CE Focusing Blog

Complete Focusing Instructions Manual (17 pages)

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

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 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

collaboration, community building, education, Uncategorized | apathy, bottom-up motivation, collaboration, Common Cents, community building, Empathy, Penny Harvest, service-learning, social consciousness, teaching activism, Teddy Gross, volunteerism

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

By Kathy McGuire, April 11, 2009 2:30 pm

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)

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

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 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

Creativity, Intuitive Focusing, LISTENING, self-help skills | Active Listening, Creative Edge Focusing, creative problem solving, Creativity, Dr. Kathy McGuire, Empathic Listening, Empathy, Focused Listening, Gendlin's Focusing, Getting A Felt Sense, interpersonal problem solving, Intuitive Focusing, paradigm shifts, personal growth, self-help skills, The Creative Edge

INTUITIVE FOCUSING: THE ONE MINUTE PAUSE — REFLECTING, NOT REACTING

By Kathy McGuire, April 10, 2009 5:02 pm

Self-Reflection

We like to think of ourselves as free. But, most of the time, we are actually simply reacting to the stimuli around us. Something happens, and we REACT. We do not usually STOP, even for a moment, to REFLECT upon what is happening. We are not “free” but quite controlled by the situations around us. And, most importantly, we are also controlled by the residue left by our past experiences in similar situations.

Human beings have the special capacity to be self-reflective. We are able to take a step back and look at what we are doing, ponder, “Why am I acting like this in this situation?”, and change our future actions. But too seldom do we take this “one minute pause” before reacting.

The capacity for self-reflection becomes urgently important when our “reactions” are not serving us well. It is then that we seek psychotherapy or other help — to figure out why we act as we do and how we might act differently.

True change comes from INSIDE and cannot be given as advice by another. Change from advice is short-term. Through self-reflection, change becomes lasting. Internal patterns change, like a kaleidoscope turning. THEN new thoughts, emotions, and action steps become possible.

Before a crisis leads to therapy, self-reflection can be learned as the simple self-help skill, Intuitive Focusing. Based upon Eugene Gendlin’s six-step Focusing process (Focusing, Bantam, 1981, 1984), Intuitive Focusing is the disciplined “practice” of self-reflection. Intuitive Focusing makes productive use of the PAUSE for self-reflection.

During the pause, the Focuser turns inward and pays attention to the “intuitive feel,” the “something-more-than-words” which underlies thoughts, behaviors, actions. During this quiet inner attention, the Focuser looks for words or images that are “just right” in capturing the “intuitive feel.” When “just right” symbolizations are found, the “bodily-felt sense” opens and shifts, is carried forward to new understandings. The kaleidoscope turns, and a whole new pattern of possibilities arises.

The PRISMS/S PROBLEM SOLVING PROCESS begins with the PAUSE and goes through the Intuitive Focusing steps needed for paradigm shifts, for the kaleidoscope to turn.

While Intuitive Focusing can be practiced alone, the quiet time for self-reflection can be greatly facilitated by the company of a Focused Listener. The Focused Listener says back the Focusers words, with special attention to the “feeling tone,” the “something more than words.” In a Focusing Community, people take turns as the Focuser and Listener, helping each other with problem solving.

Experiential Focusing Therapy also places emphasis upon teaching this self-help skill of productive self-reflection, so that clients can continue to solve their own problems throughout their life.

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)

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

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 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

experiential focusing therapy, Intuitive Focusing, LISTENING, self-help skills | Active Listening, behavior change, depression, experiential focusing therapy, Focused Listening, Focusing-Oriented Therapy, Gendlin's Focusing, Getting A Felt Sense, Intuitive Focusing, paradigm shifts, self-help skills, self-reflection

INTUITIVE FOCUSING: FROM MUD POTS TO GEISERS AND TECHTONIC SHIFTS PHOTOS YELLOWSTONE CLICK!

Comments (1)

By Kathy McGuire, March 21, 2009 2:34 pm

Stagnant and sterile: Stuck!

