How This Works

What is IR Focusing?
IR Focusing is a special way of paying attention to yourself, so that you sense the whole way you are feeling about situations or issues in your life. This is different from just having emotions or just getting in touch with feelings. IR Focusing involves having a different kind of relationship with emotions and feelings. It’s as if you are becoming your own good listener. The result is greater calm, wiser choices, and a deeper sense of connection to your own life and being.

It doesn’t require any special equipment or beliefs. It isn’t psychotherapy or coaching. It’s something you can learn to do by yourself, and do with friends and family members if you like.

Typically when something is distressing us, and we feel upset and agitated, we have a tendency to want to figure out a solution. Our reasoning is, if we can figure it out intellectually, we think that means we’ll be able to solve the problem and implement the solution. And this works well… until it doesn’t. Life’s toughest problems, especially the ones involving emotions and other people, can’t be solved this way.

With IR Focusing you bypass the intellectual analyzing. You go directly to the place where you have a deep body knowing about the situation. There is wisdom in our body-mind which we tend to ignore, partly because our modern, fast-paced, head-oriented culture is just not set up that way.

How It Works
The best way to explain how IR Focusing works is to give you an example.

Jennifer came to me with a block to speaking up. Whenever she had to give a presentation, or make a challenging phone call, she could feel her throat constricting. She tried to explain to herself that there was nothing to be afraid of, but it didn’t help. She had tried a lot of different things before she came to me, and she had just about given up. But she was determined to give it one more try because she had a suspicion that whatever was blocking her throat was probably blocking even more… and she was tired of her life feeling stagnant and not living up to her potential.

I explained that IR Focusing is a process that she could learn for herself, but for our first session I would simply guide her through it. She could tell me if something I suggested didn’t fit for her… and she was welcome to keep anything to herself if she wasn’t ready to say it. Truly, I wasn’t so interested in her life details as I was in what she was feeling in her body – right now.

I guided her through a gentle grounding exercise, just a few minutes… and then asked if she was feeling the constriction right now. She said yes: coming to learn a new skill was bringing the familiar tightness in her throat. So I invited her to describe it: was “constriction” exactly the right word? She sensed it… took some time… and said, “No, it’s actually more like a squeezing.” Her body relaxed slightly when the word “squeezing” felt right.

Jennifer was about to talk to me about the problem: how she needed to be past this kind of thing, and how she knew she didn’t have to be ruled by fear. I gently interrupted her. “Let’s just be with it as it is,” I said. “I’m not sure how to do that,” she said.

“Well… maybe you could say hello to it – kindly.” I watched as Jennifer closed her eyes and said a silent but kind “hello” to the squeezing feeling in her throat. Then her eyes flew open in surprise: “It totally relaxed when I said hello to it!”

“That’s great,” I said – not at all surprised. Then she frowned. “It came back again, just not as strongly.” That didn’t surprise me either. “I’m guessing it has something it would like to let you know.”

This was a new idea for Jennifer, as it is for many of the people I work with. We tend to take our bodies for granted and treat our emotions like furniture – something to be moved around or gotten past. What I show people is how to have an inner relationship with your feelings… and how, if you do that, they change naturally, and bring you gifts of insight as they do.

At my invitation, Jennifer got quiet again and sensed her throat. Now the squeezing feeling was calmer but still felt insistent – about something. “It has a worried quality,” Jennifer reported. That was something she couldn’t have been aware of before. And then: “It feels like it’s trying to protect me from something.” Each step leads to the next one. We stay with it, patiently.

Suddenly Jennifer’s eye fly open. “Oh!” she says. “It’s trying to protect me from making mistakes!”

“Let it know you hear it,” I invite. I see Jennifer’s eyes close again and her hand move gently to her throat. “It’s melting,” she says. “It’s gone.”

We take a few minutes for Jennifer to enjoy the new feeling in her throat: open, calm, at ease. “It’s like a miracle,” she tells me, her eyes shining.

