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Gendlin and ecopsychology: focusing in

nature
a
Adrian Harris
a
Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, Roehampton
University, London, UK
Published online: 08 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: Adrian Harris (2013) Gendlin and ecopsychology: focusing in nature, Person-
Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 12:4, 330-343, DOI: 10.1080/14779757.2013.855135

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 Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 2013
Vol. 12, No. 4, 330–343, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14779757.2013.855135

Gendlin and ecopsychology: focusing in nature

Adrian Harris*

Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, Roehampton University, London, UK

(Received 4 December 2012; final version received 25 August 2013)
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Gendlin’s focusing emerged from person-centered research and is widely used within
person-centered and experiential therapy. An increasing number of people are now
practicing focusing in the natural environment. In this paper I develop key aspects of
my doctoral research to investigate the significance of this practice. My research
suggests that focusing in nature is not only a powerful tool for personal development
but that it can also significantly deepen our sense of connection to the natural world.
The phenomenological experience of focusing provides a challenge to the idea that
every individual is a separate self, a belief that is common amongst adherents of
classical person-centered theory. By challenging this notion, focusing in nature adds
support to the more relational models of the self found in person-centered and
experiential theory and beyond.
Keywords: Gendlin; focusing; ecopsychology; relational; nature; embodiment

Gendlin und öko-psychologie: focusing in der natur

Gendlin‘s Focusing entstand aus der Personzentrierten Forschung und wird in der
Personzentrierten und Experienziellen Therapie oft verwendet. Eine wachsende Zahl
von Menschen praktizieren Focusing in der natürlichen Umgebung. In diesem Artikel
entwickle ich Kernaspekte meiner Doktorarbeit, um die Bedeutung dieser Praxis zu
untersuchen. Meine Forschung legt nahe, dass Focusing in der Natur nicht nur ein
machtvolles Werkzeug für die persönliche Entwicklung ist, sondern dass sie auch
unseren Sinn von Verbundenheit mit der natürlichen Welt signifikant vertiefen kann.
Die phänomenologische Erfahrung des Focusing stellt die Idee auf den Prüfstand, dass
jeder Einzelne ein getrenntes Selbst sei, ein Glaube, der bei Anhängern der klassischen
Personzentrierten Theorie verbreitet ist. Mit dieser Provokation unterstützt das
Focusing in der Natur die relationaleren Modelle des Selbst, die man in der
Personzentrierten und der Experienziellen Theorie und darüber hinaus findet.

Gendlin y la eco psicología: focusing en la naturaleza

El Focusing de Gendlin surgió de la investigación centrada en la persona y es
ampliamente utilizado dentro de la terapia experiencial centrada en la persona. Un
numero creciente de personas están practicando Focusing en el medio ambiente
natural. En este escrito desarrollo aspectos claves de mi investigación para mi doctor-
ado para investigar la importancia de esta practica. Mi investigación sugiere que el
Focusing en la naturaleza no solo es una herramienta potente para el desarrollo
personal sino también puede profundizar significativamente nuestro sentido de
conexión con el mundo de la naturaleza. La experiencia fenomenológica del
Focusing provee un desafío de la idea de que todo individuo es un self separado,

*Email: Adrian@gn.apc.org

© 2013 World Association for Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapy & Counseling
 Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies 331

una creencia que es común entre los que adhieren a la teoría clásica centrada en la
persona. al desafiar esta noción el Focusing en la naturaleza apoya los modelos del self
mas relacional encontrados en la teoría centrada en la persona y experiencial.

Gendlin et l’eco-psychologie : le focusing dans un environnement naturel

Le focusing de Gendlin a émergé à partir de la recherche centrée sur la personne et il
est largement utilisé dans la thérapie centrée sur la personne et expérientielle. Un
nombre croissant de personnes pratiquent maintenant le Focusing dans un environnent
naturel. Dans cet article je développe des aspects clefs de ma recherche doctorale pour
analyser l’importance de cette pratique. Ma recherche suggère que le Focusing dans un
environnement naturel n’est pas seulement un outil puissant pour le développement
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personnel, mais qu’il peut aussi approfondir de manière significatif notre sentiment de
connexion avec le monde naturel. L’expérience phénoménologue du Focusing con-
fronte l’idée que chaque individu et un self séparé, ce qui est une croyance répandue
auprès de ceux qui adhèrent à la théorie centrée sur la personne classique. En remettant
en cause cette notion, le Focusing dans la nature étaie les modèles plus relationnels du
self qu’on trouve dans la théorie centrée sur la personne et expérientielle et au-delà.