The psyche, like Yellowstone Park, is a seething cauldron, brewing and steaming, shrouded in mist, ever ready to throw up a bubble or a blast of something new, and capable of deep change, techtonic shifts.

Intuitive Focusing, based upon Eugene Gendlin’s six-step Focusing Process (Focusing www.focusing.org ) is a simple, predictable self-help method for “sitting with” the mist, the bubbling, the cauldron, and finding words and images which bring the depths into consciousness. Undercurrents can become “techtonic shifts,” Instant “Ahah!”s of creativity, emotional problem solving, innovation, spirituality.

The PRISMS/S Problem Solving Process begins with the pregnant Pause and uses Intuitive Focusing to find words and images which lead to paradigm shifts.

The Creative Edge Focusing Pyramid of applications allows use of Intuitive Focusing at home and at work, alone, in partnerships, in groups/teams, for interpersonal conflict resolution, for Creative Edge Meetings, and Creative Edge Organizations.

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)

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

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 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

health, Intuitive Focusing, self-help skills, spirituality | anger management, anxiety, biospiritual focusing, Creative Edge Focusing, creative problem solving, Creativity, depression, geiser photos, Gendlin's Focusing, Getting A Felt Sense, guided imagery, Intuitive Focusing, meditation, paradigm shifts, personal growth, Photos of Yellowstone, spirituality, stress reduction

CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN BUSINESSES: TEACHING INTERPERSONAL FOCUSING

By Kathy McGuire, March 16, 2009 2:31 pm

Creative Edge Organizations, using The Creative Edge Focusing Pyramid for application at all levels, incorporate Interpersonal Focusing for conflict resolution as well as Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening to facilitate creative, innovative problem solving. Interpersonal Focusing can take place in a separate session or right during the flow of a Collaborative Edge Decision Making (CEDM) meeting. But how do you teach Interpersonal Focusing in an actual business or organization, if there are no conflicts evident? How do you introduce it without the stress of a full-blown conflict?

Interpersonal Focusing can involve the use of a Third Person Listening Facilitator mediating between the two people in conflict. Download the entire Interpersonal Focusing Chapter from Focusing In Community: How To Start A Listening/Focusing Support Group. Order the complete manual and multimedia Self-Help Package .

From a Certified Focusing Professional bringing the CEDM model, and Creative Edge Pyramid, into two businesses:

“Can I ask you a question? I have tried to teach the same group that was so happy about CEDM, your Interpersonal Focusing, when people disagree about something. They find it hard to practice the method, without two people really having an argument. Do you have any suggestion how to “train” this skill, listening to another that you have an argument with?

Because the people I teach, they say something like “No, I could never listen in a Focusing way when I am mad at someone”. Maybe just practicing focusing is the best?”

My response: The question is a good one: how do you teach Interpersonal Focusing when there is no conflict going on?

Sometimes I have worked instead on even when one person in the group has strong positive feelings about someone else, like “Wishing I could be like you,” “Thinking you are so self-confident,” etc. Even hearing this kind of positive information about oneself can be difficult to hear and provide a good exercise in Focused Listening to emotional material.
And you can decide to have a discussion about a topic likely to bring up some conflict. E.g., it is not difficult to find two people who have differing views about politics, for instance, or any other controversial topic.
If this is a group that works together, there can also be a fear of uncovering any negative feelings or interpersonal conflicts, so saying “Oh, we don’t have any of those.” Maybe done the road they would feel safer.
Usually, when I have an ongoing 10-week group, I look for small conflicts we can practice on, as simple as whether we should invite new members, or whether we should have tea and snacks.
Also, if I see a conflict happening, I drop the lesson for the day and practice Interpersonal Focusing right then instead.
You could also have a Focuser work on their feelings about someone outside of the group that makes them really, really mad — so, as Listener, people could at least have the experience of Listening to someone who might be really angry, but it would be less threatening than working on their problems with each other. I think this is a great idea! Getting people used to being around anger when it is not directed at them, getting them used to just reflecting it.

But, you are correct, the more people practice Focusing, in the sense of “owning” their own internal reactions, and Listening, being able to set aside one’s own reactions and really “hear” another, the more these skills will be available when a conflict arises—

For more on dealing with anger, see my “yelling at the wall” component in the Passive Listening Turns model and my Active Listening Turns short article.

