolution to find a complete mini-course on Interpersonal Focusing and Conflict Resolution, including Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication, Blanchard’s “One Minute Apology,” Patricia Evan’s books on Verbally Abuse and Controlling Relationships, McMahon’s Beyond The Myth Of Dominance, and much more.

See Core Concept: Intimate Relationship to find a complete mini-course on increasing intimacy and sexuality, including the “Sharing Your Day” exercise, Listening/Focusing Partnerships for The Way of Relationship, untangling and equalizing desire, tantric sexuality, and much more.

Download complete Instant “Ahah!” Mini-Manual, in English and Spanish, from CEF Website, or download from links at top of this blog.

Find links to free articles, personality tests, multi-media Self-Help training, Classes and workshops

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

 

CREATIVITY = THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX = PARADIGM SHIFTS

By , April 23, 2008 4:38 pm

PRISMS/S PROBLEM SOLVING PROCESS AND PARADIGM SHIFTS

Creative genius includes thinking “outside the box,” setting aside preconceived concepts and ideas and being able to “look at” a problem from a totally new angle. Actually, this “looking at” is really the “sitting with” the “intuitive feel,” the fresh, present “felt experiencing” that underlies existing concepts and can lead to the articulation of new, non-linear, creative ideas. Gendlin’s Focusing (Bantam, 1981, 1984), and Dr. McGuire’s Intuitive Focusing, are the pre-eminent approaches for setting aside existing preconceptions, and finding and “sitting with” fresh, preverbal experiencing, the hotbed of new ideas and creative solutions. Below I review some traditional methods for “shaking up” old structures to allow new ideas to become available, then I add the Intuitive Focusing skill into the mix.

In his e-newsletter, The Simple Truth’s Newsletter,Mac Anderson reviews cutting-edge models for increasing creativity and innovation. In the newsletter quoted below, he leads to a link to a beautiful, three-minute video clip which exactly captures the essence of “the paradigm shift”:

“Dear Kathy,
Tom Peters gets it. He said…
“I’ve spent a good part of my life studying economic successes and failures. Above all, I’ve learned that everything takes a back seat to innovation.”
Tomorrow comes at us with lightning speed, and your competitive advantage is a fleeting thing. As leaders, we must create an environment that puts innovation front and center. Your people must know it is the key to your company’s survival.
You must create a climate that rewards risk and creative effort. Your people must not fear mistakes, but understand that honest mistakes can be life’s main source for learning.
SO TEACH THEM TO FAIL QUICKLY, AND OFTEN, TO ENABLE THEM TO REACH THE NEXT PLATEAU.
Every now and then a simple book comes along that deals with a profound subject in an unforgettable way. Paper Airplane is that book; and it teaches a valuable lesson about courage and creativity for people of all ages. It takes less than 30 minutes to read, but the “a-ha moments” are priceless. It’s one of my all time favorites.
So, if you haven’t seen Michael McMillan’s 3 minute inspirational movie titled Paper Airplane, you’re in for a treat! Just click on the link below and share it with friends and co-workers.
http://www.paperairplanemovie.com/ “

Usually, consultants coming in to help corporations with “creativity and innovation” provide a variety of games and other experiences which allow participants to “drop” or “step out of” existing schemata and access the fresh, new pre-verbal experiencing from which new paradigms can be articulated. Here is an introduction to one such “package” of “shake up” exercises:

“WHAT THE CATERPILLAR CALLS THE END OF THE WORLD, GOD CALLS A BUTTERFLY
If you always think the way you’ve always thought, you’ll always get what you always got. The same old, same old ideas over and over again. The future belongs to those thinkers who embrace change, break new ground, forge new paths, and transform the way they think. Discover how to look at the same information as everyone else and see something different by using the creative thinking techniques and strategies that creative geniuses have used throughout history.
Internationally acclaimed creativity expert Michael Michalko’s Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques have inspired business thinkers around the world to create the innovative ideas and creative strategies they need to achieve unimaginable success in today’s changing business environment of complexity and uncertainty. Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.
[Available at www.amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and most major bookstores. Visit www.creativethinking.net for more detailed information on these inexpensive workbooks.]”

