While I’ve been learning a lot about the power of working with others for my healing lately, I’ve also been looking for new ways of working with the methods I have on my own. I’ve had great success Focusing with a partner, and occasional success Focusing alone, but I generally found it much more difficult to stay with big issues when working by myself. In fact more often than not, because of my lack of success, I would find an excuse to not even sit down and Focus alone at all.
One day when I was reading through some of Ann Weiser Cornell’s Focusing Tips, I read about how a woman she knows speaks into some voice recognition software on her computer while Focusing, and it types out what she is saying for her. While I’m not aware of having any software like that on our computer, it gave me the idea that I could record myself Focusing using the Audacity program I do have. I didn’t know whether it would work, but I had a feeling that since I am used to getting great results Focusing sitting by my computer, with my headset on, with a Focusing Partner on the other end of the Skype line, it may just set the scene enough for it to work.
What unfolded was truly amazing. I not only had an incredibly successful Focusing session, which lasted for about as long as they do when I have a partner listening in on the other end of the line, but it also felt like for the first time in my life, I was truly sitting down and listening to myself. I’ve long known the benefit of truly listening to someone for their own healing, but I hadn’t realised that while I regularly make myself available to others in that capacity, I’ve been failing to do that for myself!!! As I sat, speaking aloud into the microphone, knowing the computer was recording everything I said, parts of me that I have never before heard from tentatively started coming forward. In the privacy of my own home, with no-one as witness except myself, all barriers came down, and emotions tumbled out. The issue itself was a big one, one I hadn’t even considered Focusing on, but that was only part of the benefit, the other part of the magic was that I felt like I was truly hearing myself in a totally accepting and non-judgmental way, possibly for the first time in my life.
While I still benefit greatly from Focusing with my Focusing Partner, I now also regularly tune in and Focus alone, recording the session and watching the magic unfold. One of the benefits of Focusing alone are that I can do a session any time I have a few spare minutes, or have the need to get to the bottom of something, instead of waiting for when I next have a session scheduled with someone else. I read once that the word intimacy means “into-me-see” and that we can only ever be truly intimate with another, if we can see clearly into ourselves. Doing Focusing with myself in this way feels like the most wonderful way of getting to know myself better. So the main benefit is that I am actually spending time with myself, strengthening the most important relationship that any of us have – with myself.
If you have learnt a bit about Focusing, and want to have a go at Focusing in this way, the Audacity software is available to download free from the Internet, so all you need is a broadband connection and a headset. There’s nothing to lose in giving it a go, even if you haven’t done Focusing with a partner before. However to truly get the benefits of Focusing, I seriously recommend doing several sessions with someone trained in Focusing first. I believe it is easy for me to Focus in this way now, because I have had the experience several times of a Focusing Teacher or partner truly listening to me. Having had that experience, along with the experience of truly listening to them, I seem to have discovered the capacity to truly listen to me, and I feel very thankful for Focusing and those who have helped me to learn and develop my skills with it.