Circling Science

Focusing

First published
1978
Difficulty
Accessible
Where to start
The whole book; it is short and practical.

Adjacent

Studies a related practice or mechanism, without testing Circling.

For contact with your own experience: the “felt sense”, an unclear bodily sense of a whole situation from which more precise meaning can emerge.

More a practical book by a philosopher than a conventional philosophy text. Gendlin describes the felt sense: the initially unclear, bodily sense of a whole situation, from which more precise meaning can emerge.

It is most useful when you know something is happening in a circle but can’t yet say what. Gendlin teaches a way of letting words come from that sense and checking whether they fit, which is close to the moment-to-moment noticing Circling asks for.

Questions to bring into a circle

  • Can I let words come from what I’m sensing, and check whether they fit?

Directions that build on it

  1. Active ingredients

    Builds on 10 works · 3 funding routes

    Which parts of the practice do the work: present-moment attention, disclosure, or hearing how you affect others?

  2. What being met is like

    Builds on 9 works · 5 funding routes

    What do people actually experience in the moments they describe as being seen or met?

Read alongside

Nothing here yet.

Further reading

Cite

Gendlin, E. T. (1978). Focusing.