DeBono’s Six Thinking Hats, and Parallel and Lateral Thinking (description of trainings and books to purchase) approaches are at the cutting-edge of creavity as breaking out of old structures, accessing the new.

Mind Mapping Techniques (http://www.mindmapper.com/?gclid=CMHz54C975ICFQJtlgodQT-75w for a complete description) are another method for breaking out of linear thought structures and allowing the presentation of facets of problem/solution from the non-linear, “intuitive feel” of “the whole thing.” Intuitive Focusing: “Direct Access” to Paradigm ShiftingAs I presented last week, Flavia Cymbalista has helped George Soros and others dealing with the complexity and uncertainty of financial markets to use Gendlin’s Focusing to articulate from the “intuitive feel” in her Market Focusing  approach at www.marketfocusing.com .

While games and exercises can “shake up” thinking from the outside in, at some point, the “new” answer emerges because someone in the group becomes free of old concepts and able to access The Creative Edge, the preverbal “felt sensing” of new possibilities. Intuitive Focusing allows anyone to access the Creative Edge of new, non-linear problem solving at any time.Rather than looking to the outside for new ideas, the Focuser goes inside, getting in touch with the raw, new, “preverbal” complexity of situations from which new solutions, Paradigm Shifts, emerge.

Reflecting Before Acting or Reacting

The radical contribution of Gendlin’s Focusing (Bantam, 1981) and McGuire’s Creative Edge Focusing ™ is that the problem solver makes the explicit choice to pause and take some moments for silent reflecting before acting or reacting. Instead of simply repeating past reactions, the Focuser can create new, completely innovative solutions and behaviors from the “intuitive feel” of the whole situation.A quiet pause is needed in order to sense into the “intuitive feel,” The Creative Edge, of problems. Whether in private or in group decision making settings, these opportunities for pauses to contact and articulate the Creative Edge are what allow the creation of totally new ideas and solutions. No pauses, no creation of the new!!!!!Using the PRISMS/S Problem Solving Process is like passing light through a prism. A few moments of pondering, and The Creative Edge opens into a whole spectrum of new possibilities and action steps.

Pausing To Ponder: From Problems To Possibilities

The PRISMS/S Problem Solving Process includes seven ingredients of predictable “Ahah!” experiences using Creative Edge Focusing ™. With its Core Skills of Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening , PRISMS/S is based upon Eugene Gendlin‘s “A Theory of Personality Change” (link to Gendlin Online Library at www.focusing.org, where you will find all of Gendlin’s articles for free download) and his Focusing self-help book (Bantam, 1981), as well as Dr. McGuire’s thirty years of  experience integrating Listening/Focusing skills into task-oriented groups and supportive communities.

PRISMS/S is Dr. McGuire’s attempt to create an easily teachable rubric, especially applicable to business settings,  combining Gendlin’s 6-Step Focusing Process with the unfolding steps of change, the “felt shift,” or “paradigm” shift facilitated by Focusing.

PRISMS/S can be used on one’s own or with the help of Focused Listening in a Creative Edge Focusing Partnership, Focusing Group or Team, or Focusing Community. In any case, problem solving goes through the following steps:

Pausing :  Clearing A Space for Problem Identification
Reflecting: Listening To Oneself or
Focused Listening from Another 
Intuitive Focusing:  Back-and-Forth Between Symbols and Intuition
Shifting:  The Kaleidoscope Turns And A New Paradigm Arises
Movement:  Innovative Solutions and Action Steps Arise Spontaneously
Satisfaction:  Tension Releases in the Sureness of “Ahah! That’s It!”
Support: Listening/Focusing Partnerships Build Empathy and Community

Click here to read and download the complete description of the steps of PRISMS/S from www.cefocusing.com. You will find there a link to the Spanish translation as well.

