handle

Handle is an expressive artwork about my personal journey through the complex and fascinating process of learning about Focusing—through experience, as well as studying the theories and research that support the practice.

Focusing is a natural human process given a name, definition, structure, and philosophy by Eugene Gendlin in the 1970s that has blossomed into an entire field, with numerous branches, and connected realms of research and practice today. One that I find particularly fascinating is the work of philosopher and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist, who has published interesting research about the two hemispheres of our brains. With the help of Peter Afford’s writing, I have developed a sense of how Focusing works neurologically.

Handle highlights the Focusing concept of the “handle” that I feel is a key aspect of how these theories are connected—and that also represents a connectedness between the different hemispheres of our brain and our mind-body relationship.

“Handle highlights the Focusing concept of the “handle” that I feel is a key aspect of how these theories are connected—and that also represents a connectedness between the different hemispheres of our brain and our mind-body relationship.”

The ampersand “and” symbol is used to represent both a handle and a key that opens that relationship. The left and right sides of the composition capture aspects of the different hemispheres, as well as the journey and process of a Focusing session.

On the left side are references to things and categories - thinking, organizing, and grasping what we already know and can hold on to (like a handle). In the middle and right side are references to breathing and turning our attention to our inner world, which leads to the somatic experience of opening up to a whole feel, something still forming, unfolding, and emerging. This is where creative expression tends to happen, in often mysterious, playful, and unexpected ways.

Some of my symbolic process drawings emerge from the brain-like image of a bath sponge. Each image carries deep emotional, and sometimes playful, meaning for me in that journey.

In my Focusing process I find that spending some time in my right hemisphere, connected to my body, can lead to a bodily-felt shift that feels like a release of pressure, or like cracking, or peeling back a layer, or pulling something from darkness into the light. And as a new realization arrives, it can feel like a bursting into bloom, like the blossoms at the right.

Handle was created in Adobe Photoshop, where I combined original drawings, paintings, and photos from my own Focusing sessions with graphics, images, textures, and type.