Introduction
Focusing provided the research methodology for my doctorate on eco-paganism (Harris,
2008) by enabling me to access and understand the embodied knowing of my research
participants. It also emerged as an aspect of eco-pagan practice. Given that eco-paganism
describes environmental activists who practice an earth-based spirituality, it is perhaps not
surprising that ecopsychology was another source of insight.
The importance of Gendlin’s work for ecopsychology quickly became clear to me:
Gendlin offers an embodied intersubjective philosophy that can help ground the emerging
theory of ecopsychology and a practice that can deepen its application. I initially intended
to discuss the significance of Gendlin’s philosophy for ecopsychology and then explore
the potential offered by focusing. At that stage Fisher was the only ecopsychologist I
knew of with any interest in either Gendlin or focusing (Fisher, 2002).
However, when I asked focusing colleagues if they had ever tried focusing in nature,
the response was overwhelming. People who were focusing in nature were not only
developing a deep sense of nature connection, but were also experiencing significant
shifts in their personal lives. I then discovered that two colleagues of mine were using
focusing in their ecopsychology practice (Key & Kerr, 2012). I realized that focusing in
nature was far more widespread than I had expected and that this paper, a development of
my doctoral research, would need to serve as an initial exploration of this profound
practice.

Person-centered counseling and ecopsychology

At first glance person-centered counseling appears to offer very little to ecopsychology,
and may indeed seem inimical to it. The person-centered approach typically understands
the client and therapist as “distinct entities” who “act in and on a world which is
essentially other” (Neville, 2012, p. iv). In contrast, most ecopsychologists challenge
the idea of a separate self (Key & Kerr, 2012, p. 241). Although Rogers’s understanding
of the actualizing tendency was initially focused on becoming “that self which one truly
is” (Rogers, 1961, p. 181), he later introduced a less anthropocentric basis for
 332 A. Harris

understanding growth and change. The formative tendency leads us towards an “aware-
ness of the harmony and unity of the cosmic system” (Rogers, 1980, p. 133). Neville
suggests that this “unfolding process” is something bigger than the client or even the
client-therapist encounter (Neville, 2012, p. 34). Rogers’s work thus offers more than one
interpretation of the relationship between self and world; despite his emphasis on the
individual, Rogers acknowledged that there is no sharp division between the individual
and the wider world (Rogers, 1951, p. 497). Some person-centered therapists adopt his
more conventional view and treat the individual as a discrete entity. Others however take
forward the alternative thread in Rogers’s thought. Tudor and Worrall (2006) emphasize
Rogers’s contribution to an organismic psychology which “emphasises the indisssolubility
of organism and environment …” (Tudor & Worrall, 2006, p. 47). Cornelius-White takes
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a similar approach, arguing that in ecological terms, “persons are persons because they are
parts of a larger system” (Cornelius-White, 2007, p. 235). Such an organismic psychology
concurs with the ecopsychology principle that human beings are intrinsically connected
with the wider environment such that the mind is “tangled up with” the natural world
(Fisher, 2005, pp. 557–558).
Mountford takes a different, though related approach; he suggests that if Rogers’s core
conditions are applied to the non-human world they can create an environmentally
valuable “way of being” (Mountford, 2006a, p. 110). Elsewhere Mountford advocates
focusing on the question of “What do I need right now?” He suspects that our felt sense
will reveal that most of what we need right now is related to the non-human world.
Perhaps that realization could transform our relationship with that world (Mountford,
2006b, p. 34).

The connected self and embodied knowing

There are innumerable challenges to the notion of a separate self. These come from a wide
range of perspectives including cognitive science, embodiment theory and psychology
(see for example, Blackman, 2008; Mearns & Cooper, 2005, p. 5; Varela, Thompson &
Rosch, 1991). The evidence is clear: “We are constituted by webs of interconnection.
Relationship comes first, and we emerge as more or less distinct centers within the vast
and complex networks that surround us” (de Quincey, 2005).
The idea that the self emerges from intricate networks is closely related to notions of
embodied knowing. Both notions are difficult to articulate in the language of the dominant
culture because such “subjugated ways of knowing” (Foucault, 1980, p. 84) evade
analysis. However, embodied knowing is referred to in a wide range of disciplines and
my research considered anthropology, business studies, cognitive neuroscience, ecopsy-
chology, philosophy, religious studies and sociology. Across disciples a consensus
emerges that embodied knowing is largely non-verbal, practical and blurs conventional
understandings of “self” and “world.”
When the philosopher Merleau-Ponty articulated the phenomenology of the embodied
mind he concluded that in knowing the world we become part of it, and thus the
conventional subject-object distinction was illusionary. Our awareness does not emerge
from a disembodied mind located somewhere outside the physical, but is part of an active
relationship between embodied humans and the world: “The properties of the object and
the intentions of the subject … are not only intermingled; they also constitute a new
whole” (Merleau-Ponty, 1963, p. 13).
Anthropologist and philosopher Abram applies Merleau-Ponty’s work to develop a
philosophy which understands the body as “a sort of open circuit that completes itself
 Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies 333