Focusing Partnerships, Groups/Teams, Communities

While anyone can learn to use PRISMS/S for creative problem solving on one’s own, the process can be greatly facilitated by having an outside Focused Listening Partner. Read about all the options for Focusing Alone, Focusing Partnership, Focusing Groups/Teams, etc. under Case Studies at www.cefocusing.com .

If you do not have a Listening/Focusing Partnership, consider whether there is a colleague at work, a friend or family member who is already an excellent listener and might be interested in learning the formal Listening/Focusing Partnership method with you. Then, use the multi-media materials in our Self-Help Package or the free download of Chapter Three: The Listening/Focusing Exchange (a link at the top of this blog entry ). You can also enroll in Listening/Focusing Classes/Workshops internationally  with Certified Focusing Professionals or bring in Creative Edge Consulting for onsite training.

The Blurry, Vague, “Feel of the Whole Thing” Holds The Next Steps

   

I invite you to use Intuitive Focusing again below to find next steps on a “creative project”: an article, a book, a poem, a song, a dance, a marketing campaign, an engineering breakthrough, some project needing creative ideas.

If you need to work more specifically on “blocks” to creativity, you could use Cornell and McGavin’s technique from last week, using Focusing to give a gentle hearing to the “part” that wants to “hold back,” as well as the “part” that wants to “go forward,” until steps toward resolution arise (Week Two Treasures In Blocks).

Focusing On A Creative Problem or Project

Click here to find the complete Intuitive Focusing exercise in e-newsletter archives

Remember, it is often easier to learn Intuitive Focusing with the company of a Focusing Listener. See links below to find many resources, including self-help groups, and Creative Edge Focusing Consultants for individual Coaching or Classes and Workshops.

Download complete Instant “Ahah!” Mini-Manual, in English and Spanish, from CEF Website

Find links to free articles, personality tests, multi-media Self-Help training, Classes and workshops

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

The site of new insights and creative solutions is at the edge of what is already known. This edge, The Creative Edge, holds implicit within it all past and future knowing about the problem, more than could ever be put into words in a linear way 

CREATIVITY, INTUITION, AND GLADWELL’S “BLINK THINKING”

By , April 18, 2008 2:54 pm

INTUITIONS GUIDE CREATIVE DECISION MAKING

 

“Blink Thinking”

 

In his best-selling book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking(Little Brown, 2005), Malcolm Gladwell justified the importance of intuitive, “gut” thinking in decision making. In fact, he pointed out that, contrary to our assumptions about our rationality, many high-level decisions are based more upon a “gut sense” or a “blink of an eye” impression than upon rational, logical thinking.

 

When they believe they are using objective indicators for choices, people are often influenced by subjective, peripheral factors “outside of awareness.” For instance, for generations, classical music orchestras believed that women could not master the instruments or the nuance of the music. Women were seldom hired.

Then, orchestras started having performers audition behind a screen, cutting out visual cues in making hiring decisions. To everyone’s surprise, chosen through “listening” alone, women were actually chosen a majority of the time, even for instruments “presumed” to be more “masculine,” like French Horn and other brass instruments.

 

Gladwell distinguished between two kinds of intuitive decision making:

·        In the one case, a person has a “gut sensing,” an unclear, preverbal “feel” about something, which is very real and substantial and resilient, impossible to put aside or ignore, even though words for it can’t be found. An example: some museum curators have a “sense” that there is something wrong about an antique statue. They don’t know what it is, but their “body-sense” tells them there is something. Eventually, following this “intuition,” they discover concrete evidence that it is a facsimile.

 

·        In the second case, a person makes a decision in “the blink of an eye,” without even awareness of an “intuitive feel” but out of an immediate, precognitive assessment of a situation. An example: a fireman deciding where to step, which way to go, what to do in a split-second emergency situation.

 

Gladwell says that we can’t really “unpack” our “gut senses.” However, although this is true about the split-second decisions in emergency situations, it is not true for the more common situations in his first case, where there is a gnawing, long-lasting “gut sensing,” an “intuitive feel,” for which words HAVE NOT YET been found. In these latter situations, Intuiti Focusing, “sitting with” the “intuitive feel” of “the whole thing,” and carefully looking for words and images which are exactly “right” in capturing this preverbal “intuition,” is a premiere way for increasing the usefulness of “intuitive” or “gut” information.

