Kevin McEvenue, Author at Kevin McEvenue's Wholebody Focusing Blog

Focusing with One’s Body

Photo Credit: Michael Lux The Creative Little Garden NYC

As part of our Trainers’ Corner, we are offering a series of short training videos. The videos demonstrate what happens in a Wholebody Focusing session.

This first clip is from a session between Kevin McEvenue and Diana Scalera. It is from the end of a meeting whose theme was of being with what is new in our lives while honoring what was there before. What you will see in this video is how this situation lives in Diana’s body and how Kevin supports the forward movement of how these challenges live in her body.

Please consider sharing what you notice about the session, what you learned, or maybe that which you want to know more. Use the link below to send your comments, and we will respond.

In the week after this session, my right shoulder pain that would show up after a night’s sleep in the same position disappeared. There is still pain on the left side. What did change in a big way was that I have a broader capacity to face challenges with more confidence and clarity.

Let’s see what happens when my left arm has a chance to be fully heard and becomes more aware of itself.

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

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When Love Pays Attention to a Deep Wound

Photo credit: Pixabay

This audio tells us about an unusual solo focusing session—no listening partner—and its extraordinary aftereffect, described by an advanced Wholebody focuser who had decided to sit-with a serious medical condition for which surgery had been recommended.

He knew he needed to pause.

He speaks succinctly. No explanations! No analysis! When confronted with chronic pain, he simply sat-with what came, watched and consented to the thoughts, the feelings, the inner-directed movements that came directly from the Body—simply present to all-that-came without trying to change it. Or to explain it.

After two hours of simply sitting-with, the pain was largely gone. And, for all the twenty years since, his chronic, medically-recognized symptom has not reappeared.

I wonder what you will notice when you listen to his story.

And I welcome you to share, here, your own unique transformative experiences that have resulted from your own inner-listening to stuck places.

I know I will open myself to this invitation as well.

Hearing from each other on this blog can be a powerful way for us—as a community—to explore our emerging edge together.

Elizabeth Morana

Adapted from a recording from Nada Lou

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On Being Reactive Versus Being Responsive

Painting: Kevin McEvenue

Dear Kevin,

When the body hears that it’s “directed to do something,” it is not being given a choice. It’s expected to do it. It might refuse, or it might comply. But it cannot come from a natural place because there’s no offer of a choice.

What you are showing us is that we can build in a choice. For ourselves! After you see the typical reaction we all have to being told to do something, and we don’t want to, and yet, we’re going to make ourselves do it. It’s a burden trying to comply, and fighting it as we do.

So you’re showing us that we can turn to our own inner self, and offer a choice—an invitation. Instead of forcing ourselves to cooperate, we can ask the body to choose how it would like to respond.

An option not always offered to children. Or to us, when we were children. Yay for giving the body the chance to do something on its own, creatively. Rather than just feeling forced to comply or rebel.

Yay for offering ourselves the freedom of choice! What would the world be like if we had this option built into us? Would we be a bunch of ‘hippies?’ Or would we be purely self-centered people?

Or would we be a group of kindhearted, peaceful, beings connected to one another in a gentle way?

Elizabeth Morana

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Intunement Beginning Place Part 2

Preamble for Intunement 2

In this audio recording, Kevin tells us more about how the practice of intunements have continued to evolve. At the risk of missing rich nuance, I’ll say this: first, he makes explicit that heartfelt conversation is not a one-way-street bringing value only to the ‘focuser.’

Kevin shares: “….heartfelt connection has a quality of GOODNESS, of light, of wisdom, that—perhaps—is for BOTH OF US….it begins with you—but maybe the life in it also has something in this experience of Alive that’s for me. That felt new! And gradually—and only now—beginning to emerge as something that I can claim for myself, and spend time with, and allow that to open more fully in my life too….” Much like trying to describe a beautiful sunset, it’s hard to give concise words to this, but I’ll say that Kevin seems to be describing that quality of Goodness that forms in a Heart Felt connection and inevitably brings something new for each of those present.

Then he turns to the aliveness that we feel in each part of ourselves—a body part, for example. And then he goes further, Inviting us to give our attention to something alive to us in nature: “….what we bring to that is our human consciousness…whether a foot or a tree…..we ADD something to its awareness of itself that wasn’t there until we mutually met one another in that way….”
He may not have made his case yet for some of his readers—although he has succeeded, with me. If so, just hold all of it, all of these ideas, and hold your own not-sure-about and your own even-a-bit-cautious, and see how that shakes out in the coming days and weeks. Your own questions are seeds of the MORE that can and will grow in this exploration of what is happening when two or more are gathered in heartfelt connection.

Elizabeth Morana

Reference: Mr Deer and Me and The Pine and I (Stories on the Blog as excellent examples of giving our Heart Felt attention to something alive in Nature, Kevin.)