only in things, in others, in the encompassing earth” (Abram, 1996, p. 62). The immediate
environment meshes with our thinking and perception is participatory in that it always
involves “an active interplay” between the embodied self and world (Abram, 1996, p. 57).
Bateson’s interdisciplinary work is grounded in anthropology but he helped develop
double theory and had a significant impact on systems theory (Bateson, 2000 [1972]).
Bateson proposed that the individual mind is “immanent in pathways and messages
outside the body; and there is a larger Mind of which the individual mind is only a
subsystem” (Bateson, 2000 [1972], p. 467). While Rogers was not entirely convinced by
this notion (see Rogers’s dialogue with Bateson in Kirschenbaum & Henderson, 1990, p.
199), the idea has influenced embodied cognition theory, notably in Ingold’s discussion of
animism (Ingold, 2000). Both I and Ingold apply this term in the context of the “New
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Animism” described by Harvey. In brief, “Animists are people who encounter other
persons, only some of whom are human, as cultural beings” (Harvey, 2005, p. 83). For
an extended discussion see Harris (2013).
Gendlin’s philosophy of the implicit provides a particularly detailed phenomeno-
logical exploration of the process of body-environment interaction: “In sensing ourselves,
our bodies sense our physical environment and our inter-human situations” (Gendlin,
2003, p. 101). Gendlin (1981, p. 25) also makes a major contribution to our our under-
standing of embodied knowing by identifying a “bodily sensed knowledge” which he
calls the felt sense.

Focusing
Gendlin’s notion of the felt sense emerged from his research into the process of psy-
chotherapeutic change (Gendlin, 1981). Those who were successful in therapy drew on an
embodied knowing which Gendlin called the “felt sense,” “a body-sense of meaning”
(Gendlin, 1981, p. 10) which the conscious mind is initially unable to articulate. In
everyday terms, the felt sense describes the fuzzy feelings that we do not usually pay
much attention to, a vague “gut feeling” or that inexpressible sense of unease we express
as “I’m not quite feeling myself today.” How easily people access the felt sense varies
considerably, as shown by the Experiencing Scale (Gendlin, 1961), but anyone can learn
to access and verbalise the embodied knowing of the felt sense using focusing (Gendlin,
1981). Gendlin trained with Rogers and focusing-oriented therapy is usually included as a
member of the person-centered “tribes” (Sanders, 2012).
Focusing is taught as a series of steps and although different teachers present these
steps in different ways (see Cornell, 1996; Gendlin, 1981), the principles remain the same.
Focusing begins when we sense our bodily response to something, which can be our felt
sense of a question or a situation. We then seek a symbol for that response – what Gendlin
calls a handle (Gendlin, 1981) – and sense whether that symbolization fits our felt sense.
If it does, we can spend time exploring the symbol and allowing it to carry forward our
initial felt sense.
Although Gendlin describes the felt sense as a “bodily sensed knowledge” (Gendlin,
1981, p. 25), we need to be clear that his approach requires “a new conception of the
living body” as a process by which “the body means or implies” (Gendlin, 1997a, p. 19)
and, crucially for this discussion, the Gendlian “body” extends beyond the skin. For
Gendlin “the body is a vastly larger system” (Gendlin, 1997a, p. 26) such that the felt
sense is the entire situation (Gendlin, 1992. emphasis as per original). The body “is an
ongoing interaction with its environment” (Gendlin, 1992, p. 349) and this explains how
the felt sense can access “a vast amount of environmental information” and how new
 334 A. Harris

creative work can emerge from it. Gendlin emphasizes that as a result of this approach the
subject/object distinction collapses: “We will move beyond the subject/object distinction
if we become able to speak from how we interact bodily in our situations” (Gendlin,
1997b, p. 15). Applying Gendlin’s insights to psychotherapeutic practice can reveal “one
intersubjective world” occupied by the therapist and the client “as it exists each moment
in our individual bodies” (Madison, 2001, p. 12).