 

Using Intuitive Focusing In Situations Of Uncertainty

 

In her Market Focusing approach (www.marketfocusing.com ), Flavia Cymbalista  taught Gendlin’s Focusing to people like George Soros, financier, and others needing to make decisions in situations of “uncertainty”, like the ever-changing stock market. Traders often had to follow their “intuition” and wished for something more substantial to base decisions upon.

 

Soros thought he used logical, rational indicators for decisions. Through work with Cymbalista, he realized that, actually, he got a “pain in his back” when his portfolio needed adjusting, and the pain disappeared when he got it “right.” He was following an “intuition,” a “bodily feel” without words. He and others learned that consciously using Gendlin’s Focusing to find words and images for “gut intuition” allowed even greater access to the “intuitive feel” for market decisions.

 

“Gut Sensing” Is Everywhere In Creative Decision Making

 

Here are just a few situations where pausing for some minutes of Intuitive Focusing can provide a way forward:

 

·        You have a “gut feeling” of exactly what problem you want to work on, but you don’t have any words or images to describe it.

·        Your boss hands you a problem to solve out of the blue, and you have no idea where to begin, how to approach it.

·        You are “stuck” on a creative project, “blocked,” no inspiration about where to go next.

·        You know that something is bothering you, your whole body is tense, you can’t sleep, but you have no idea what the problem is.

·        You have an”inkling,” an “intuition,” but you can’t put it into words.

·        You have a “hunch” about what to do, an action you want to take, but you can’t verbalize any reasons to justify it.

·        You wake up with the “feel” of a forgotten night-time dream.

·        You have a wonderful feeling of well-being, a “spiritual” feeling, and you would like to spend more time with it, finding a way to describe it.

·        You have an uncomfortable feeling after an interaction with someone, but you don’t know exactly what it is about, so you don’t know what to do about it.

·        You know exactly what you want to do but find yourself blocked, unable to move forward.

·        You might have no feelings, no creative ideas. You feel like a flat piece of concrete.

·        You feel totally stressed out, confused, overwhelmed —

 

Focused Listening To Aid In Creative Problem Solving

 

While a person can use Intuitive Focusing on their own to find words for “gut sensing,” having the help of a Focused Listener, in aFocusing Partnership or Focusing Group/Team, can make this process of “finding words” easier. Here is a hypothetical example.

 

The Focuser sits with The Creative Edge, the murky, intuitive “feel” of the whole Gestalt, and attempts to make new words and images using the Intuitive Focusing skill. The Listener uses Pure Reflection, simply saying back the words and images of the Focuser, without judgment or advice, and with emphasis upon reflecting “the unclear edge,” the “bodily, intuitive feel.”  The Focused Listener can reflect back the Focuser’s actual words as well as the less-clear nuances, until the Focuser finds exactly the right new symbolizations to capture The Creative Edge.

 

 Example:

 

The Focuser starts out with a “gut sense” about a problem. He knows there is something wrong, but he can’t put his finger on what that is nor on a solution:

     

 Focuser: “There is something about the mechanical execution of this model that is not going to work — I don’t know what it is, but I can sense it. I’m uneasy about it —“

       Listener: “So there’s an uneasiness there — something not right about the

    mechanical execution —“

Focuser: (sitting quietly, pondering at the Creative Edge — ) “All I get so far is an image of red intertwining with white, two triangles intersecting — “

Listener: “So there’s an image — two triangles intersecting — red and white intertwining —“

Focuser: (some excitement in voice, opens eyes) Let me draw that (starts drawing with pen and paper, grabs red and white chalk — soon, a gear-like drawing emerges) —(evident excitement) Yes, it’s something there , in that gear box!!!

