Still another way to ‘empty’ your mind is engaging in all kinds of sports that involve endurance. Examples are running, swimming, bicycling and all other forms of lengthy rhythmic movement such as dancing, which in time lead to thinking of nothing in particular.
However, it does not have to be that drastic. Leisurely walking or bicycling is also good for musing and daydreaming. As well as each of these forms of movement being an effective method of reaching a state of thinking of nothing in particular, they also contribute to your physical fitness.
Ĺ How does each of these methods work for you?
Ĺ Which is the least appropriate one and why?
Ĺ Which one do you find the easiest and which the most pleasant?
Ĺ What makes it pleasant?
Ĺ What possibilities do you see to make these techniques more effective for you?
Ĺ Where and when can you apply these techniques best?
Comments
Ĺ What can we do with all these methods to be able to think of nothing in particular? To start with, we can practice them at fixed times of the day. We can practice thinking of nothing in particular also during the breaks and waiting periods mentioned before. This is simply pleasurable, but it can also help us to center our thoughts, concentrate better at work, prevent and counteract stress and sleep better. All in all, we can use mental quiet purposely to refresh ourselves and to feel more energetic and centered.
Ĺ All of this makes bringing about mental quiet an important tool in a dialogue session, both as a part of preparation as well as to cool down if things become too heated.
Ĺ In addition, we can use mental quiet in a more focused way to calm down and make contact with ourselves, when that is needed. In this way, we can better control interfering thoughts and emotions such as anxiety and tension. We then can think more clearly about our next moves. To this end, we must sometimes retreat from the situation at hand. At other times, however, we can use the relaxation techniques to calm down on the spot.
Apart from this, we can use this approach to ask ourselves questions and give ourselves tasks (later in this chapter).
FOCUSING
(Frijda, 1986). That is why examining our feelings can give us all kinds of information about our attitude and position in the world at the moment.
There are different indications that we should resort to focusing.
First, it is the proper technique when you have an indeterminate feeling that something is not right, is strange or odd. This involves questions such as: ‘What is the matter?’, ‘What is this about?’ and ‘What is happening here?’
Another indication is the striking absence of any feeling where you would expect a clear and intense feeling. An example is thinking back indifferently to an event that must have been intensely traumatic.
Still another indication is when you are faced with a difficult choice or don’t know what to do next. Also there are more practical questions that refer to choices or seeking for a more desirable alternative. Focusing then can give answers to questions such as: ‘What should I do?’, ‘What do I want?’ and ‘What is now the most important to me?’. The good thing about focusing is that it can provide valuable as well as fully unexpected answers (Gendlin, 1981, 1986).
Instructions
The technique begins with concisely formulating a question. For example: ‘What do I want from this organization?’ Write the question down and read it over a couple of times. This enables you to evoke the question effortlessly in a light state of thinking of nothing in particular. Then empty your mind, without getting too far ‘away’, and ask yourself the question you have memorized. Imagine that you put your question some meters in front of you, for example on a chair, as if it concerned an object. Stay explicitly ‘outside’ the question: do not go into the details and intricacies of it nor into the emotions attached to it.
For example, focusing doesnotinvolve thinking: ‘What about a higher salary? A better room?’ and so on. Though such further questions in themselves are quite harmless, they are just not part of the technique.
When you notice that you still are goingintothe problem, start all over again. Again, just let go of your thoughts. If solutions are going to come, they will come completely by themselves. They will develop calmly and silently, and when it is their time they will present themselves in some way.
Then focus on your body, somewhere in the middle, and examine how it feels. Note the feelings and sensations of your various body parts. This may take some time. Just relax and quietly examine whether you feel something. When a sensation comes to the fore, just focus your attention on it quietly for some time.
What does the feeling make you think of? What comes to your mind? What does it remind you of? An image, a memory, a thought? Is there some shift in your feelings? Does the new feeling give you new energy? Stay with that new feeling and ask it questions. How is it related to you? Is it about your past? Or about your future?
Often these ideas and images – and that is what is so curious about this method – relate to the original question. Maybe not at first, but then often at a later stage.
When something emerges that throws a new light on your question, that information often goes together with a peculiar feeling of certainty about its relevance and validity: a feeling of self-evidence. This is a little like suddenly remembering where you put an object that you had not been able to find for a long time.
If you somehow lose the new feeling, you can go back to the initial feeling, the feeling before the shift. Then try to find your way back from there to the new feeling.