Focusing in nature
Before proceeding I want to clarify my use of the word “nature,” a mercurial term with
myriad meanings. When I write about nature in this paper, I specifically refer to the
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natural environment. This is rarely wilderness and cultural influences mean that most
natural environments are “fundamentally historical” (Ingold, 2000, p. 20).
Despite cultural influences, the natural environment remains a complex “flux of
interweaving processes” (Fisher, 2002, p. 97) “that proceed autonomously in the world,
and ‘that limit the possible’ of human action” (Ortner, 1996, p. 179). For a further
discussion see Harris (2008, p. 13).
Gendlin did not invent focusing; it is a skill some people use instinctively and its
influence can be found in traditions that include environmental philosophy and nature
writing (for examples, see Hay, 2002). Given that these traditions contributed to the
emergence of ecopsychology, focusing was influencing the field long before Gendlin
identified it. However, by making this process explicit and providing a clear method to
access the felt sense, Gendlin provides a unique resource.
Previous discussions of focusing in nature have appeared in a variety of disciplines.
Fisher applies Gendlin’s work to develop a “radical ecopsychology” (Fisher, 2002). He
explores how Gendlin’s work can disabuse us of the illusion of a separate self by
providing phenomenological experience of an inseparable body-world relationship
(Fisher, 2002). Although he does not explicitly discuss it, Fisher has had personal
experience of focusing in nature. In reference to one of his conversations with “nonhuman
others,” Fisher describes a message from a raven as coming through an embodied
“resonance”. This experience can become part of daily life and Fisher notes that “[t]he
more I am able to attune myself to the natural world the more I discover that it is
correspondingly attuned to me” (Fisher, 2002, p. 103). This embodied communion
awakens us from the dualistic illusion that we are unitary subjects utterly separate from
an objective world. We experience this psychological shift phenomenologically as a sense
of connection that allows us to “attune … to the natural world,” and we may come to
sense that “relevant messages are being spoken everywhere” (Fisher, 2002, p. 103).
Schroeder, an environmental psychologist working for the United States Department
of Agriculture Forest Service, used focusing to help him articulate his sense of the
intrinsic value of the natural environment. He became aware that the perceived boundary
between self and world was quite sharply defined in the city, but blurred into a relaxed
permeability when he was in an arboretum (Schroeder, 2012, p. 141). He realized that a
“sense of rightness … and openness” frequently came when he was in nature but that he
had never put those feelings into words. Focusing in nature provided the crucial first step
“toward articulating the ineffable, experiential value that natural environments have for
me” (Schroeder, 2012, p. 141). Schroeder suggests that surprising insights about our
relationship to the world in general can emerge through focusing in nature (Schroeder,
2008). He makes the crucial point that it is only natural environments that have this
power, and notes that “there are facets of my life process that remain stopped in artificial
 Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies 335

environments and that resume only when I return to a natural place” (Schroeder, 2008, p.
70). Schroeder experiences nature as a self-sufficient “egoless other” that facilitates the
full emergence of his own intrinsic process (Schroeder, 2008, pp. 65–66).
For Boelhouwers, a professor of geography at Uppsala University, academic study of the
natural world led to a sense of disconnection from what she most wanted relationship with. A
personal crisis led her to seek a different approach and she began to use focusing in nature. She
describes how the natural world becomes a companion in her focusing, such that even when
she is focusing alone in nature it is not “a time of solo-focusing. Without the presence of the
trees, [and] the grass around me an essential support would be missing” (Boelhouwers, 2013).
Conversely, Boelhouwers often feels that she becomes “the companion of nature, just listening
to what it wants to communicate to me” (Boelhouwers, 2013). Who is companion to whom?
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Our culture is so steeped in the dualistic belief that self and world are entirely separate that it is
difficult to articulate the kind of experiences we have when focusing in nature. Boelhouwers
highlights the difficulty of separating what is “within” and what “envelops” us; although her
attention is receptive to “the larger-than-self landscape,” all experience is grounded in embo-
died awareness (Boelhouwers, 2013). Beauvais, a Somatic Counseling Psychology student at
Naropa University, uses object relations theory to understand how we form attachments to the
natural environment (Beauvais, 2012). When we are focusing in nature felt senses are elicited
by “empathy with, attunement to, and mirroring of the interrelated environmental systems to
which we all belong” (Beauvais, 2012). This can help us to make sense of a relationship with
the organic world that we tend to suppress (Beauvais, 2012, p. 287).
Some people intuitively do something very like focusing and inevitably this some-
times happens in nature. I have observed this process most amongst Eco-Pagans but it can
happen in other contexts. I regularly facilitate nature connection workshops in London
parks and during one of my first sessions a participant had a powerful experience that I
would now identify as focusing in nature. For the final exercise of the day I invited
participants to find a spot nearby that resonated in some way with how they felt at the
time. One woman, who was in therapy at the time (though not with me), chose a spot with
thick woods behind her and a more open space, looking towards the Sun, in front. I
invited her to share how that particular spot resonated with her. She explained that the
darkness of woods behind her brought to mind her difficult past and the more open space
in front of her symbolized how she saw the future. At that moment and that place, she was
poised between the dark past and the inviting future. When she first began to speak she
was using the place as a simile; the dark of the woods was like the darkness of her past.
But as she continued, the pace of her voice slowed and she seemed to experience
something more profound: It was as if the place was her life at that moment. Her eyes
began to fill with tears and it was only with difficultly that she brought her attention back
to the workshop group. Although this woman was not explicitly practicing focusing, it is a
perfect example of how a “felt meaning” is “called forth” when we interact with some-
thing whose symbolic character arouses a feeling in us (Fisher, 2002). This was a very
significant moment for me; seeing just how powerful this work could be was a deciding
factor in my decision to train as a counsellor.
I now turn to my primary research into focusing in nature. I draw on two quite
different sets of interviews and the names of some participants have been changed. My
most recent interviews – conducted explicitly for this paper – were with two women I
contacted via email groups discussing focusing. Cathy and Jennie were both experienced
with focusing and regularly practice what they called focusing walking. The earlier set
were conducted as part of my PhD research into embodied knowing in eco-paganism. I
have discussed the notion of embodied knowing above; the term “eco-pagan” has
 336 A. Harris

