Fact Sheet

What is Focusing?

Focusing is a mode of inward bodily attention that most people don’t know about yet. It is more than being in touch with your feelings and different from body work.

Focusing occurs exactly at the interface of body-mind. It consists of specific steps for getting a body sense of how you are in a particular life situation. The body sense is unclear and vague at first, but if you pay attention it will open up into words or images and you experience a felt shift in your body.

In the process of Focusing, one experiences a physical change in the way that the issue is being lived in the body. We learn to live in a deeper place than just thoughts or feelings. The whole issue looks different and new solutions arise.

What Are the Benefits of Focusing?

Focusing helps to change where our lives are stuck. The felt shift that occurs during Focusing is good for the body, and is correlated with better immune functioning. More than 100 research studies have shown that Focusing is teachable and effective in many settings. Focusing decreases depression and anxiety and improves the relation to the body.

Who Can Learn Focusing? What is A Focusing Partnership?

Focusing can be taught to anyone! Most people learn best in Focusing Partnerships.

First, one is guided through the process. Second, some didactic understanding of the process is given. Because Focusing is not a set of ideas, but an experiential process, it is best discussed after experiencing it. Third, people practice with each other, using listening skills Focusing guiding instructions and Focusing partnerships. Click here for more information, or to register and then find a partner.

How Can I Learn More About Focusing?

The Focusing Institute has an international network of certified Focusing teachers who are trained in intensive two-year experiential programs. Click here to locate a Focusing teacher or partner near you.

The Focusing Institute recommends the following books in our Bookstore:

Focusing, Bantam Books, 1981 (available in 12 languages).
Focusing Oriented Psychotherapy, Guilford Press, 1996.
The Power of Focusing, New Harbinger Publications, 1996.

To learn more about Focusing, please continue to visit our website, email the Institute, or call us at 845-362-5222 (Country Code 1).

This page was last modified on 04 February 2005