When a shift in feeling takes place, this is also expressed in your attitude and behavior.
Just let that happen fully. Exaggerate it a bit. Play with it. You even may walk over to a mirror, to see what it looks like.
So it might happen that the question ‘What do I miss in my job?’ evokes a particular feeling in your chest, which makes you breathe in deeply, to evoke then a memory of your childhood: that first time that you went bicycling with the children next door, without your parents, on a warm summer evening, outdoors, the smell of hay, a beautiful world of unlimited challenges. That marvelous feeling of the freedom and adventure of that occasion.
Could it be that you want more freedom and adventure in your organization and that you have hopes that steps in that direction can be taken?
Often it is pleasant to hold on to the feeling and the accompanying ideas and images for a moment, to breathe in deeply once and breathe out very slowly. After this, you can examine each insight separately, looking at it from all perspectives. Of course, you can make notes.
Try focusing on a suitable problem, following the instructions given above.
Comment
Ĺ If focusing works for you, you have found a way of functioning that helps to give meaning to your life, to integrate yourself in a way that you feel more ‘whole’ and function in a more focused way, without being needlessly diverted by intrusive thoughts and feelings.
Focusing on Separate Body Parts
Another version of focusing consists of successively focusing on the bodily sensations in a number of specific body parts and the accompanying images and ideas. Consecutively, this involves our neck and shoulders, throat, chest and stomach (Hendricks, 1998). For the remainder, the technique is the same as described in the previous section.
Procedure
The various body parts each play a different role here.
Shoulders and neck. Focus for some time on the back of your head, your shoulders and your neck.
Ĺ What do you feel when you focus on the back of your head, neck and shoulders?
Loosen up your shoulders, relax and take a deep breath.
Ĺ What images and ideas make an appearance?
Here, you are mainly tracing ‘forgotten’ memories of intrusions. These may be intrusions on your wishes, needs, personal space, interests, (ownership) rights, integrity or bodily immunity. Each of these can be an issue about which you were – or should have been – angry. However, many people prefer not to express their anger and not even to feel it.
Throat. Focus on your throat.
Ĺ What do you feel in your throat?
Relax your throat and take a deep breath.
Ĺ What comes to your mind?
Concerning our throat, this involves primarily tracking down ‘forgotten’ instances of loss – something which, or somebody who, is not there any more for us – and the accompanying grief. This may evoke a feeling as if there is a ball in our throat, which makes it difficult for us to swallow. Here too, focus on these feelings and once or twice breathe in deeply and breathe out fully and slowly.
Chest. Focus on your chest.
Ĺ What do you feel in your chest?
Ĺ Do you recognize what comes to your mind?
Ĺ And what happens when you connect what you want most right now to what you feel?
Relax your chest and take a deep breath.
Focusing on our chest is foremost a matter of identifying our hidden unfulfilled desires, the matters ‘for which our heart longs’. Focusing on our chest and a deep breath can also contribute to reinforcing the goals that we have set for ourselves, at least when these goals are compatible with what we really want. Doing this intentionally can help us to hold on to our goals.
Stomach. Again, the same procedure, only now it involves our ‘forgotten’ fears.
Ĺ What do you feel in your stomach?
Ĺ Of what or whom are you afraid?
Relax your stomach and take a deep breath.
Comments
Ĺ This technique is especially appropriate for re-examining and solving unfinished prob- lems. As described in Chapter 7, old problems that are never solved still tend to demand energy, even when we hardly pay any attention to them at a conscious level any more.
By focusing on the separate body parts mentioned above, with the intention of making us aware of old problems again, we can sometimes trace these problems, even though we thought that we had completely forgotten about them. Then we can ‘solve’ them after all. We can bring about such solutions because now these problems tend to be much less threatening than when they came into being. To the extent that we succeed in solving
such problems after all, they stop bothering us. As a result, we have more energy at our disposal, which allows us to go full speed ahead. To solve such old problems, we do not need to ask ourselves a specific question, as long as we keep in mind that this is about identifying unfinished business from the past. Focusing consecutively on the body parts mentioned from a moderate state of thinking of nothing in particular is already sufficient.
Ĺ ‘Working through’ these body parts at the end of the day, before going to bed, is also a good way to identify and get rid of the smaller frustrations and displeasures of the day.
Ĺ ‘Working through’ these body parts is also a good way to end a dialogue session.