Listener: “So, you can see clearly now — it’s something in that particular gear box — “

Focuser: (closes eyes) “Let me sense into that some more (sits quietly, pondering at The Creative Edge — over a minute — ) — something, something twisty there —“

Listener: “Twisty —“

Focuser: (more closed-eyed Focusing, pondering at The Creative Edge — minute or more — sighs, shifts in seat — more pondering —)”Hmmmm — I think I’m getting it — something about the ratios there, the red too dominant over the white — “

Listener: “The ratios — red over white —“

Focuser: “I’ve got it — needs to be 8:6!”

 

Clearly, the Listener doesn’t even have to understand what the Focuser is talking about, but, still, having that outside person offering Reflection can carry forward the process of creating new symbolizations out of The Creative Edge.

 

Even though Focused Listening allows the Listener to occasionally use other kinds of responses (Asking For More, Focusing Invitations, and Personal Sharings), pure reflection is still the most powerful form of response to someone using Intuitive Focusing at The Creative Edge.

If you do not have a Listening/Focusing Partnership, consider whether there is a colleague at work, a friend or family member who is already an excellent listener and might be interested in learning the formal Listening/Focusing Partnership method with you. Then, use the multi-media materials in our Self-Help Package or the free download of Chapter Three: The Listening/Focusing Exchange (a link at the top of this blog entry )

The Blurry, Vague, “Feel of the Whole Thing” Holds The Next Steps

   

I invite you to use Intuitive Focusing again below to find next steps on a “creative project”: an article, a book, a poem, a song, a dance, a marketing campaign, an engineering breakthrough, some project needing creative ideas.

If you need to work more specifically on “blocks” to creativity, you could use Cornell and McGavin’s technique from last week, using Focusing to give a gentle hearing to the “part” that wants to “hold back,” as well as the “part” that wants to “go forward,” until steps toward resolution arise (Week Two Treasures In Blocks).

Focusing On A Creative Problem or Project Click here to find the exercise

Remember, it is often easier to learn Intuitive Focusing with the company of a Focusing Listener. See links below to find many resources, including self-help groups, and Creative Edge Focusing Consultants for individual Coaching or Classes and Workshops.

Download complete Instant “Ahah!” Mini-Manual, in English and Spanish, from CEF Website

Find links to free articles, personality tests, multi-media Self-Help training, Classes and workshops

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

The site of new insights and creative solutions is at the edge of what is already known. This edge, The Creative Edge, holds implicit within it all past and future knowing about the problem, more than could ever be put into words in a linear way 

FOCUSING AND CREATIVITY: FINDING TREASURE IN BLOCKS

By , April 16, 2008 4:04 pm

RELEASING BLOCKS TO CREATIVITY

“Treasure Maps To The Soul”

Ann Weiser Cornell and Barbara McGavin, Certified Focusing Trainers, have made a life’s work at discovering the treasures that lie within our deepest conflicts, action blocks, addictions, depression, and other forms of “stuckness.” They have developed a workshop called “Treasure Maps To The Soul” which introduces participants to many forms of “stuckness,” like the Swamp, The Fog, The Dragon, and how to use Focusing to find the treasure, the life-direction forward, in each of these blocks.

Central to their method is “the radical acceptance of everything.” Taking a neutral position of Presence inside, the Focuser then welcomes and greets with curiosity ANY inner experience that wants to come forward, without judgment. With respectful and compassionate Listening to EVERY part, EVERY aspect, their Inner Relationship Focusing allows even the most hated “blocks” and “critics” to soften, to express their own positive wants and needs and wishes to protect the Focuser.

In experiencing a “block,” there is a “part” of us that wants to go forward, to do our creative project, and a “part” that holds us back. We plan to paint, and never get to it. We sit down to write, and become totally blank, feeling suffocated. We try to write a report, and find ourselves daydreaming. Usually, we try to “beat up” or “beat down” the “part” that we see as getting in the way, holding us back.