Five Minute Grieving might be helpful (what to do if a patient, client, friend, colleague starts crying) and bring up interesting discussion about the role of emotion in business settings.

These are all Instant “Ahah!”s in the sidebar of my website homepage and also in the free download, Instant Ahah Mini-Manual, which you can find below.

Especially in businesses whose work is helping and supporting and healing others, it is important to find a way to nurture those who are trying to help others. That, to me, has always been the great gift of teaching Listening/Focusing to staff — that they can choose to use it to support each other as well!

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)

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

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 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

Business, conflict resolution, LISTENING | Active Listening, anger management, collaboration, conflict resolution, creative problem solving, Empathic Listening, Focused Listening, Gendlin's Focusing, harmonious relationships, Interpersonal Focusing, interpersonal problem solving, Intuitive Focusing, peace making, teaching Active Listening, teaching Focusing

INTUITIVE FOCUSING: THE GIFT IN EMOTIONAL DEPRESSION, ECONOMIC RECESSION, AND OTHER TIMES OF “IMPRISONMENT”

By Kathy McGuire, March 13, 2009 12:03 pm

: From The Bog Comes The Lotus

: A Profusion of Growing Mandala

Times of grief, depression, economic recession, imprisonment, in the external world or internally self-imposed, can give the time needed to go deeply, “fish up” new energies and creativities from the bottom feeders, and come out renewed.

Intuitive Focusing, especially in the company of Focused Listening from an empathic friend or support group, is a simple self-help tool for doing this fishing, providing predictable steps for “Ahah!” experiences, at home, work, and in the community, while avoiding getting drowned in the process!

A friend posted this on the Focusing Discussion e-list (subscribe at www.focusing.org under “Felt Community”) and, with his permission, I share it with you:

“(A blog about innovation prompts the following thoughts, which takes form together with what comes for me)

On reflecting on these dark and unprecedented times, amidst gathering clouds and raging storms… it occurs that our predicament is not without parallel (I do not mean 1929), and that it is only that we have not just yet recognised the edges of our cell. By way of locating ourselves, a we-ing of us in this, an Eskimo proverb says that in the storm is the time to fish…

So I’d like to tell you a story… but first, what are the similarities in the lives of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela? Each made a personal and social contribution to equality that was far-reaching, upset a status quo, and has sustained beyond their lives. Each recognised the energy of truth and non-violence. And each spent a lot of time in jail, and each found it to be productive time for reflecting and writing, re-editing and re-imagining the world as-it-was-known.

Ibn Al-Haitham is less known but no different. Ab? Al? al-Hasan ibn ibn al-Haytham (also known as Al hazen) is considered as the first ‘scientist’, a pioneer of the scientific method and a ‘father’ of optics. He headed a project to regulate the flow of the Nile in Egypt. Once he decided it was impossible, he escaped severe punishment from the Fatimid caliph in Cairo only by pretending to be mad. So instead of a death sentence, he was kept under house arrest until Hakim’s death in 1021.

There, in-house (as more than a few of us are about to be), he spent his time experimenting with light and physics, and made the discovery of light travelling in a straight line (instead of light beaming out of eyes as it was known) by making holes in the prison’s wall and seeing how buildings outside were depicted upside down on the other wall. Ibn al-Haitham gave the first clear description, illustration, and correct analysis of the camera obscura. The word ‘camera’ comes from the Arabic (qamara), which means dark or private room.

During this time in prison, he wrote the influential Book of Optics and scores of other important treatises on physics, medicine, science and mathematics problems (among which he explored the squaring of the circle). More than 200 works he wrote on all these topics, and in particular published a seven-volume treatise on optics which had great celebrity and influenced western thought, notably that of Bacon and Kepler. His time in prison gave him time to open himself to new theories, and elaborate the gift of a deeper science of optics some 6 centuries before Isaac Newton’s studies.

