The jotted notes I started at the beginning of this conversation ended up a transcription! I felt in very good company, raising and and speaking to some persistent questions and wonderings I have had about the intersection of 'field' and 'focus'. Thank you both for your clarity, kindness and generosity in engagement, I enjoyed marinating in that.
Thank you! This is a welcome and very rich resource to return to and something of the kind I have wanted to see/hear for many years. I often felt a lone voice wanting to bring together the faculties and insights from Buddhism with the natural flow of a Focusing way to be which were unfolding in my life. Both gave the gift of silence, and permission to pause, but Focusing enabled meeting myself fully where communication, concepts or relational patterns in the Buddhist community (as with all areas of my encounters in life) could throw me off my own knowing if i was not careful. Training in Focusing companioning, with the regular practice of peer listening was a game changer for some and it was for me. It seems to me the perfect accompaniment to an interest in meditation or mindfulness for the relational accompaniment in unfolding aliveness. Since so many struggle with accessing a sense of groundedness and personal authority in todays fast pace, I wish it was more widely known about.
What a fun interview. Being both a longtime Buddhist and a shorter-time Focuser and studier [sic] of Gendlin's philosophy, I frequently wanted to jump into the conversation! Perhaps I can share one little piece that came up when Christian was talking about...to simplify....the bias towards problem-solving vs resting in open awareness and acceptance of whatever is there. Being a sort of person who habitually goes to my head to figure things out (and has that worked out? ha ha) - what I have found with Focusing is not that any problem has ever been "solved" through Focusing - but there is a way that going in and touching the felt sense, the energy that is manifesting as something icky or worrisome or repetitive, etc. - just TOUCHING the energy directly - rather than avoiding or ruminating about it - makes a difference. A little difference that is worthwhile. Thank you Christian and Gregory!
i would love a space for those conversations! A lot of Focusers have a background in Buddhism and the meeting of the two is I suppose unique for all of us, but the crossing of experience and understanding is helpful to share at times. I am collating sources on this. My life changing introduction happened over two decades ago and was initiated by a Buddhist Core process therapist, trained via Maura Sills' Karuna institute who created the form bringing in Focusing with a range of elements from Buddhism into that pioneering and profound spiritual psychotherapy. After that and locating peer training to embark on a committed Focusing path, my Buddhist practice and learning was facilitated and deeper than it could ever have been trying to navigate unconscious trauma /projections without the relational interior space and receptivity. Focusing isn't explicitly spiritual yet it nurtures our own 'way in' to a source within to relate to spiritual teachings.
I shared this video on a Facebook group that I run for psychotherapists. Here us what I wrote about this talk: I enjoyed Christian Dillo and his approach. I normally don’t give Zen or Buddhism much attention these days, but Dillo’s take on it is refreshing. He combines Zen practice and the therapeutic practice called Focusing, developed by Eugene Gendlin. Dillo overcame his depression through these practices. He speaks about being unapologetically alive, overcoming internal resistances to various intense experiences, how “oneness is too much - are you going to pay my bills for me? Go to the bathroom for me?” He lands instead on what he calls “undivided activity.” He doesn’t seem to have a shred of the anti-individualism that I’m used to finding in Buddhism and in Zen. I love how freely he refers to personhood as a real thing, and how he sees himself as a phenomenologists studying attention and experience. He refers to all teachings as antidotal, and he is loath to speculate about metaphysics. Dillo speaks of his reservations about calling what he does a method, and he goes into what he sees as the spiritual dimension of things. He gestures towards the peace that is possible when awareness rests in an open field, accepting of everything, and not trying to solve any problems. He goes into how this is different from passivity. Cautioning against spiritual bypassing, Dillo says: “I don’t believe in skipping over the personal. There is something vital in the felt sense, and trying to transcend that is problematic.”
I loved this conversation and much of it resonated with my work as a therapist. Authenticity is such an overused term currently, losing all meaning, so I appreciated the focus on that point. Loved the term ‘mental postures’ you used - very evocative of what I think you are referring to, and much more so than ‘stance’ or ‘position’. A posture implies a whole network of positions and relatedness-of-positions, a bit like a constellation of stars, as opposed to a location of one star. It speaks to the web of associations we take as our starting point, and how deeply knotted and rooted outside of conscious awareness so many of these assumptions can be. In this way, it is about making the frame visible while also acknowledging the complexity of that frame, at times. Thanks for sharing this one with the world.
Greg...interesting conversation few thoughts: in Gendlin's scheme of things ...he does not use the word awareness....probably the experiential dimension ( implicit) when it is fully functioning in conjunction with the symbolic/conceptual dimension, I suppose the sense of expanded self/space/awareness comes into foreground it would be helpful if you can do a conversation on how to use Mindfulness and yogic practices along with focusing to reinforce each other.