Mr. Deer and Me

The PIne and I

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A Gift that Keeps Giving & How I Mustn’t Feel the Joy of all that Until I Pause!

Each time I paused, I felt more like myself. I felt more appreciation for who I am, the struggles I’ve survived and the beauty I created along the way. This is an appreciation I had never felt before because I was always too busy trying to change myself to be something or someone “better.”

Photo Credit: Pixaby

Here is where I want to begin, reflecting on what Diana shared below in her blog that will not let go of me until I say something. This was a very powerful connection that demanded my attention. I am appreciating how the power of Diana’s heartfelt piece on the Blog that so deeply touched me. There is so much there as I stop and make room for what wants to come in me now. Maybe see what comes for you here too. Kevin

Pauses Big and Small

“Each time I paused, I felt more like myself. I felt more appreciation for who I am, the struggles I’ve survived and the beauty I created along the way. This is an appreciation I had never felt before because I was always too busy trying to change myself to be something or someone “better.” Instead, I now know that this treasure trove of information about me is readily available and that whenever I pause and hold space with equal regard for what is there, something new about me will emerge.”

Diana Scalera November 19, 2018

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Connections can be so powerful and so rewarding when we can stop and take in!

Photo Credit: Pixaby

Sharing this Heartfelt blog together seems to bring more in each one of us. That is my experience—enjoying what you have added to us from your direct experience of life shared with us.

Recently I had a very powerful experience with another person, a person who I regularly meet when I come to get my medication filled. Usually I ignore such moments, but this time I did something different again. I allowed my body-self to take it in.

Later, in a private moment, I allowed this experience to return and to give it the time it needed to be fully appreciated for what it was for me. Suddenly the felt sense of the moment came so alive, so powerful that it overwhelmed me and seemed to scream; “A connection is happening here!” My body seemed filled with passion and a desire that felt so satisfying when I could find my ground. All because I stopped and allowed that simple connection to complete itself rather than walk away before it had a chance to become more fully present.

I invite you again to join me and Pause and notice an everyday connection that demands attention. Perhaps it will be someone you don’t know and yet this powerful connection feels so good and you wonder why! Maybe you could spend time with it and let it show you why!

Kevin McEvenue

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A Moment of Kindness that felt so Satisfying!

I had just gotten on a bus and a lady offered me her seat. The normal reaction would be simply, “Oh! she is being so nice.” But something more unfolded between us.

A moment of kindness that felt so satisfying.

We have been practicing moments of Wholebody Focusing and Heartfelt Connection with one another in enjoying these blogs, awakening something very special in each of us. I know I have. And some of those moments stay with me and enrich and expand my own life experience in me and around me–often in very unexpected ways. Here is a moment like this when I was able to Pause and enjoy the moment–as several of you have suggested.

In this recording, I want to share an unexpected kindness that happened in a situation that felt so deeply touching and satisfying and so uninvited. The situation was really quite ordinary. I had just gotten on a bus and a lady offered me her seat. The normal reaction would be simply, “Oh! she is being so nice.” But something more happened because I was open to actually feel the body connection unfolding between us, and I was able to step back and become aware of what was happening–happening without a single word being spoken, but deeply felt.

I would like to invite you to stay with me and join me in this kind of event which may have happened to you too, and maybe awakened a similar bodily felt connection that seemed heartfelt and so satisfying. Kevin.

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Unsatisfied Can Feel so Heard!

A situation happened recently that felt so uncomfortable that I couldn’t leave it alone. I just had to address it and so I did. It was a very familiar event—having dinner with somebody or a group of people and walking away feeling so unsatisfied, hating every moment of it.

In fact, I realized I could kvetch for days and I would still remain unsatisfied. This time, I did something quite different. I paused and found a safe place to ask my body what was so unsatisfying here? And when I could pause like that, I could feel my body appreciating the question and it felt very present in a different way than the usual chatter of thinking about something I don’t like, and why!

This is what came, being with that kind of ‘background feeling’ at a dinner gathering where I came away feeling so very unsatisfied wondering why, again! What came was a real surprise and left me feeling in a very different place!

Join me here and see what comes for you in this kind of situation where you’re feeling either uncomfortable or more—unsatisfied.

Actually, they might feel slightly different. Feeling unsatisfied often points to the possibility of what it would feel like to feel fully satisfied. Feeling uncomfortable seems more like doing something, like making a list about what to do about it, but not necessarily point to something that could change the body experience, more like a quick fix to get rid of that feeling.

In this recording, I discover something very different as a possibility I never dreamed of.

Enjoy! Kevin

Author: Kevin McEvenue

Focusing with One’s Body

Photo Credit: Michael Lux The Creative Little Garden NYC

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