So in thinking about ‘our time in prison’, and considering the evolving impacts that the decline-of-empire inevitably bring, this might also just be our opportunity to explore new ways of being-before-doing in a global self-righting-and-redistribution. Seeking new ways to see and know, even when the images are unfamiliar, upsidedown, senseless, or without a pattern that can be quickly picked.

Not a story directly related to Focusing, but when I hear ‘try Focusing with anything’, I want also to try it with contemporary apprehension, with uncertainty and suburban dread, with this wintering and these icy currents, with what works at all anywhere in this we-ing across the world, in our qamaras and private connections, in my living, seeking wild hybridisations and simpler, quieter approaches – much like in remembering how to fish… in a storm.
Mmm … what might that feel like…”

My friend includes a link to a beautiful short video, A Father’s Tools and The Tears of Things, by Tim Wilson, who includes many more “deep fishing” videos at www.personamedia.com .

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)

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

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 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

Intuitive Focusing | Active Listening, anxiety, Creativity, depression, economic recession, Empathic Listening, Focused Listening, Gendlin's Focusing, imprisonment, Intuitive Focusing, meditation, paradigm shifts, self-help skills, social change, spirituality, stress reduction

OBAMA DESIGNER JASON WU’S FASHION ROYALTY DOLL OSCAR’S RED CARPET DIORAMA

By Kathy McGuire, March 6, 2009 12:09 pm

: Exotica Adele Arrives

: Crowds on the Red Carpet

: Young Erin and Glam Lush Life

: Glamorous Lush Life Poses

: Flame Rouge With James Bond

: Kyori and James Bond!

: Barbie’s Ken Escorts Natalia Fatale

: Ken and Natalia

: Bollywood’s Isha With Veronique

: Exotica Adele Closeup

: All Together Now

Okay, after five posts on “Why Cry?” (Parts 1-5), time for some light-hearted fun where Dr. Kathy McGuire plays with her collection of Jason Wu’s fantastic Fashion Royalty dolls and their male escorts on the Red Carpet for Oscar night.

Wu, who designed Michele Obama’s Inaugural Ball Gown, began winning Barbie doll fashion design contests at age 16, went on to join multi-ethnic doll company Integrity Toys (www.integritytoys.com ), and soon started his own line for Integrity, the Fashion Royalty dolls (www.fashionroyalty.com ).

Initially extremely limited (100-1000 max, compared to Barbie’s 30,000-100,000!), with beautiful authentic multi-ethnic face sculpts with fabulous makeup, and fashions from gorgeous fabrics, totally lined, with tucks and pleats and flounces and buttons and snaps galore (compared to Barbie’s velcro closings!), Wu’s Fashion Royalty dolls took the doll collecting world by storm. The entire new line was bought up in Spring and Fall completely on Pre-Order, sight unseen, and dolls immediately tripled (or more!) in value on ebay.

Search “Fashion Royalty,” “Jason Wu,” and “Michele Obama” in my blog for more details and photos, or look in Category “Best of Everything.”

For my real work (when not playing with my dolls), I, Dr. Kathy McGuire, “give away” a multitude of self-help skills, for intimacy, conflict resolution, parenting, education, spirituality, creativity, innovation, Creative Edge Organization, and more as described below:

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

Free Downloads:

Complete Focusing Instructions Manual (17 pages)

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

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 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

Best of Everything | fashion doll diorama, Fashion Royalty Dolls, Inauguration Ball Gown, Jason Wu, Michele Obama, multi-ethnic fashion dolls, Oscar Red Carpet, playing with dolls, Red Carpet

“WHY CRY?” PART 5: BOOKS AND ARTICLES ON TEARS, CRYING, BEING TOUCHED AND BEING MOVED, INNER CHILD HEALING, ACTIVE GRIEVING, TRANSFORMATION

By Kathy McGuire, March 4, 2009 6:41 pm

Articles by Dr. Kathy McGuire: Being Touched and Being Moved, The Alchemy of Grieving, Focusing Inner Child Work, Finding The Meaning of Tears

Crying and vision, crying and opening the heart, crying and connecting (this is such a profound experience when it happens — as a Listener, I tear up in empathy with a Focuser, who may also be touching on tears, and, in my experience, the walls, the envelopes of flesh separating us simply melt away, and we meet in Buber’s I-Thou space — the two of us and The Something More, The Sacred entering in).