The jotted notes I started at the beginning of this conversation ended up a transcription! I felt in very good company, raising and and speaking to some persistent questions and wonderings I have had about the intersection of 'field' and 'focus'. Thank you both for your clarity, kindness and generosity in engagement, I enjoyed marinating in that.
Thank you! This is a welcome and very rich resource to return to and something of the kind I have wanted to see/hear for many years. I often felt a lone voice wanting to bring together the faculties and insights from Buddhism with the natural flow of a Focusing way to be which were unfolding in my life. Both gave the gift of silence, and permission to pause, but Focusing enabled meeting myself fully where communication, concepts or relational patterns in the Buddhist community (as with all areas of my encounters in life) could throw me off my own knowing if i was not careful. Training in Focusing companioning, with the regular practice of peer listening was a game changer for some and it was for me. It seems to me the perfect accompaniment to an interest in meditation or mindfulness for the relational accompaniment in unfolding aliveness. Since so many struggle with accessing a sense of groundedness and personal authority in todays fast pace, I wish it was more widely known about.
What a fun interview. Being both a longtime Buddhist and a shorter-time Focuser and studier [sic] of Gendlin's philosophy, I frequently wanted to jump into the conversation! Perhaps I can share one little piece that came up when Christian was talking about...to simplify....the bias towards problem-solving vs resting in open awareness and acceptance of whatever is there. Being a sort of person who habitually goes to my head to figure things out (and has that worked out? ha ha) - what I have found with Focusing is not that any problem has ever been "solved" through Focusing - but there is a way that going in and touching the felt sense, the energy that is manifesting as something icky or worrisome or repetitive, etc. - just TOUCHING the energy directly - rather than avoiding or ruminating about it - makes a difference. A little difference that is worthwhile. Thank you Christian and Gregory!
i would love a space for those conversations! A lot of Focusers have a background in Buddhism and the meeting of the two is I suppose unique for all of us, but the crossing of experience and understanding is helpful to share at times. I am collating sources on this. My life changing introduction happened over two decades ago and was initiated by a Buddhist Core process therapist, trained via Maura Sills' Karuna institute who created the form bringing in Focusing with a range of elements from Buddhism into that pioneering and profound spiritual psychotherapy. After that and locating peer training to embark on a committed Focusing path, my Buddhist practice and learning was facilitated and deeper than it could ever have been trying to navigate unconscious trauma /projections without the relational interior space and receptivity. Focusing isn't explicitly spiritual yet it nurtures our own 'way in' to a source within to relate to spiritual teachings.
I shared this video on a Facebook group that I run for psychotherapists. Here us what I wrote about this talk:
I enjoyed Christian Dillo and his approach. I normally don’t give Zen or Buddhism much attention these days, but Dillo’s take on it is refreshing. He combines Zen practice and the therapeutic practice called Focusing, developed by Eugene Gendlin. Dillo overcame his depression through these practices.
He speaks about being unapologetically alive, overcoming internal resistances to various intense experiences, how “oneness is too much - are you going to pay my bills for me? Go to the bathroom for me?” He lands instead on what he calls “undivided activity.”
He doesn’t seem to have a shred of the anti-individualism that I’m used to finding in Buddhism and in Zen. I love how freely he refers to personhood as a real thing, and how he sees himself as a phenomenologists studying attention and experience. He refers to all teachings as antidotal, and he is loath to speculate about metaphysics.
Dillo speaks of his reservations about calling what he does a method, and he goes into what he sees as the spiritual dimension of things. He gestures towards the peace that is possible when awareness rests in an open field, accepting of everything, and not trying to solve any problems. He goes into how this is different from passivity.
Cautioning against spiritual bypassing, Dillo says:
“I don’t believe in skipping over the personal. There is something vital in the felt sense, and trying to transcend that is problematic.”
Thank you for the excellent summary and for sharing the conversation. I hope it’s of interest to others.
My pleasure, thank you for doing this. I’ll be checking out your content 🙏
I loved this conversation and much of it resonated with my work as a therapist. Authenticity is such an overused term currently, losing all meaning, so I appreciated the focus on that point. Loved the term ‘mental postures’ you used - very evocative of what I think you are referring to, and much more so than ‘stance’ or ‘position’. A posture implies a whole network of positions and relatedness-of-positions, a bit like a constellation of stars, as opposed to a location of one star. It speaks to the web of associations we take as our starting point, and how deeply knotted and rooted outside of conscious awareness so many of these assumptions can be. In this way, it is about making the frame visible while also acknowledging the complexity of that frame, at times. Thanks for sharing this one with the world.
Greg...interesting conversation
few thoughts:
in Gendlin's scheme of things ...he does not use the word awareness....probably the experiential dimension ( implicit) when it is fully functioning in conjunction with the symbolic/conceptual dimension, I suppose the sense of expanded self/space/awareness comes into foreground
it would be helpful if you can do a conversation on how to use Mindfulness and yogic practices along with focusing to reinforce each other.