In Focusing, we stop this inner battle and finally turn with compassionate Listening to this blocking part, asking, “Okay, what is going on for you — ?  What do you need?— What are you trying to protect us from?—How can I allow you to be welcome and present while we attempt this task?” And the Focuser also then takes time to Listening with compassionate curiosity to the “part” that DOES want to go forward, its needs, wishes, fears, hopes, etc.  By going back and forth between the two, Focusing allows something to “shift” inside, and a new possibility for going forward to arise. Here is the Introduction to one of Ann’s Articles from her website for Focusing Resources:

 

How To Use Focusing To Release Blocks To Action

by Ann Weiser Cornell, PhD
This article originally appeared in the January 1993 issue of The Focusing Connection (Subscribe).
Writer’s block, procrastination, being a pack rat… all these are action blocks. If you want to start an exercise program but you don’t, if you want to keep your desk clean but you don’t, if you want to be more creative but it just doesn’t happen, you are experiencing an action block–and Focusing can help. Action blocks are painful, and everyone experiences them at times. For some people, the struggle dominates their lives. Are you familiar with wanting to do something day after day, even cursing and criticizing yourself for not doing it? Do you know about making resolution after resolution, even changing for a little while, but always sliding back? Wouldn’t you love to be able to break that cycle and act easily and confidently instead? Focusing releases the stuck system by changing the dynamic that holds the action block in place. In an action block, there is a part of you that isn’t being heard. Ironically, that’s the same part of you that seems to be in charge: the one that isn’t taking action. It has you in its iron grip, and yet it’s lonely, isolated, unacknowledged. No one has really asked it yet, “How come you’re so set against taking action?” (Remember, being sure that you already know why is not the same thing as asking it!) The Focusing process starts by bringing in self-compassion instead of self-criticism. This alone begins the process of release, because self-criticism is the glue that holds the action block in place. It’s funny, isn’t it, that it often feels like just the opposite is true? I feel like my criticism of the part of me that won’t exercise is my only hope of moving it, and that if I accept it, it will really take over my life! But actually, self-criticism holds the system in place because it ensures that the criticized part will not be heard, and everything will stay the same. And remember: compassion and acceptance are not the same as agreement or giving in. I can still want to change, while being compassionate to the part of me that doesn’t want to. Through Focusing, we create an inner atmosphere of safety, where any part of us can be heard without being attacked or criticized. This is important, because if you want to hear the truth and be released, you can’t put pre-conditions on what you hear. “You can tell me anything except…” just won’t work. In Focusing, it is quite literally true that the truth will set you free. So if you want to set the stage for allowing truth to come, start with an inner atmosphere of compassion, if possible. (If something in you says “No” to being compassionate, see if you can be compassionate to that!)

Listening to the Part that Blocks You —“
READ ON AT ANN’S WEBSITE and check out the many other great articles in her Library and Workshop Offerings.

FOCUSING EXERCISE: RELEASING BLOCKS TO CREATIVITY

Last week, we used Focusing just to work with the “intuitive feel,” the “bodily-felt sense” of next steps in a creative project. We will return to this. But, for today, I ask you to look for a place in your life where you are “stuck” or “blocked” in terms of a creative project, where you are trying to move forward but continuously are holding yourself back at the same time. To begin the Focusing Exercise below, I will ask you to scan your life and choose a “blocked project,” then lead you through Focusing instructions which allow you to “listen to” both sides in the conflict, allowing new possibilities for moving forward to emerge:

 Leave at least one minute of silence between each instruction

(One minute)

Okay — first, just get yourself comfortable — feel the weight of your body on the chair — loosen any clothing that is too tight —

(One minute)

Spend a moment just noticing your breathing — don’t try to change it — just notice the breath going in — and out —

(One minute —)

Now, notice where you have tension in your body (pause) —

(One minute — )

Now, imagine the tension as a stream of water, draining out of your body through your fingertips and feet (Pause) —

(One minute — )

Let yourself travel inside of your body to a place of peace —

(One minute — )

Now, bring to mind a creative problem or project that needs attention, particularly one where there is some blockage to forward movement. Take as long as you need to scan your life, looking for something with this kind of “stuckness” (pause) —

(One minute or more — )

