Something in Me Hurts!

In the first 12 intunements, Kevin helps us strengthen our sense of Me Here.  Something in Me Hurts is the beginning of a new phase of this this work–a phase that guides us to being with the parts of ourselves that need our attention and love.  This new group of intunements helps us hold both Me Here and something else. The first intunement of this group works with a painful part.

Something in Me Hurts!  is an intunement that supports us when we need loving kindness for a part of us that has pain or is suffering.  Kevin walks us through, in real time, what happens to him when he awakes to a painful shoulder.  He connects to himself and to the part that hurts which allows both to become more aware of themselves and each other. Through this process something new emerges.

Feel what happens when you share this experience with Kevin.

Something in Me Hurts! Intunement

For more intunements please visit Find your Favorite Intunements 
Or visit Kevin Speaks  for more of Kevin's work.

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Invitation to Commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Photo Credit: Ellen Korman Mains

A Contemplative Focusing-oriented Zoom Gathering
January 25, 2020, 12 Noon – 1:30 pm EST
with Ellen Korman Mains
author of the award-winning memoir

Buried Rivers: A Spiritual Journey into the Holocaust

To the chagrin of her parents—Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust—Ellen became a Buddhist at 19, nearly tearing her family apart. Decades later, on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, an experience on a German train sent her on a series of life-changing journeys to Poland to explore the meaning of basic goodness after the Holocaust, and her own family history. January 27, 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and 15 years since that 2005 train ride.

As nationalism and other threats increase around the planet, how do we acknowledge and hold space for an event as monumental as the Holocaust? Is healing possible? As a daughter of Holocaust survivors, Ellen will offer some personal and historical context for this gathering, including her journey since January of 2005. This gathering will include a guided meditation to help us connect with grounded presence, to create an environment of safety, and to invite ancestral support. Breakout groups will allow us to freshly share our experience.

“We, the living, are the body of our ancestors, and in our bodies we carry all the tears they could not cry during their lifetimes. And when we allow their tears to be cried through us, something is being made whole between the generations . . .”

-The Tears of the Ancestors: Victims and Perpetrators in the Tribal Soul, by Daan van Kampenhout

“If we go underneath the overwhelming emotions and touch into physical sensations, something quite profound occurs in our organism—there is a sense of flow, of “coming home.”

-In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma & Restores Goodness by Peter Levine

Please join us!

Email EllenKormanMains@gmail.com to RSVP and receive the Zoom link.

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

When You Help Me Go Further, It Feels so Good

Photo Credit: Kakadu National Park, Victoria by Gabrielle Clark

The first time I tried Focusing something was not right. I was usually good at what I tried, and I could pick most things up easily. Not focusing—I froze, I could not do it. My body would shake, my jaw would shake, no words would come out.

It was so hard! How was it that some people were saying how wonderful it was. I hated it and wished I had never joined the class.

This situation led me on a mission to get it. I would try harder; surely I would get it…eventually. I went to lots of different teachers. I did lots of reading, and I even spoke to Gene on one of his phone courses.

An Encounter with Gene Gendlin

Even given a chance to speak with Gene Gendlin, the founder of Focusing, I couldn’t get the words out that I wanted. They would have been, “please help me, Gene, I can’t do focusing and I don’t know why, please help me.” Instead, I made a statement about the process model. I held my breath and blurted out…“Hi Gene, I am so excited that my body will know what it needs when it finds it.” There was silence for a few seconds “Oh…what do you mean?” he asked gently.

Oh my gosh, I froze. Did I even know what I meant? How will I answer him? What if I can’t remember what I said?  I had rushed it out so quickly, and I didn’t know if it was still there to be found. I panicked. I can feel this now, how I hold my breath and rush the words out quickly, I don’t feel my body at all. I paused and begged my body to bring it back, sure enough, it was there. I tried again.

We spoke back and forth for a while. Gene was not just answering me.  He was trying to understand me and to help me to go on from where I was. He seemed to genuinely care about what I said and even wanted to hear more, to understand me or maybe help me understand myself. He would say something that he thought I had meant and then say “is that right?” so I could check it. It moved me profoundly and brought tears to my eyes then and now- this was so new to me and so wanted.

It ended up by him saying “we need both the words and a body sense. If the body is not ready, then it’s not ready, and if the words are not ready, they are not ready. They will come when they are ready.”