In my own journey to understand the place of crying, being touched and being moved, particularly, I have found

(a) an early book by William Frey called Crying, which, when first published, was a media event. He collected tears in test tubes from people watching a tear-jerker movie, and compared them, their chemical analysis, with “non-emotional” tears, collected questionnaire data on frequency of crying (women five times as often as men!), etc.

(b) The book by Anglican hermit Maggie Ross, The Fountain and The Furnace, cited above.

(c) Pema Chodrin’s (Buddhist nun) work on the “way of compassion” as a complement to, for instance, Tolle’s “way of enlightenment.” While much of Eastern philosophy seems to emphasize “detachment,” “objectivity,” Chodrin talks about going DOWN into the morass of human pain and living through it and into it, with other humans, with compassion.

(d) William Gaylin, Feelings: Our Vital Signs (Harper & Row Perennial, 1979), where he has chapters that are a phenomenology of many different feelings. He has a chapter on “being touched” as a human to human happening, and one on “being moved” as between a human and The Something Greater.

Here are links to some of my articles (all found on my website, www.cefocusing.com , Category Free Resources, then Articles):

“On Tears and Focusing,” a mini-research where Focusers spoke about their experience with tears (I have tons of great quotes!). SHORT BUT SWEET

“Being Touched and Being Moved: The Spiritual Value of Tears”, with lots of quotes about how Focuser value their tears.

“Finding The Meaning of Tears,” a book chapter, with more great quotes about how Focusers use their tears and giving actual Focusing exercises for following the path of tears.

“Affect in Focusing and Experiential Therapy”, containing quotes from dialogue between Gene Gendlin and myself about the value and role of what I call “cathartic unfolding” vs. “sheer, repeating emotions.” THEORETICAL WITH EXAMPLES

“Medical Change Events Through Experiential Focusing,” including the complete transcript of the 12- minute session (also on my DVD Listening/Focusing Demonstrations) where a woman goes from depression/migraine to felt shift, including joyful releasing teariness, and also including my “Five-Minute Grieving” procedure for helping professionals, immediate application for all physicians and helping professionals.

“Active Grieving Part One,” a perspective on grieving as an alchemical, tranformative process

“Active Grieving Part Two,” an actual protocol for active grieving of a loss.

“Focusing Inner Child Work With Abused Clients”, which is not about tears directly but about the extreme attitude of awareness toward subtle nuances of word or body gesture which can indicate repressed memories of emotional/sexual/physical abuse in childhood and the extreme attitude of gentleness needed to allow clients to “be with” and work through, “carry forward,” these painful experiences.

It was enlightening to me to see how much of my work has this emphasis upon a kind of “going deeper” and “connection” that is associated with even a slight SHEEN OF TEARS in the eyes (sobbing not necessary but welcome!)

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Chapter 11: The Way of Listening: Offer Deep Presence

See more at the author’s organization site, Unlimited Love Institute.

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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.”

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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

experiential focusing therapy, gender, health, Intuitive Focusing, LISTENING, personality differences, self-help skills, spirituality | Active Grieving, being touched and being moved, compassion, crying, depression, Empathy, Gendlin, Inner Child healing, Intuitive Focusing, Maggie Ross, Pema Chodrin, self-help skills, spiritual transformation, tears, William Frey, William Gaylin

“WHY CRY?” PART 4: CRYING FOR A VISION, OPENING OUR EYES TO TRUTH

By Kathy McGuire, February 28, 2009 7:59 pm

The Opening of Vision: “Crying For A Vision” by David Michael Levin

A key quote from Levin:

“Crying, of course, is involuntary. But the experience of crying, with which we are all familiar, can be taken up by the self, taken to heart, and turned, through the gift of our thought, into a PRACTICE of the self. The practice is concerned with the cultivation of our capacity for care — Crying becomes a critical social practice of the self when the vision it brings forth makes a difference in the world, gathering other people into the wisdom of its attunement.”