emerged to describe those whose nature honoring spirituality is grounded in environ-

mental activism (Harris, 2013). I interviewed 23 people for my PhD research – 12 men
and 11 women – from a range of geographical locations. All participants were involved at
some level with the British environmental protest movement. Although this eclectic
movement draws on the counter culture of hippies and new age travellers, its prime
inspiration is the direct activism exemplified by Earth First!, a kind of anarchic and radical
version of Greenpeace (McKay, 1996). The recent occupy protests mark the most recent
manifestation of this continually evolving phenomena. Some of my participants lived in
low impact dwellings on temporary protest camps located in small areas of mainly
deciduous woodland, while others had a more urban lifestyle. None of them had any
experience of focusing as such, but all were very aware of their felt senses.
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Given that embodied knowing is usually fuzzy and wordless, obtaining data and
presenting it present unusual difficulties. A methodology that can articulate embodied
understanding needs to reveal such phenomena in ways that are “both experientially
evocative as well as structurally coherent” (Todres, 2004, p. 24). I shall highlight two
strands here; accessing data and presenting it.
By integrating elements of focusing into my research methodology, the embodied
knowing of both participants and researcher is respected and evoked. I used a version of
depth interviewing (Reason & Rowan, 1981) I call the focusing interview (Harris, in
press). I generally begin a focusing interview by explaining that because I am interested in
accessing “what the body knows,” I use an unusual approach and I might invite the
respondent to pay particular attention to how their body feels. More specifically, I may
invite them to open their awareness to any felt sense which my questioning might evoke.
This process often enabled my participants to articulate embodied knowing of which they
were previously unaware. Furthermore, I stay open to my own felt sense during the
interview and throughout the process of transcribing and analysing it. By remaining open
to my felt sense, I can access valuable tacit embodied knowing that would otherwise be
missed.
Todres has developed a similar approach which illuminates my own (Todres, 2007).
Most of the interviews and some of my discussion have a poetic quality. Such aesthetic
forms of writing provide an “experientially evocative” (Todres, 2004, p. 24) texture that
can engage the reader in a more embodied way. It is an attempt to communicate lived
experience through a text that will invite the reader to re-live it (van Manen, 1990).

Walking focusing
Cathy lives in southern England, teaches focusing and set up a monthly focusing walking
group. Between four and six people come along to these walks which are held in a large
park that includes woods, fields, a lake and a hill. Cathy finds that both environment and
movement become part of the process:

… sometimes I’ll need to move really fast or, and sometimes I’ll need to go slow. Quite often
I’ll stop … the quality of the movement is part of the process whether it’s fast, and in which
direction … sometimes somebody’ll say ‘I need to be up a hill’, and we’ll say okay let’s go
that way…. people choose the environment according to the inner process. So, you know, it
guides it.

