Focusing app
Gendlin’s Focusing, on your iPhone
Focusing is a method for getting in touch with a vague feeling in your body: the felt sense. Little Somethings guides you through it step by step, one question at a time.
What is Focusing?
Philosopher and psychologist Eugene Gendlin worked with Carl Rogers to understand why therapy helped some clients and not others. The clients it worked for did something striking: they turned their attention to a vague, bodily feeling and gave it time to become clearer.
Gendlin called that feeling the felt sense. It isn’t an emotion like anger or sadness, but something vaguer: the whole of how something is for you, before you have words for it. He called the method of working with it Focusing.
Read about the research behind it →The six steps, and how the app follows them
Gendlin described Focusing in six steps. Little Somethings turns each step into something you can do on your phone.
- 1
Clearing a space
Stepping back from everything that’s going on, without diving in.
In the app: You place each something on your path: close by, or with some space.
- 2
Felt sense
Noticing the vague, bodily feeling of one thing.
In the app: You tap where you feel it.
- 3
Handle
Finding a word or image that fits the feeling.
In the app: You shape a blob and choose one word.
- 4
Resonating
Checking whether the word really fits what you feel.
In the app: You adjust the shape and the word until it fits.
- 5
Asking
Asking the feeling what it needs, and waiting patiently.
In the app: While you sit with it, a few questions help you along, like what it’s saying and what you’d give it. No timer.
- 6
Receiving
Welcoming whatever comes, without judging it.
In the app: You write down what it said. Sometimes something shifts.
Can you do Focusing on your own?
Yes. Gendlin wrote his book Focusing (1978) precisely so people could learn it themselves. The six steps are also used as a practice and self-help method. Many people also practise with a Focusing partner or a therapist.
Little Somethings is a way to practise on your own, in a quiet moment, in a few minutes.
Do the free exerciseFrequently asked questions about Focusing
- What is a felt sense?
- Gendlin’s term for the vague, bodily feeling of a situation as a whole, before you have words for it. It’s different from an emotion like anger or sadness.
- Is Focusing the same as mindfulness?
- They’re related: both ask you to pay attention to what’s here now. The difference is that in Focusing you choose one vague feeling and ask what it wants to tell you.
- What does the app cost?
- You can start for free. See pricing for what’s in Plus.
- Is it on Android?
- Not yet. Little Somethings is available for iPhone.