Author: Kevin McEvenue

An Intunement is a Place to Begin a Wholebody Focusing Process (Part 1)

Painting by Kevin McEvenue

What Kevin tells us here—how ‘intunements’ got started in WBF and what their purpose is—seems to me that he’s opening the door to a spiritual aspect of WBF.  That’s there’s something beyond my intent, and there’s something beyond your intent when we come together as ‘focusing partners’. That there is something beyond my personal ability to listen, to understand, to empathize—and beyond yours.

It’s certainly not just about getting better at ‘listening’ in the ordinary sense; it’s not just about getting better at ‘knowing what to say.’  Once we become fully present, it’s about noticing my aliveness in response to your aliveness—in the moment that it happens, when we’ve come together to listen and speak in a meaningful way.

And then Kevin tells us this: “I suggest something has been awakened in us and between us and is more than us.  A resource WE DON’T HAVE unless we do that connecting in that way, and then IT’S there.”

Do you hear what I’m hearing?  A resource—beyond you and me that shows up!?

Elizabeth Morana

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Active Meditation with the Breathing Self as “Me Here!”

Today’s intunement helps us connect to another way of finding grounded presence through using our attention to our breath.  Kevin guides us to being with this simple practice used for ages in so many healing modalities in a way that the experience of grounding itself becomes self-aware.

What is the quality of your breath?  What comes for you as you are holding space for your breath?  How does that help you be with what is there for you today?

Start your day with this short exploration and see what comes.

Diana Scalera

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

When We Observe Ourselves

This video captures one of those moments where transformation becomes dramatically self-evident. You can see it happening!

By Kevin McEvenue

When we observe ourselves on videoconferencing, something in us changes. See The Observer Effect. Videoconferencing has become a favored method of interacting with other people either professionally or socially.  This form of interacting with ourselves and others has never been true for humanity before. I am examining what it means to observe oneself on screen.

You are a witness to a bodily event emerging, changing itself as it happens. In this video, you are watching a bodily experience being transformed from that deeper wisdom of Self, actually undergoing a fundamental reorientation for all to see—even me.

What is becoming transparent is a very familiar pattern: a self-defeating belief that suddenly becomes something just its opposite! It first happened that day in August 2008.

When Perception Changes

What emerged is a whole change of perception of what is true. The very opposite what I have believed to be true most of my life. An immediate shift in perception that actually facilitates a behavior shift and restructuring. Almost like alchemy!

This video captures one of those moments where transformation becomes dramatically self-evident. You can see it happening!

My immediate response to any stimulation is to stop, protect, tighten, or hold-on-to for dear life! Like a bulldog gripping on with that kind of intensity. And then suddenly the opposite occurs—a physical release, expanding with equal determination but from a very different place.

The image that comes is that of a pull-up bar. I find myself lifting myself up, playfully allowing my muscles to flex and work with a pleasurable kind of tension. It seems to be enhancing my ‘wanting’ muscles; “I can do this; I want to do this, I am enjoying doing this; it feels so good to do this.”

This is a beautiful illustration of focusing with your whole body in action as it explores its own possibilities for all to witness. (Wholebody Focusing: Life Lived in the Moment.  It is a wonderful integration of mind/body working together to create a new wholeness of self as it emerges. In the end, the imagining of the event is enough to awaken that process once again! So good—and enough!

To read or leave a comment please click on the word Comments next to or under the photo.

To Feel Good about Myself is Desirable

It is very warm this morning.  I have the overhead fan on to keep me cool.  As I hear Kevin suggest that I connect to something outside myself I notice the sensation of the cool air on my skin.  And then Kevin suggests that the sensation of something outside myself can be how my skin feels.  He asks me to wait for something to come and I realize that my feet are already moving and my arms are wrapped around each other. My body is here with me today. Is there any goodness in me today?  I wait for the answer.  My thoracic spine releases the tension it was holding.

Diana Scalera

 

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Heartfelt Loving Beyond Expectation

The first law of spiritual energy: energy follows attention! In other words, wherever I focus my attention, the energy in my body, mind, and spirit follows. It is as simple as that!

The power of heartfelt loving is beyond any expectation we can imagine. It is the essence of the practice of Heartfelt Connection in Wholebody Focusing as we know it.

HeartFelt Loving

I start by inviting a connection between me, a part of me, a part of something outside myself, and especially a sense of you over there as I hold the whole of that in my consciousness. I pause, to just notice what is there, and accept what comes beyond what I might expect.

This feels proactive in some way—like an opportunity to notice that seems to want my attention, and to do so. Often something totally unexpected or even uninvited appears out of the blue! It is an opportunity to turn my attention towards something there with an open heart and wait there. I just notice…that is all…and allow a felt sense to emerge…as though it seems to notice itself and notice me too…with mutual affection.

Beyond Expectation

Something very powerful seems to be present at the same time; something not of my own making. I can feel it there and it feels powerful. If I am able to hold a space for such an experience, something more begins to happen. Something happening that couldn’t happen without this kind of heartfelt participation!

We could call this the first law of spiritual energy: energy follows attention! In other words, wherever I focus my attention, the energy in my body, mind, and spirit follows. It is as simple as that!