Every time we practice focusing with a new person it feels different and something similar
happens when we try focusing in a new place. Cathy commented that focusing will work
 Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies 337

like that because “ultimately we’re not separate. How could it not be part of [it] … maybe
doing it in a room the room is part of the process but we don’t notice it…. so noticing that
and then taking and using it … [is] kind of using the energy of what’s there to carry the
process forward.”
Place is fundamental to what is called forth. Cathy describes her felt sense of being in
a particular wood:

Cathy: When I think about it I think of myself in that wood, and more interaction with the
trees, really. I do like those trees. There’s not a particular tree that I latch into I don’t think.
But there is a feeling of, um – in Christian language you could say a crowd of witnesses. I
just like to have them there. [Laughs].
Adrian: They’re witnessing your process.
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Cathy: Yeah. Yeah and you know like, the feeling of the roots under the ground. And actually
I did have a lot of tree symbols this time…. There has been a particular tree but it wasn’t the
tree that was in that place … It’s been coppiced and its got five or six stems so grows like
this. [Holds her hand up with outstretched fingers]…. The image of that tree came and it was
really helpful…. I had the feeling of I’m supposed to have one path and do one thing and be
like everybody thinks that a tree should – have one trunk and be one thing and everyone can
see what is … you know by this time my life I should have a proper trunk! Something to
point to and and show and when people say “What you do?” I can say I’m a this. [Laughs].
And then, but it’s not like that and then I could … say “Okay maybe my tree’s different and
it’s like this”, and that’s fine because it’s the nature of the tree and it’s okay. So [that] gave me
an “Ah, okay!” So I had images of trees and I needed to be among the trees for that to come.

I invited Cathy to focus on the trees as a “crowd of witnesses.”

Cathy: So I’m imagining myself in that place and there’s the feeling of the seasons with all
the leaf litter and making ground and enriching it and providing habitat and all of that and
then the roots down and above the canopy. And the way the light comes. And the way the
sound is. And my memories of all the other times I’ve walked in that wood. Sometimes on
my own, sometimes with others. Part of that path joins up very nearby with H. Way which is
an ancient right of way. So there’s a feeling of generations of feet there. Farm animals and
horses. Up on that ridge which goes right across the top there…. Into that the focusing comes.
Like a breath. Or a speech bubble. And there’s a sense of it being held by the sense of place.
Adrian: The focusing is held in that space of trees.
Cathy: Yeah. The history, the continuity of people past and of people to come. Me - myself as
a little drop in history. And also - as part - the change, in time and out of time. I get that sense
and if you can allow that feeling to come in you - that’s very [pause]
Adrian: A sense of eternity?
Cathy: Both in time and out of time. Both. History, the context of history and the time to
come but also out of that altogether - just a drop in time and space. [Pause]. Allowing that
interaction. Just your partner and you. Interaction in trees - in the place. Spirits of the place.
[Pause]. Yeah.

As well as teaching focusing Jennie does one-to-one sessions. These are usually held
indoors but sometimes it is appropriate to go walking in nature. Jennie discovered the
power of focusing walking by accident when she and a colleague at the British Focusing
Teachers Association AGM decided to try walking and focusing as a means of making the
most of the limited time available. Jennie takes up the story:

My only expectation was that it might be quite difficult to concentrate [laughs] whilst walking
along with eyes open and we were completely blown away by what happened…. So it seemed
that the focusing process used the landscape by way of symbolising what was happening in
 338 A. Harris

the inner world. So we had things like a bird flying low nearby and that just sort of resonated
with something, er going on in the inner process.

Jennie describes one particular recent example:

… we had a lot of rain and I set off on what looked like a clear path and I was in my inner
world being with something very complicated and convoluted that had been going on in my
life at that time and although the path set off looking very promising - I was aiming to go to
the top of a hill which we could see in the distance - but the path dipped and got extremely
muddy and we came across a tree - it looked like it had been struck by lightning or just blown
down in the storms, but we had to really struggle through quite a tangle of branches and this
very muddy path and the resonance with my inner process was um … That I realised I've
been merged with something in me that just wanted to get out and up to the top of that hill,
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um, with a sense of “well that’s behind - that’s all behind me now I just want to enjoy the
fresh air and get up on top of the hill” and kind of with a sense of the life forward energy of
this whole thing. But it seems as though the landscape came in and sort of entangled me in all
those branches and mud so that part of me that was getting left behind was able to be heard.
So I hadn’t realised until that moment that there was a part of me saying, “Yeah but I’m still
confused here. I don’t understand what’s happened. It’s been so convoluted and tangled - and
I need some attention here. [Laughs]. I need some listening.” That was a powerful experience
of er - you can look at it either way, either the landscape came in and supported the process or
the inner world just found something that was what was needed at that moment to symbolise
itself.

