TAE and Domain Focusing
TAE und Domain Focusing
by Evelyn Pross, evelyn.pross@e-prisma.de
“TAE is possible only with Focusing”1
In order to make TAE available for non-focusers a careful and effective guiding into felt sensing is necessary. Domain Focusing was developed by Robert Lee as a teaching method. As I started to guide students and clients with Domain Focusing I was surprised how much more accessible felt sensing has been for someone practicing Focusing the first time. I developed a TAE manual based on Domain Focusing to make TAE available for non-focusers.
“If there is not a bodily felt sense guiding, the TAE steps can only be frustrating.”1
Domain Focusing opens with the avenues into felt sensing a lot of possibilities to enter and deepen experiencing. The permanent presence of the felt sense domain is very helpful for TAE practitioners to be always connected with experiencing. Domain Focusing ensures that the issue is always linked to the bodily knowing and not just story telling.
“TAE offers …a way to use logic and the felt sense together”1
Experienced focusers who are practicing TAE tend sometimes to stay too much into felt-sensing and feelings. Domain Focusing gives more attention to thinking generally and to the Issue/Situation particularly and it puts more emphasis on the linkage between issue/situation and felt sense than other teaching models. In Domain Focusing the mere presence of the domains underlines the evidence of permanent linking between thinking and felt sensing. Therefore Domain Focusing is very much suitable to explicate and expand thinking within experiencing.
“A felt sense for TAE comes only in midst of the “personal” and yet it is different from all the “personal” concerns everyone’s body is always carrying.”1
When I did a TAE process about TAE I started with a felt sense which was represented by a house. First I unfolded the meaning of the house having rooms which are accommodating the TAE steps which can be visited in a flexible way.
But still there was another meaning in it. Doing TAE and guiding TAE I experienced that sooner or later the practitioner always gets into personal problems. However, the instructions of TAE do not give help in such moments. But it is so important to ask questions like: is there a way to stay in the TAE process without being blocked / without criticizing by myself/ without being overwhelmed / without being afraid that I will not manage it? These are questions coming from the self-empathy domain of Domain Focusing. This domain is designed for handling blockages and critics caused by the topic or the TAE process or by emerging difficult feelings.
But there was even more in the meaning of the house:
“What is a house like? It is giving space, it is giving room, it is a place to feel safe and protected, a space for development. There is protection, something solid in contrast to a vague concept you are carrying with you. An image is coming up: the Christmas story. Joseph and Maria searching for a house, a place to rest, the need of protection to enable the birthing of a baby. TAE needs self-empathy to birth a new concept. TAE without self-empathy is cold, is just a method.”2
Self-empathy provides safety which is needed to overcome existing concepts and to create new ones. Domain Focusing has its own place for self-empathy. This was the moment I decided to build my way of teaching and guiding TAE on Domain Focusing.
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1Gendlin, E.T., The Folio 2000-2004, p.11
2Pross, E., TAE process about TAE