Toddler's feelings are transparent. As we age and learn to symbolize through language, we can also "lose touch" with ourselves and become unable to express ourselves. Intuitive Focusing and Active, Empathic Listening can help children "stay in touch" and express themselves as they grow. Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening can also help adults to "refind" and express themselves authentically.
Intuitive Focusing is a premiere method for going back-and-forth between body and mind, healing the split. Combining Focusing with energy-awaking methods like Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), Qigong, meditation, and Tai Chi brings additional power for integrating mind and body.
Creativity comes from inside, from articulation of The Creative Edge, the "something-more-than-words" experienced as intuitions, gut instincts, the vague, blurry "feel" of "the whole thing." Creative Edge Listening and Creative Edge Focusing are self-help skills that facilitate exploration of the "not-yet-known. Applications at home and work, alone, for interpersonal conflict and for creative problem solving in organizations.
Self-reflection, the "pause" before acting or reacting, is a learnable skill. Based upon Gendlin's Focusing (Bantam, 1981, 1984), the PRISMS/S Problem Solving Process, including Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening, teaches basic self-help skills for self-reflection. The kaleidoscope turns, and new ideas and action steps become possible.
Intuitive Focusing, based on Gendlin's Focusing, is a six-step self-help process for going deeper into vague, bodily-felt discomforts, intuitions, gut instincts legitimated by Malcolm Gladwell in Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. When just-right words and images are found for the "bodily-felt sense" of issues and ideas, "Ahah!" experiences, transformation, paradigm shifts follow. George Soros uses something like Intuitive Focusing in deciding when to rearrange his portfolio. Focusing can be used for problem solving at home and at work. A child's first exploration of a Christmas present makes a good visual image of this "going deeper" into the "implicit" information held in the "bodily-felt sense.
Photos of Yellowstone mists, mud pots, steaming cauldrons, geisers are used to illustrate the ever-changing nature of the psyche and the Intuitive Focusing process, a simple self-help skill for "sitting with" this teeming creativity and finding words and images which allow a techtonic shift, an Instant "Ahah!" of insight and creative problem solving. The Creative Edge Focusing Pyramid allows the use of Intuitive Focusing at home and at work, alone, in conflict, for group problem solving.
Comparing a Thinker and a Feeler on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), we see videos of Eugene Gendlin, creator of Focusing, describing theory in a felt-sensing yet Thinking way, compared to video of Kelly Corrigan, being "touched" and "moved" as she describes "Women and Strength. Why are tears associated with moments of transcendence, awe, love?
Intuitive Focusing involves noticing that there is "something more than words" inside and making the decision to stop, pause, and spend some time "sitting with" this "intuitive feel" until it is allowed to open and "carry forward" into new actions steps, solutions and ideas. Here, a cat models this "sitting with."
Photos of lotus flower unfolding (in Arkansas!) are metaphor for the gentle opening from potential to actualization that comes from Intuitive Focusing.
Using Intuitive Focusing to pay attention to a strong positive emotional experience of "being touched" in a situation can lead to finding words and images for core spiritual and life-directing meanings, leading to a clear action path ahead.