Choose one “blocked” project, and spend a moment just bringing it fully to mind, thinking about where you are in relation to it, where you “left off,” the “next step,” the “block” —

(One minute — )

Now, try to set aside all of your thoughts about the situation and possible solutions, and, as you carry a mental image of the problem or project in your mind, just wait and see what comes in the center of your body, around your heart/chest area,  in response (pause) — not words, but the intuitive feel of the whole situation, The Creative Edge —

(One minute — )

Now, carefully try to find words or an image for that Edge — Go carefully back and forth between any words and the intuitive feel of the whole thing until you find words or an image that are just right for it —

(One minute — )

Now, gently ask yourself, “What is in the way here? What is the body-sense for the part that gets in the way, doesn’t want to work on the project”, and wait, at least a minute, to see what comes in your wordless intuition, your whole-body sense, The Creative Edge —

(One minute —)

Carefully look for some words or an image or metaphor that exactly fit that Edge —

(One minute — )

Now, ask that “resisting” or “critical” part, “What is this like for you? Why are you holding back? Is there something you are wanting to protect me from? Is there something you are wishing for?”  Take some time just to “listen to” how it is for this part of yourself. Go back-and-forth between words/images and the “bodily feel” of that part until you have captured the “feel of it all” —

(One – three minutes — )

Now, turn your attention to the other side, the “part” of you that wants to move forward, to tackle the project, to have the pleasure of creating. Spend some time looking for the “intuitive feel” of this forward-moving, creating part or energy.  Don’t answer from your head, what you already know, but wait, as long as a minute, for an answer to come in the center of your body, your wordless intuition, The Creative Edge —

(One minute — )

Again, carefully find words or an image for that, ” the part that wants to create” Weiser Cornell suggests that you imagine yourself working on the project, being free-flowing creative, and get the “body-feel” for what that is like, and find some words or images/metaphors to capture that–

(One to three minutes — )

And ask that part some open-ended questions, like “What is this like for you, being creative?— What are you wanting/needing?— What is a first step you can imagine for moving forward?”. Again, don’t answer from your head, but wait as much as a minute for “the feel of that whole thing” to arise, and then carefully go back-and-forth, finding words/images/metaphors/gestures to capture the “intuitive feel.”

(One to three minutes —)

Continue in this way, going back and forth between the two sides, asking each, “And how is that for you?” , waiting to see what comes in your body, finding words and images for that, letting each side fully express itself.  If other “parts” arise, make room for them as well, giving them time to express themselves.

As you spend compassionate, non-judgmental Listening time with each aspect of the situation, you will find the different “sides” softening and blending, becoming more understanding of each others’ needs, more willing to look for an acceptable “next step forward.”

Weiser Cornell and McGavin suggest you pay special attention to what the “blocking, holding back” aspect is “afraid of” or “wanting to protect” the Focuser from, and what it does want for the Focuser. They find that Critical and Blocking parts are often motivated by FEAR and think they are working in the best interest of the person, guarding and protecting from fearful outcomes in the only way they know how.

Spend as long as is comfortable listening to the various aspects of your “conflicted” situation, looking for a possible step forward. If no clear next step arises, just remind yourself that, by spending Focusing time sitting with The Creative Edge, you have added energy and started a new living-forward, and, especially if you continue to hold “the feel of it all” on the back-burner of your mind, later something new will likely pop up —

(One minute)

Appreciate yourself and your “subconscious,” the “intuitive feel,” for taking time with this, trusting that taking time is the important thing — solutions can then arise later.

Remember, it is often easier to learn Intuitive Focusing with the company of a Focusing Listener. See links below to find many resources, including self-help groups, and Creative Edge Focusing Consultants for individual Coaching or Classes and Workshops.

Download complete Instant “Ahah!” Mini-Manual, in English and Spanish, from CEF Website

Find links to free articles, personality tests, multi-media Self-Help training, Classes and workshops

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

The site of new insights and creative solutions is at the edge of what is already known. This edge, The Creative Edge, holds implicit within it all past and future knowing about the problem, more than could ever be put into words in a linear way 

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