Now Kate was asking me to tell her again, "What had I in the first place, about such situations?", because, although the Focusing worked, she was sure that it wasn’t what I had been talking about. As it turned out she was coming to our Focusing session with a headache, and so I suggested that rather than discuss the approach, I could walk her through it. She was happy to do that. However, because I know that a quiet, pliable mind is the best for accessing the awareness that is involved in the meditative approach, instead of going directly to it, I suggested that she do some Focusing on the pain first, much as she would have supported her daughter in doing. So we did that, and the Focusing session was very helpful it reduced the pain, through Kate listening to what it had to tell her (the main point of which, if I remember well, was fundamentally that it wanted her to give it some room).

   The distinguishing feature of the Focusing type of approach is that a self establishes a respectful empathetic relationship with a ‘something’ that is in some sense ‘other’. There is then, a dialogue of sorts between 'the self and other’. In this particular case, a respectful relationship was established by my friend putting the pain somewhere else in the room, because some part of her didn't like being so close to the pain. This was Kate's action, and it wasn’t at my suggestion. At this point it would ordinarily be helpful to bring an unlimited friendliness to both the original 'something', and the new something that doesn't like the other part. This was how we worked with it on subsequent occasions. However, this time Kate had made a specific request to move into the meditative territory, not so much for her long-term healing, but for her understanding of the possibilities. It was a mentoring situation. Hence, under these special circumstances she took this 'putting it somewhere in the room' approach. So there it was, and there was immediately some relief - though the pain was still present, it was diminished through the reduction of resistance, and hence she could have some relationship with it. And her felt sense of the pain expressed some relief that she had listened to its need for a respectful attitude.

   When Kate had come to a place that felt that it was a good place to finish, then I took a direct guiding role, and asked her to take a moment to appreciate the positive things that had come there for her what she was experiencing in herself. Then I asked her to be aware of her breathing as it is evident in her belly, and to bring her attention back to the pain. I also reminded her how in the Focusing process there was an element of respect for the pain, and to notice that respect lets the pain be itself, be what it truly is. I said we want to have that relationship with the pain, but this time we want to be directly in contact with it. In response to her solicitation of something more about ‘direct’, I said that I would like her to not change anything about the pain, but just to pay gentle attention to it right where it is in her body I didn’t want her to put it on the other side of the room, or to get a felt sense about it, or to ask it a question. Nothing but to become awake to its existence. I left her space to do that, reminding her that she can stabilise her attention by lightly touching her breathing in her belly.

   I can’t remember, but I might have also reminded her that she can bring her heart’s involvement to it, and she can hold her head’s dispassion toward it. (These were things that we had discussed earlier, and that I repeat at the end of this article.) She quietly became intimate with the raw fact of the pain, the pain as it is, as I described it to her, in its own dimension, it own reach and range. She touched it with full awareness, and when she was ready for the next phase she let me know. At this point I asked her to inspect the fact of the awareness of the pain, and to discern whether that, in itself, was painful. The awareness and the pain are inseparable, they are together, and yet they can be discerned separately, if you take time and sensitive to the difference. Again, she spent some time doing this, and reported that she could discern the awareness if she imagined it somewhere. This was an interesting moment.

   I pointed out that what she was putting somewhere wasn’t the awareness. Her mind had made an image of the awareness, and was locating that somewhere. I asked her to notice that this happens, and, of course, it is very natural for the mind to make images, and to try and make an understandable thing out of the presence of non-dual awareness, but just notice that, and bring her attention back to the raw fact of the pain. She noticed that the pain had become less accessible in that direct way which I imagined was due to the mediation of the image however, after a moment there is was, and the luminosity of the awareness was present again, but this time she could note that it is a non-locatable ‘mind’. Wonderful! That’s right, you can’t really locate this nature of mind, the Essence of mind. It is something wondrous that we can discern it, when the conditions are right a quiet and pliable mind helps, in this case nurtured, I believe, by the preceding Focusing session.

   There is nothing to ‘do’ in this awareness it just IS. Indeed Beingness is one of its qualities. Once it is seen, it is possible thereafter for this luminosity to support our inquiry into existence. Once it is experienced with stability , its various qualities begin to emerge, but I won’t go into that here. Certainly, it is a great help in Focusing, once this quality of awareness is found. The Focuser is far more skilful at disidentifying from sub-personalities, for example, and can bring a greater sense of spaciousness, of presence, to the emergence of the felt sense. However, in this case, Kate had been asking what was the meditative approach to the pain, and so that was the immediate object of our experiment. Now she was very much at peace with what pain there was left.

   When I am Focusing I am aware that for me three body centres come into Presence, and I rather suspect that any skilled Focuser awakens each, whether they have analysed it this way or not. So I’d like to just share what I am conscious of, as the solid ground to my Focusing. The reason that I’d like to share this is that I have found this understanding is useful under different circumstances, but especially when touching some very, very difficult emotions including those of the type that one might like to call the ‘beast’ in us. (We have all sorts of names for the parts of us that appears to be like unruly animal souls, and these can surface in therapy, where Focusing can be very helpful to make non-fearful contact with them.)

   Briefly my description amounts to this: the heart centre is involved when I invite the difficulty to fully inhabit me; my belly centre is present with an awareness of my breath there, which strengthens the presence of ‘my self in the chair’; and, also, in allowing whatever happens to be present without judgement, the head centre brings its objectivity.

   Holding my awareness of the breath in my belly during the process supports me to not identify with, or to disidentify with, the different felt senses, sensations, and mind-states. And from the heart centre I involve myself completely in the felt sense (and when necessary, in the whole existence of the associated subpersonality). From the heart I embrace the felt sense’s way of existing, in the sense of allowing it to fully inhabit my body. It may seem contradictory to say that it inhabits me fully, and yet to say that I am not identified. If you look back at Kate’s experience this can make some sense the awareness of the felt sense is not the same as the felt sense, though it is co-existent with it. Awareness has discernible qualities that are different to the felt sense. So the heart dives into the felt sense, and yet doesn’t lose the contributions of the other centres.

   I also become a dispassionate witness of whatever arises in my experience - allowing anything that arises to be present in its own way. This is the head centre's contribution, and the experience of space can be the result of this. (Though space can arise elsewhere, too). Space is a most powerful thing, because false structures dissolve in the light of spacious awareness, revealing Essence. And if that happens, well, Focusing becomes meditation, which has less of a dialogic aspect and is more of an appreciate awareness of Being.

   John Welwood explores the relationship of Focusing to meditation in his book, "Toward a Psychology of Awakening" (Shambala), and there he says:

"When the focus of awareness shifts from a feeling as an object of pleasure or pain, like or dislike, acceptance or rejection to our state of presence with it, this allows us to discover new resources and wisdom hidden within it, as we move from the realm of personality into the larger space of being."