Crying as a PRACTICE, a discipline like yoga or meditation or Focusing, a social practice for CULTIVATION OF OUR CAPACITY FOR CARE!!!

Dave Young, Focusing Teacher in Colorado, brought attention to the work of David Michael Levin, a Focuser and philosopher-colleague of Eugene Gendlin, creator of Focusing, particularly Levin’s book, The Opening of Vision, Chapter 2, “Crying for a Vision.” Here are Dave’s comments interspersed with quotes from Levin. I include the entirety, since most will not have the Levin book at hand (original discussion happened on The Focusing Discussion e-list, joined at www.focusing.org , under Felt Community).

Dave says:

[Kathy]You challenge us brilliantly & beautifully, with your question: “So, just wanting people to look and then ask themselves, “What is this about humans being ‘touched and moved’ to tears, and how does it relate to guiding oneself and others during Focusing?”

I’m presenting some quotes, with a bit of my own commentary, from the best philosophical writing on crying that I know, this from one of Gene’s closest philosophical colleagues, himself a Focuser, David Michael Levin. It’s found in his marvelous book, The Opening of Vision, Chapter 2, “Crying for a Vision”.

“This work on vision began, not with a vision, but with an experience of crying. Crying for the earth, the earth itself, whose devastation I see all around me. Crying over the plundering of the land. Crying from the depths of my ancestral body for the victims of the Holocaust. Crying for the Indians massacred in my country — “

Let me urge our discussion of crying, as Focusers, begin here: with specific experiences of our crying, not merely of our sense of crying in general. And let it include our own crying & our own struggles with crying.

Levin makes a startling claim, based on his Focusing-oriented experiences: “With crying, I begin to see, briefly, and with pain. Only with the crying, only then, does vision begin.”

Perhaps carefully, caringly examining our own specific experiences of crying we can bring Levin’s claim within us.

Levin: “Our eyes are not only articulate organs of sight; they are also the emotionally expressive organs of crying. The site where vision takes place is sometimes a site where a very different kind of process takes place. We will now give some thought to the character of this process. What is crying? Is it merely an accidental or contingent fact that the eyes are capable of crying as well as seeing? Or is crying in the most intimate, most closely touching relationship to seeing? Is crying essential for vision?”

Understand that Levin is a Focuser. Therefore, as he will point out later, vision is never divorced from the body, and in particular, vision is never divorced from what he calls the body’s “moodedness” or as he says, “our capacity for care, ‘Sorge’, feeling: our care-taking capacity, that is, as visionary beings.” More strongly, he says, “Crying is visionary feeling, and feeling is inherently closer to a sense of wholeness than the disembodied intellect.”

This, then, is what Levin means when he says that crying & “vision” are linked, when through his question he implies that crying is “essential for vision”.

Levin: “Only human beings cry. Animals are beings endowed with sight; but only we are capable of crying. What does this show about us? What does this show TO us? Is it this capacity for crying, then, which ennobles our vision, makes it human? And is it not the ABSENCE of this capacity which marks off the inhuman? By the ‘inhuman’ I mean the monstrous and the inwardly dead: the Nazi commandant, for example, and his victim, the Jew, locked into a dance of death, neither one, curiously, able to shed a tear: for different reasons, their eyes are dry, empty, hollow.”

Very strong, what Levin is challenging us to examine. And yet, on a deeply felt-sensed level, we know this. I would hold that, in any discussion of crying, the state or rather the stopped-processing of not-crying must also be closely examined, experientially, in ourselves and in others. What, societally, that stops us from crying is, of course, what we most need to cry about. And as this need is a stopped-processing, that means the need always remains within us, waiting, crying to come forth.

Levin: “What does this capacity [for crying] make visible? What is its truth? What is the truth it sees? What does it know as a ‘speech’ of our nature? How does it guide our vision?”

Certainly, these are questions which we, as Focusing/Listening guides need to address.

