And I think that's important because what you learned from that is that you can trust your body.
See the body, your body makes the decision rather than your head.
You go down inside and that's what you learn with all these steps in the Focusing process you learn
how to trust your body and to go with it for good reasons. Let me just give you a quick example.
A friend of mine who's written a number of books and is a therapist in California, he told me this
example. Once a number of years ago, when he used to help us with workshops there. Said he had a
client that came to him. She was a woman about 55 and she started to come to him for therapy. And
when she came in that morning and star I started her Focusing, this is the primary tool he uses,
Ah what felt like it was number one was that out of her kitchen window she could see that the
that her neighbour's rabbit in the garden yard next door in rabbit hutch
was not being properly fed or watered.
That's felt like it was number one. Now in the context of this you have to know understand how
kind of stupid that seems. This lady had to drive for an hour through rush hour and city traffic.
Therapy is 75 to 100 an hour in the San Francisco Bay area. Well my head, at least would say look
if I have to put up with all this traffic to get to this therapist, pay him 75 or 100 bucks,
I certainly should focus on something more important than the damn rabbit, next door.
You know that's the way my head would work you know, so let's get with it and find a
real problem here and work with it. But both she as well as as uh John knew that that's that's this
thing thinking up here. So what did she do? Well she stayed with that feeling of looking out her
kitchen and feeling uncomfortable about the rabbit not being properly cared for there in the box.
And what happens John said was uh, was so illustrative of what we're talking about now
with the Focusing process being able to trust the body. After a few minutes of just sitting
holding that inside that feeling of the rabbit not being properly cared for what came were the words:
That's the way I feel about myself. Nobody really cares whether I'm dead or alive.
And that was the real issue of the whole therapy in the first place. Was that she
thought nobody really gave a damn whether she was dead or alive. And with that of course came
the tears the loneliness. You know everything that came with that. So you know it's just amazing how
these things aren't accidental - the burned toast, things, the noticing some so-called silly thing
is not silly. Obviously and where it can go where it can lead you. So john said within 45 minutes
she had moved just miles inside in owning how she really felt. She told him afterwards,
she said I really I've never been able to say this because I wasn't really clear. So it was a felt
sense you know. It was you I wasn't really clear to explain to you why I was even here for therapy.
She says now I know why I decided to come here, she said, now it even makes sense I can see what's
happened in the past, she said I moved to a San Francisco area from out here in the east coast,
where I only have one living relative, that's an old uncle, should I have no family. And she
said when I was about 45 years of age I began to realize, well maybe there will not be any family.
And there will not be anybody that is a significant other person in my life. And she
said when I started to realize that, she said, it so frightened me that I threw myself into church
work and volunteering for everything and doing things for everybody. I was everybody's servant,
and she said, in order not to feel that feeling of maybe I am really alone and nobody gives a
damn whether I'm dead or alive. And she said as I began living with that, she said, I began to
have health problems, she said, I was frequently cried when I was right up to here with tears and
people could just say practically nothing to me and I would dissolve into tears.
And she said, my concentration at work suffered and I was having problems with working, you know
on and on she listed all these things that were happening and she said that was why I came to you
for therapy. It was because I was having all these other problems, but I said she said I
know now but what's behind that. That I never owned how I really felt about myself in my life.
And you'd think well, now she walks out the door ten thousand times worse.
But just the opposite. Just the opposite. And John said it was so, so wonderful to see with three or
four more sessions how she found an inner strength in her, herself and she began now to reach out
and do things from inside that felt right and felt life-giving and and she created a
world for herself in relationships that that brought that into her life what was missing.
And he said he'd follow he told me not too long ago he'd follow through on her and he said
I would call her one of the happiest women I've ever run into.