Focusing in Naturopathic Medicine

One of the fundamental philosophies of naturopathic medicine

Your body knows how to heal itself

Our task is to clear the path, to move what is stuck or blocking us from moving forward.

The Search

We look for root causes, such as digestive or hormonal imbalances, harmful microbes, or other environmental triggers like allergens, mold or other toxic exposures.
We change our diets, replete nutrient deficiencies, support detoxification and antioxidant pathways, and balance neurotransmitters.
We exercise and manage stress.

The Cycle

This approach can be successful, and sometimes, it can be overwhelming and arduous.
We may cycle into working harder and harder in an effort to feel better.
Our approach to restoring health can actually get in the way — and we stay stuck.

A New Approach

In order to approach it differently, we need to step outside the status quo.
As Ann Weiser Cornell writes in Focusing in Clinical Practice, we can get frozen inside a problem, “where attempts to solve the problem are just an example of the problem all over again.”
We need to relinquish top-down management, where we rely only on scientific reasoning and cognitive logic to solve our health problems.

WE NEED TO ASK THE BODY

What if instead of trying to manage and direct our bodies, we invite a conversation with the stuck places?

What happens when we hold space for an interaction, and welcome our body to share its wisdom, trusting that it has something to show us?

When we listen closely, we can awaken an inner knowing, an awakening that brings vitality and reveals a deeper path to healing.

Focusing

We can tap into this inner knowing using the tools of Focusing, a practice developed by the philosopher and psychologist Eugen Gendlin and carried forward by many amazing practitioners throughout the world.

In Focusing, we re-orient from removing, changing, and fixing problems, and toward a place of deep listening and present moment experiencing.

As we create a compassionate curious space, something, a bodily knowing, may come forward. In the practice of Focusing, we call this ‘something’ the felt sense.

The felt sense is a present moment, bodily sense of a whole situation. It can be described as an ‘uneasiness’ about a situation or problem.

The felt sense may include, but encompasses much more than simple emotions, thoughts or physical sensations. Whereas emotions, thoughts and sensations are often repetitive, the felt sense is always freshly forming.

The felt sense contains intricacy and nuance and often subtlety, and is particular to this very moment — the felt sense carries the implicit knowing of the whole experience, both what feels wrong and perhaps what would feel right.

In Focusing, we attend to the freshly forming felt sense, to our own immediate experiencing and see what emerges. We invite a sense of its own knowing and hold a space for radical acceptance.

We learn to trust that the next steps are already happening, as we are experiencing them.

In this unfolding, we find a new sense of direction and a fresh energy to help carry us forward.

In this process we may discover that the medicine is not as much about what we take or do in order to feel better, but rather how we listen and how we hold what wants healing.

SCHEDULE A FOCUSING APPOINTMENT NOW

Focusing in Naturopathic Medicine

One of the fundamental philosophies of naturopathic medicine

Your body knows how to heal itself

The Search

The Cycle

A New Approach

WE NEED TO ASK THE BODY

Focusing

Have more questions? Please contact the office.

Naturopathic Doctors don’t treat diseases, they treat people.

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