Levin: “Crying is not something we ‘do’. Crying is the speech of powerlessness, helplessness — As a response to what history has made visible, crying calls for vision, for thought, for understanding; we need to SEE what IT make VISIBLE.”

Levin points what, to me, is a key in crying: that crying isn’t a self-chosen act. Though we do, of course, choose to embody-open ourselves up to seeing what calls for crying. Yet crying, genuine crying always comes as a kind of cleansing & joining gift. But more on this later, when I have time to better think it through, based on my own personal experiences.

Continuing & developing this thought, Levin states,

“Crying, of course, is involuntary. But the experience of crying, with which we are all familiar, can be taken up by the self, taken to heart, and turned, through the gift of our thought, into a PRACTICE of the self. The practice is concerned with the cultivation of our capacity for care — Crying becomes a critical social practice of the self when the vision it brings forth makes a difference in the world, gathering other people into the wisdom of its attunement.”

This will take an unbundling I cannot do now. But know: crying does make a difference. Kathy, it’s not only pointing to meaning, but to a special type of meaning. And this meaning is a connecting, an act that reaches out and makes a difference in the world. This I know from my own crying for abused & neglected clients who have been alienated from their capacity to cry for themselves and, worse, have become alienated from the truth that they are worth crying over. And that is only one example. But this points to a powerful truth which, when we guide those who have greatly suffered, we should not shirk from. Always, of course, we see how our crying affects, not only is affected by, in our intense “interacting first”. But we must never rule away our crying out-of-hand.

Additionally, when I allow myself to cry for my clients, not only does this crying — not all crying, not the crying of pre-empting or communicating this is too much, but the crying of being deeply touched which can be held & presented — not only does this crying usually bring for depths & healing from within my clients or rather from within our interacting. I myself, by our genuineness, by my congruence, am far less likely to be drained & burned out. This healing capacity of crying should also be noted in our discussion.

Levin gives us a starting point to understand the types of “moods” in crying, paralleling yours, Kathy:

“We could think of our eyes as capable of three kinds of mood: (i) the ontical moodedness of everyday seeing, which can differentiate and articulate what it beholds only in a more or less dualistic, objectifying, re-presentational manner; (ii) the transitional moodedness of a seeing which cries for vision, immersed in painful seeing, immersed in the processes of its subjectivity; and (iii) the moodedness of a more joyful, more fulfilled seeing, clear and bright and articulate, and capable of being deeply touched and moved, even at a distance, by what it is given to see.”

— As a taste of where this leads, permit me one more Levin quote:

“Crying is the rooting of vision in the ground of our [universal, shared & interacting] needs: [our] need for openness, [our] need for contact, [our] need for wholeness.” Dave

And Franc Chamberlain, Certified Focusing Professional in Ireland, also dives into Levin’s work, with more on Vision and Crying:

“Hello, I haven’t been following closely, so apologies if I’m repeating — I’ve recently been dipping back into some of the Levin books, such as The Opening of Vision — and there’s also a questioning about tears in the early part of The Philosopher’s Gaze, in the section entitled ‘Blindness, Violence, Compassion’ (which seems to link the two threads of tears and (non) violence).

After discussing briefly T.S. Eliot’s ‘I see the eyes but not the tears/this is my affliction’ he goes on to say:

“What must we say about philosophers? When have philosophers seen the tears? When have they given thought to what, without words, tears are saying? Is the history of philosophy a history of blindness, a discourse disfigured by traces of this terrible, unavowable affliction? Is there something inherent in the philosophical gaze that compels this affliction to remain unavowable? (The Philosopher’s Gaze, 1999 p.4)

So, is there something in the philosophical gaze that both arrests crying whilst at the same time prevents us from knowing that crying is arrested? So, could we discuss ‘crying’ in a philosophical sense, and even discuss the arrest of crying, without even knowing that our own crying is a stopped process? Because western philosophy often splits itself off from ‘experiencing’ even when speaking about ‘experience’

Franc

Dave and Franc and Levin all pointing to the experience that crying is essential to our caring, having compassion, “seeing” the truth of this world, and acting on its behalf. “Being touched and being moved” as essentially human, and essential-to-humanness.

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