How this Conversation Lives in Me Now

Kevin McEvenue says, “when the story is ready to tell itself it will” and “the secret to your unfolding lies in you not me, I just throw things out now and then for you to check them.” My body likes these statements.

I will never forget this moment, and I think one day, with practice, I will be able to slow down enough to feel both. I will be able to pause and hold both my body sense and my words together and speak slowly and surely from a place of grounded presence. My practice will be to feel me first, then speak from that deeper place. To let it come, to allow the story to tell itself from where it wants to. This new ability is a scary thought both unknown and unfamiliar, but I like it.

No one can teach me how to hold both my body sense and my words together, I have to find my own way, and I am grateful to Kevin and Gene for the way they both hold space for a person to do just that.

To find my own way feels so good.

*****

Gene Gendlin is the founder of Focusing. To learn more about him, please click on http://www.focusing.org/bios/gendlin_bio.html

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Let Your Experience Be

Welcome to the second video blog of a recent conversation between Kevin and UK Wholebody Focusing trainer Addie van der Kooy.  In the first clip Kevin and Addie explored the “inner core muscle” of “Me Here” and in this clip Addie speaks about another inner core muscle that can be activated by the practice of Letting Your Experience Be – a letting go of any notion of what your experience should be in each moment.  Enjoy!

Addie van der Kooy (avdkooy@outlook.com)

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A Shared Body to Body Listening & Understanding Beyond Trying to Think

Wake up and enjoy who you are!  Love your resistance!  Feel you own energy! And let what wants your attention to have the space it needs.

Kevin demonstrates how Wholebody Focusing is about returning to our authentic selves and honoring ourselves over and over again.  He does this by walking us through a challenging shared experience with two people in his life and how he can be with those challenges and still be able to love and enjoy who he is.

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The Felt Sense of What Feels Alive and the More that Emerges from that Alive

What does it mean to accept ourselves in a deep and true way?  As we move forward in our daily Wholebody Focusing practice our sense of aliveness emerges in a stronger and more clear way.  This may feel uncomfortable.  It may show up as pain or an unraveling of our own ways of ignoring what is there.  In this intunement, Kevin gently guides us through this on-going process in which each unfolding may lead to a new one.  Along the way, we can continue to ask “what is good for me now?”

By simply accepting what’s there each time, we allow whatever is needed to emerge.  Kevin asks us to notice the difference in our bodies when we resist what is there from how our bodies feel when we are giving acceptance to what’s there.

It would be wonderful to hear replies from our readers about that difference.

Diana Scalera

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Oceans of Benevolence

Mr Deer

 

…You offer me Space for that encounter a couple years ago with the two does. As I have your words here it comes back so palpably, so viscerally that moment of going out the front door and finding the deer just across and up on the high side of the driveway.

We all stopped.

And from somewhere there was a becoming more as I somehow knew or it came to just meet them wordlessly yes but also deeply from my heart as though it were a sending and receiving directly.

As I “remember” this and re-feel this I am in there again and wonder what/how this relates with your experience.

My heart comes more alive. Yes that sounds right, the activity of my heart comes more alive to itself in this stopping in this way. I see/feel/give from my heart. And the piece that comes more to know itself is the receiving part.

I have to pause here. There are oceans of Benevolence to receive that I have been letting in by the dropper full. OMG

OK This one can go on the blog.

As I reread this having typed it here, a reticent bit comes, this is wide open and something worries about its safety.

It comes to me to pause back at the words that seemed to describe or point to something – oceans of Benevolence.

Letting this In.

A word comes further as I have the whole of this experience – Reception. Something satisfying in there, to have these words come. Oceans of Benevolence. Reception.

Laura Dickinson

 

From a Solid Base of Me Here I ask, “What is going on in Me Right Now?”

As I sit listening to Kevin’s voice, I notice a desire to rest my hands on the desk in front of me.  There is a wanting for the stability that this gives me beyond the contact of my feet on the ground.  I feel a stronger sense of safety with this stability.

I let myself be with this new sense of stability.  I notice how my sense of the temperature in the environment has changed as if a cool breeze has swept through the room.  When that passes I notice how my feet want my attention.  They have problems.  The stability of my hands allow my feet to be heard.
Diana Scalera

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