In this blog, I offer two concrete examples of situations where Heartfelt Presence is activated; first, my own experience happening now, and next an event that happened 25 years ago to a man who suffered a very debilitating crisis called carpal syndrome. (See a previous blog entitled: When Love Pays Attention to a Deep Wound.) Today I fill in the empty pieces that unfolded over all these many years and updated that event with some very surprising results.

These two ‘happenings’ speak for themselves. What more can I say except to appreciate the power explored in Participatory Spirituality in this series.

 

Heartfelt Conversation Explained

Photo Credit: Image by splongo from Pixabay

We have a special podcast from Kevin McEvenue in which he explains what makes Heartfelt Conversation so unique. He points to it as a way of caring for one another as we care for ourselves. As we give ourselves a chance to be with ourselves uncritically, we also find a way to be with another uncritically. It is a mutual agreement that our ability and willingness to be fully present to each other is unconditional and supportive.

Sometimes, as focusers, we find ourselves in Heartfelt Conversations as a natural outcome of our interaction with our partners. This podcast helps us appreciate, to a higher degree, what is happening. Kevin also provides some guidance on how to consciously create a situation in which Heartfelt Conversation emerges and supports both parties at the same time.

These specific steps can be used as a guide to help us learn Heartfelt Conversation. They can also serve to deepen our experience by bringing to our consciousness how Heartfelt Conversation is different from talking to someone.

We invite you to enjoy this groundbreaking podcast and share your own experiences of Heartfelt Conversation by submitting your own posts or comments.

To leave or read a comment, click here and go past the end of the post.

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

It’s a Big Deal

“There is a deeper process inside of you that wants to be seen…and heard…and appreciated by you.”

It’s a Big Deal
Intro by E. Morana

It’s a Big Deal is a segment on the power of being noticed that brings us to the completion of the series, Participatory Spirituality.

In his own words:  “It’s a big deal…to notice…to be noticed…to be informed…and to receive and to go with…”

The video below is a shortened version of a webinar which Kevin offered on Zoom to a group of WholeBody focusers in July 2021. In it, Kevin begins by speaking to us of his own experience of what it’s like—for him—to be in a community. When asked to lead a webinar on the value of community, he knew he didn’t want to do it. His past experience had left him with generally negative expectations regarding community. He noticed that. Then he decided to do the webinar and to see what was there.

To Notice

He opens with the statement: “Here I am…so what’s going on in me? Notice me being present to myself.”

After articulating his own discovery, he invites his audience—and now, that’s each of us here on the blog—to turn inwardly and to wait for our own Body Sense to form about being here—in this situation. His words: “There’s a deeper process inside of you that wants to be seen…and heard…and appreciated by you.”

The Big Deal

Kevin has set out to show us something almost miraculous: that when we begin to pay attention to whatever-that-is-in-us, it begins to awaken to itself and it begins to transform. On its own! And it needs us to pay attention to it. It couldn’t have awakened—and couldn’t have begun this new period of growth—without our attention.

That’s what we’ve really come here to learn. Not thoughts-about community, but our direct-experience-here-and-now of me-in-this-community. Instead, we’ve come to practice listening to how it is for me, here, now. Things begin to unfold that could not have happened without it. Surprising things. Good things.

No wonder it’s a Big Deal.

Eyes Wide Open

Wholebody focusing demonstrates the power of consciousness alive in possibility. It invites a connection between me and a part of me. Once I sense the connection is there between us, I invite it to awaken to its own awareness of itself. Something it can’t do without me.

Eyes Wide Open is a major shift in perception. A very significant and powerful belief: how I can’t see, mustn’t see, and how limiting that has been for me.

Many of us suffer this kind of eye dis-function, a dysfunction that has been there—only to get worse, not better! I could have just talked about an issue like how it is to be short-sighted, for example. But here I do something very different! I don’t talk about it; I live into the experience of how it is right now!

Eyes Wide Open

I allow myself to come alive to this experience for all to see me in the way I suffer it. I have been haunted by these words, “eyes wide open,” for some time. How that is—a suffering accepted as almost normal. In this session I ask myself, “what is happening?” I pause to wait and see what wants to come. At first it brings me back to how it was; and then—unexpectedly—how it also awakens something new that begins to flow.

Wholebody focusing demonstrates the power of consciousness alive in possibility. It invites a connection between me and a part of me. Once I sense the connection is there between us, I invite it to awaken to its own awareness of itself. Something it can’t do without me.

Notice what happens when we invite this part to awaken to the history of its suffering from its own perspective. When we invite a relationship to emerge between us now, something new can happen that couldn’t without our active participation.

In this session something begins to be moved that feels fresh. First the awareness of how it has been so stuck, but then something else begins to emerge beyond that! And that feels good and yet uncomfortable in its newness. Fear and apprehension appear…I don’t know…I don’t know what to do. I can’t see!

But then I hear a gentle soft voice in the background, saying; “Kevin, open your eyes and see. Open your eyes.”

Eyes wide open…there it is! It keeps coming back. It keeps coming back until I stop and pay attention. This is just how it works.

%d bloggers like this: