5 Benefits of Somatic Focusing
Over the years, as a Somatic Psychotherapist, I’ve encountered many tools and practices that promise healing and transformation, but few have had the profound impact that Inner Relationship Focusing has had on my life. More than a technique, it has become a way of being that continues to shape how I navigate life’s challenges and and precipitate the path ahead. Here are some of the powerful benefits that have nourished me on my own journey with Focusing.
1. Regulating the Nervous System
One of the first things I noticed when I began practicing Inner Relationship Focusing was a shift in how I responded to stress. Life still throws curveballs, but instead of feeling swept away by anxiety or overwhelm, I found myself with tools to steady my nervous system.
Focusing, informed by Polyvagal Theory, taught me how to ground myself. I learned how to sense when I was stuck in fight-or-flight and, equally, how to gently guide myself back to ground. In this way, Focusing has helped me to cultivate a deeper sense of safety in my body.
2. Discovering "Bodyfulness"
For over 20 years I have practised various forms of mindfulness and, in time, I qualified as a meditation and mindfulness teacher. It was only when I discovered Inner Focusing that I learned how mindfulness had also tended to keep me in the head, out of the body, and all the many different inner wounds that it held. I saw that I had been using mindfulness as an escape, to transcend my suffering and the various patterns of trauma held in my body. Inner Relationship Focusing was a profound doorway into a deeper stratum of healing, and empowered me to gently turn inwards, bridging the mind-body divide. In this way. In a world saturated with mindfulness, Focusing gave me the gift of bodyfulness—a way of being fully present in my body.
This embodied mindfulness helped me feel more connected to myself and my family of inner parts. Whether I was walking in nature or working through a specific trigger, it brought a sense of grounded presence that mindfulness alone hadn’t quite reached. Focusing has been like discovering a hidden room in a house you thought you knew or opening a whole new organ of perception, like a blind person discovering sight.
3. Unlocking Deep Insights
Some of the most surprising and life-changing moments I’ve experienced during Focusing have come from tapping into the Felt Sense—the fuzzy mix of feeling-sensation in the body that carries profound meaning. Focusing teaches us how to access the wisdom held within the felt sense that opens to reveal a rich repository of insight about our life or a creative way forward in a situation where we feel stuck.
There have been times when I was quarantined in thinking mind, ruminating on the hamster wheel with a problem, unable to find clarity, only to realize that my body held the answers contained within the Felt Sense. By learning to listen to these cues through Focusing, I’ve gained insights into my relationships, work, and even rusted-on personal patterns that I couldn’t resolve through logic alone.
4. Reparenting the Inner Child
Each of carries a tapestry of inner wounded children, each holding their own stories and grief and wounds. From feelings of abandonment and being unlovable, to being invisible or not enough, the inner children long to be held, and heard and tended. Focusing offers a deeply compassionate way to turn towards our inner children and to heal the emotional wounds that pattern how we think, act and show up in the world into adult life. Focusing gave me a way to gently meet these parts of myself, with care and a non-judgemental ear. Over time, this reparenting work has brought deep salve to old wounds, and helped me break free from patterns that once felt immovable.
5. A Lifelong Tool for Self-Healing
The greatest gift of Inner Relationship Focusing is that it offers tools that each of us, no matter who we are or the inner work skills that we have already learned, to self-heal and find greater inner wholeness. In this way, Focusing has companioned me through the ups and downs of my life; through the high peaks and passes of work, parenting and social life into a deeper sense of self love and wholeness.