Exploring the Shared Felt Sense

This is a video-recording. Several of us gathered via Zoom to participate in a one-time online group about the topic of shared felt sense. That is, paying attention to a process that is larger than the individual, or the dyad, or the group as a gathering of individuals.
Our purpose was to apply our Focusing skills to the task of sensing and communicating what happens in such a group process. We video-recorded this gathering, to share with others what we mean by paying attention to shared felt sense.


Participants (in alphabetical order): Richard Crease, Katarina Halm, Christel Kraft, Nada Lou, Serge Prengel, Betty Szatkowski, Banu Ibaoglu Vaughn, David Young, Andrea Zwingel. June 16, 2017


It was a very rich process, and especially so in the exploration of collective vs individual. Notice in particular:

– Conflict can be the motor of carrying forward. I use “conflict” in a positive sense: What I mean by it is the opposite of blind acceptance. There is space for the individual to say: “Wait a minute, this is not right for me”. Such “conflict” in the group can do something that is very similar to what the Pause does in our individual process. One instance of this happened relatively early on, as a participant made a comment about keeping our attention on the group itself as opposed to future viewers.

– In the later part of the video, notice the body language of a participant as she is describing her process: Going back and forth, forward to backwards, then forward again, etc… In a group that is supportive and not totalitarian, we have the opportunity to keep alternating from moving more closely into the group, and moving away to be more separate, in such a way that the two perspectives enrich each other. We are enriched by the process, and we enrich the process, while being enriched individually as opposed to losing our individuality.