How do you handle your most intense feelings? Are you able to keep them company when they come up, or do you feel swamped, like they are “taking over?”
Intense feelings are a familiar feature of the emotional landscape for sensitive people. We may be able to handle less intense events and feelings with ease, but we find ourselves overwhelmed when intense emotions come up.
Happily, there is a specific way to create a big enough space in yourself to hold the most intense emotions: a body-grounding “lead-in.” In Focusing, we use the term “lead-in” to describe a series of suggestions that help create a state of Presence in ourselves. Presence is helpful not just for Focusing but for any kind of inner work that evokes emotional intensity.
In this video, I take you through a lead-in I learned from Focusing-oriented psychotherapist and teacher Glenn Fleisch.* I have made some of the language my own, but the structure and principal content are entirely his. Thank you, Glenn, for your permission to share this.
As you try out this five-minute lead-in, notice that it invites you to tune in to your embodied sense of yourself from five points of view: physical contact, inner sensing, the external environment, the relationship environment, and the spiritual environment. Notice how each point of view brings a new layer of richness and subtlety to your embodied awareness of yourself.
This is the key first step to come into relationship with whatever is going on in you.
*To read more about Glenn’s Wholebody Focusing work, click here
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