Focusing On A Positive Experience (20 minutes)
---Get comfortable in a chair or lying on the floor, letting your weight fall into the surface under you, trusting it to support you ---
---Turn inward by closing your eyes and beginning to just notice your breathing, noticing the breath going in --- and out --- in --- and out--- in --- and out ---
1 minute
---Notice where you have tension in your body, perhaps your neck, shoulders, legs, face 30 seconds
---Imagine that the tension is a stream of water, flowing out of your body, down your arms and legs, out through your fingertips and toes---30 seconds
---Imagine the tension flowing like water, down your body and out of your arms and legs --- 30 seconds
---Let yourself travel inside of your body to a place of peace --- 30 seconds
---Now, bring to mind a specific positive experience about which you want to know more ---
1 minute
---Bring back the detailed memory of that experience ---
1 minute
---Now, set aside all of your thoughts about the experience, and just try to remember what it felt like to be there---not words but the bodily feel of being there ---
1 minute
---Now, carefully try to find words for the bodily feel, or an image or gesture. Go carefully back and forth between the symbols and the feel of the whole thing until you find words or an image or a gesture that are just right. Take your time to explore the experience thoroughly, making symbols for many aspects of it, enriching it.
1 minute or more
---Now, gently ask yourself, "What was so special about this experience for me?", and see what comes in the center of your body, the place where you have "intuitions" or the "bodily felt sense," the "intuitive feel"---
1 minute
---Again, carefully find words or an image that exactly fit that felt sense ---
1 minute
---And ask yourself, "What else makes that experience special?"and see what comes as an "intuitive feel," somewhere in the center of your body ---
1 minute
---Find words or an image that are just right ---
1 minute
---Now, think of some symbol, a word or phrase or a picture, a song or movie or book, anything that you can find that would "represent" the feel of this whole positive experience for you, so that you could use that symbol as a "doorway" back into this whole positive experience ---
1 minute
---And ask your body, "Is there any way that I want to bring this into a present relationship or share it with someone? Any way to make this kind of experience more present in my life right now?" and see what comes---
1 minute
---Find words or an image to capture that "intuitive feel" ---
1 minute
---See if you can imagine some small step you could take to make this positive experience more present in your life ---
1 minute
---And check with the "intuitive feel" in your body to see if that would be possible ---
1 minute
---Keep imagining a step, and checking with your body, until some step feels "okay."
---And, when you're ready, stop Focusing for today.