A few weeks later I heard from her again. She had to give a major presentation at work, and for a moment her throat constricted in the old way. She paused and said hello to the feeling, and it relaxed in a minute. It was the most enjoyable and effective presentation she’s ever given. She’s grateful for the IR Focusing process -- and so am I.

What are the essential qualities of IR Focusing? As we can see from Jennifer’s story, it is gentle and respectful. We think we need to be forceful with ourselves in order to make something change – but force just creates resistance. Gentleness can be the most powerful force in the inner world. Likewise, self-criticism sets up resistance to change. Treating ourselves with kindness and respect is key.

IR Focusing is based in body-sensing. Your body can give you guidance about every situation in your life. Sometimes, as in Jennifer’s case, the body sense is there already, and other times you would invite it to come.

With IR Focusing, you learn a series of steps of inner contact, from describing what something feels like, to saying hello to it, to sensing what it has to show you. It’s like a conversation with yourself, a conversation where you do all the listening.

And finally, it is not therapy (though it can be therapeutic) because it is something that you can do yourself and have with you through all the ups and downs of your life.

How do you learn it? That depends on you.

Some people can learn IRF from reading a book or listening to a CD. So I wrote the easiest, most practical and accessible book that I possibly could, and I wrote and recorded the most transparently helpful CD set that I knew how to make. Both of them are based on over 20 years of experience helping all kinds of people learn IR Focusing, and you can learn more about each of them by clicking on the pictures here.

But many people cannot learn IR Focusing from a book or a CD. I was one of them. I needed the patient help of Focusing teachers, working with me one-to-one and in groups, and also a lot of practice with Focusing partners.

Why isn’t IR Focusing easier to learn? Because it’s a really different way of relating to ourselves, that goes counter to most of the messages around us. We are told how to feel, or to “get over” how we feel, and we are never ever taught about the body knowing that is the real way through our difficulties.

Why do you feel so stuck? Why do feel like you’ve tried everything and nothing has worked? Why do you go around in circles, repeating what hasn’t worked, feeling the same emotions, and no farther along than before?

It’s not that there’s something wrong with you. I really want you to hear that! So I’m going to say it again.

It’s not that there’s something wrong with you, it’s that the whole way our modern culture is set up leaves us cut off from our bodies and our source of wisdom. And if you suffered traumatic experiences or came from a dysfunctional family (like I did), that makes it even harder to stay in touch with yourself.

If you’re like me, you probably need to learn IR Focusing from a teacher. And that’s why I set up the Focusing Training Program. It’s the lowest cost, most efficient and effective way that I can imagine to give you IR Focusing for the rest of your life, in every situation where you need it. In that program, you’ll receive one-to-one guidance, group instruction, and lots of practice in peer partnerships… and it really works.

Just one more thing about how this works. You still might be wondering what this is. Is it therapy? Is it coaching? Is it meditation? Is it positive self-talk or positive visualization?

IR Focusing isn’t any of those things…. But it has similarities to each of them. (And can be used with those other methods to enhance their effects.)

As in therapy or coaching, you can get positive change on deeply held, long term issues, as well as releasing blocks to taking practical action. But unlike therapy or coaching, you do IRF on your own or with partners in a free exchange. You learn a way of being that you have with you at all times, and once you learn it, it costs you nothing more.

As in meditation, IR Focusing has an essential quality of acceptance, and you can find greater inner peace and detachment from stressful emotional states or thoughts. But unlike meditation, IRF is more engaged, practical, issue-oriented – being about a particular life situation.

As in positive self-talk or visualization, you can access the very best of your potential for moving forward with your life without getting stuck in negative emotions. But unlike positive self-talk or visualization, IRF is grounded in your whole self, inclusive of all your feeling states, so you aren’t leaving out aspects of yourself that can return in a backlash later.

If you’re ready to learn more, here are some suggestions:

More about one-to-one sessions

More about the Focusing Training Program

More articles about Inner Relationship Focusing

My Living with Focusing blog with answers to all kinds of questions about using IR Focusing in daily life