Jennie articulates a question that has hung in the background of this entire paper: does a
landscape of “nonhuman others” (Fisher, 2002, p. 102) somehow communicate to those
focusing in nature or does it simply serve to symbolize something within? For Boelhouwers
“[t]here is a reciprocity from nature in this situation. For me the question (and it’s a real
question for me) then becomes whether I am the focuser or the companion in this meeting?”
(Boelhouwers, personal communication). Fisher suggests that the natural world has agency in
this process when he writes that “the natural world [is] telling me things I need to hear, and to
which I need respond” (Fisher, 2002, p. 103). I shall return to this thorny question later, but
wanted to acknowledge its importance before turning to the eco-pagan animists for most of
whom the agency of the other-than-human world is beyond question (Harris, 2013).

Eco-pagans focusing in nature

Eco-pagans are those who practice earth-based spiritualities within the British protest
movement. I count myself as an eco-pagan and came to research this group because of my
personal experience of the way ritual could provide an embodied knowledge that was
deeply felt and difficult to articulate (Harris, 1996). Through my PhD research I realized
that I had been using my felt sense in a fairly ad hoc way for years, and that many other
eco-pagans also use it. Eco-pagans have not learnt to access their felt sense using focusing
but simply by attending to their sense of embodiment. Religious studies scholar Harvey
suggests that “[e]mbodied reality is authoritative in paganism because Pagan understand-
ing is located in everyday life and experience” (Harvey, 1997, p. 187).
Nearly all my eco-pagan participants described experiences of using the felt sense as a
means of relating to nature. Mary explained how she sometimes experienced feelings
which she assumed were from a particular tree or place: “The feeling is how it makes my
body feel.” Barry had a highly developed felt sense of plants: When Barry explained his
animist “pattern of consciousness,” I asked if there was a physical sense associated with it:
 Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies 339

Barry: Definitely. Absolutely definitely. [….] when you said the physical sense, and I focused
there and I went there, I moved into that, I turned the volume up on that and I put my
awareness into that, and what I got was a sense of embodiment which was much richer and
more strange than your normal body awareness. Um, and so in a sense what happens is the
hawthorn buds about to burst into May blossom became a physical sensation within my body
[…] You know what I mean?
Adrian: Kinda. Whereabouts in the body?
Barry: OK. I'll do hawthorn buds. Oh, yeah, there is a practice I do that's related to this
locating it in the body. Hawthorne buds are very much in my upper arms, and my chest.
[Pause]. My shoulders. Like a kind of – You couldn’t call it a buzz, I’m not talking about a
buzz – I’m talking about a kinda, something, delicate.
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Those familiar with focusing – especially focusing in nature – will best appreciate that
Barry is tuning into his felt sense. But he learnt to do this through many years of shamanic
practice and had never heard of focusing.
Lauren spontaneously experienced the same process when she saw a shaft of autumn
sunlight illuminate a small Scottish waterfall:

And there was this one little waterfall, and when it started it was nothing but, suddenly the
sun, just caught it, and it was just so alive with colours. It was pink, and then there was white
- the middle central stream was absolutely white, this shining whiteness out of this dark water,
dark and inky, on the other side there was this sort of brown and then round the sides a very
deep blue - sometimes when you get a very deep brown it’s almost blue - and then there was
this green on the other side of the moss.

The waterfall was not only beautiful, but also eloquent:

And I just looked at it, and had this amazing feeling of just, sort of talking to the Earth. I can’t
describe it any other way - It was as though the Earth was just talking to me.

This is clearly a felt sense that she could understand consciously:

But standing on there, I also - you know - got this message about all sorts of things - I really
kind of got sorted out. I just stood there, and my head just went through things, and it was as
though logically, I knew what I had to do about X and me, and I knew what I had to do about
the woodland and, I knew what I had to do about Y and Z and it was all there coming to me.
And it was a feeling more than words. It was just - you know, my mind was making words
out of the feeling. It was fantastic.

Her sense of “a feeling more than words” that her mind could make “words out of” is a
perfect description of focusing. Lauren’s experience was indeed profound and powerful:

It was just, um, the only way I can equate it is like being, when I first found out I was
pregnant - I just wanted to run down the hill and tell everyone saying “I’ve just been spoken
to by the Earth!” I mean I really felt that connected with this one site.

All my eco-pagan participants found a “sacred relationship with world” (Zoe) through an
embodied relationship with place. This relationship informed their spiritual practice and
helped inspire their activism. This relationship was informed and supported by various
factors, but in every case a process I identified as focusing in nature was highly significant
(Harris, 2008).
 340 A. Harris

Focusing in nature and the relational

There are common strands in descriptions of focusing in nature. Again and again we hear
of powerful insights and a deep sense of connection. But the question remains as to what
these experiences might reveal about the relationship between human focuser and natural
environment. This question bring us to the debate in person-centered theory I began with:
are the client and therapist entirely separate? Neville notes that counsellors and psy-
chotherapists sometimes have experiences which appear to violate western notions of the
self and other divide: “Many counsellors will admit to experiencing physical sensations,
tensions or pains … which seem to belong to the client rather than themselves” (Neville,
2012, p. 96). Samuels concurs: “the analyst’s body is not entirely his or hers alone and
what it says to him or her is not a message for him or her alone” (Samuels, 1989, p. 164).
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Cooper and Ikemi engage with this question in their dialogue between focusing and
relational perspectives, with Ikemi, a focusing practitioner, emphasizing the “originally
entangled, or interrelatedness of one and the Other” (Cooper & Ikemi, 2012, p. 135). They
conclude that although person-centered theory “tends to see persons as separate units that
relate to each other,” a sense of interrelatedness is common to both focusing and relational
perspectives. However, a “formidable challenge” lies ahead to incorporate this under-
standing into person-centered theory (Cooper & Ikemi, 2012, p. 135).
At the start of this paper I briefly discussed theories of the connected self but could
only touch on the burgeoning literature on the subject. However, I believe that theories of
the connected self and related theories of embodied cognition are the clearest way to
understand what happens when we are focusing in nature and can also shed light on the
therapeutic relationship. There is a surprising degree of agreement between researchers
studying the connected self and embodied cognition. Three related arguments are sup-
ported by the research: first, cognition is embodied and situated (Chalmers & Clark,
1998); second, what we conventionally think of as a “subject” and an “object” are co-
arising, such that organism and environment are enfolded (Varela et al., 1991); and third,
we can conclude that the familiar notion of separated individuals is at best an over-
simplification (see, for example, Blackman, 2008). I have attempted to integrate Gendlin’s
theories with contributions from diverse disciplines into a usable model (Harris, 2008,
2011). There is insufficient space to discuss that model here, but I believe it offers an
integrated understanding of a range of related approaches.
In his discussion of the relational, Schmid highlights the importance of relating to the
Other “as a whole and in their essence without ignoring my own essence, i.e. keeping the
difference” (Schmid, 2002, p. 74). If the “self” is entirely entangled with the Other, do we
risk losing the difference and thus any possibility of relationship? Not if the self is
understood as a process which emerges from a space where organism and environment
are enfolded. From that context, let us return to the question of whether focusing in nature
simply provides a reflection of our own process or a subtle communion with the non-
human Other. In therapeutic work we need to be “astonished and questioned” by the Other
(Schmid, 2002, p. 79), and this may provide a suitable test: does focusing in nature open
us to be astonished and questioned? Barry found something rich and strange while Lauren
had a “fantastic” experience of “talking to the Earth”. Both Cathy and Jennie leave the
question open: Jennie concludes that “you can look at it either way”; Cathy speaks of
choosing an environment that suits the inner process, and yet there is a sense of her being
witnessed by the spirits of place. Material from the existing literature generally supports
the relational model: Fisher presents an animist worldview (Fisher, 2002), Schroeder
experiences nature as “an egoless other” (Schroeder, 2008, pp. 65–66) and Boelhouwers
 Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies 341

becomes a “companion of nature” (Boelhouwers, 2013). Beauvais seems less conclusive,

speaking of both “empathy” and “mirroring” (Beauvais, 2012, p. 283).

Conclusion
People typically experience two significant shifts when focusing in nature; the familiar
sense of separation between self and world becomes somewhat blurred and a deeper
relationship emerges with non-human Others. These experiences support and illuminate
relational models of the self. On that basis alone, focusing in nature is relevant and
interesting, but it also helps motivate greater environmental responsibility. Focusing in
nature enabled Schroeder to articulate his felt sense of environmental value, informed
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ecopagan activism and contributes to the transformative changes witnessed in ecopsy-

chology practice (Key & Kerr, 2012). In conclusion, focusing in nature can serve as a
means of appreciating our connection to the natural environment, provide personal insight
and support both environmental activism and spiritual growth. It also provides insights
into our interrelatedness, a topic that may prove to be the growing edge of person-centered
theory.

Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to my interview participants and my anonymous reviewers whose suggestions were
invaluable.

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