I Am Because You Are - Focusing Oriented Ubuntu Empowerment

How Arts in Focusing Promote Acts of Relational Empathy

Ubuntu-Based Community Building - The FOUR Project

In 2008, while teaching Focusing to a group of professionals, I had a dream that revealed my understanding of Focusing at that point in my life. The dream was very short with no imaginative imagery except for some open space, like the sky. There was a voice saying, 'Focusing is ecumenism.'

I used Self-Focusing to explore the meaning of the word 'ecumenism.' I ultimately understood it to mean 'bringing together groups or people with highly differentiated beliefs to share a sacred space.'

The result from that was reading the Books 'God Is Not a Christian: And Other Provocations' and 'Made for Goodness. And why this makes all the difference' by Desmond Tutu. I also undertook an in-depth study of the Pan-African concept of Ubuntu under the mentorship of Prof. Dr. Workineh Kelbessa from Addis Abeba University, in Ethopia. My studies finally led to workshops on Ubuntu-Focusing at the International TIFI Focusing Conference 2013, in Switzerland, and at the European Focusing Association's Focusing Fair 2014, in Germany.

At the 2016 International TIFI Focusing Conference in the UK, I presented a poster session on the Ubuntu-Focusing project named 'FOUR' (Focusing Oriented Ubuntu Repair) which I ran in Tübingen for two years

The FOUR project meetings were free of charge and held monthly in the first year, and quarterly in the second year. The meetings were open to everyone, regardless of Focusing experience. Each FOUR meeting was held in person and lasted three hours.

The FOUR workshop concept was based on Focusing and Felt Sense–based arts engagement. Participants were encouraged to explore what community and interconnectedness meant to them and express their Felt Sense of it through visual art, writing, movement or sound, depending on their preferred modalities. 

What made these FOUR workshops special was the integration of the Ubuntu spirit into group interactions. Participants identified the person in greatest emotional need in the meeting from their sense of interconnectedness. They checked their inner sense of rightness to see if it was okay to give their painting or write-up to the person they had identified as the most needy from Felt Sense. The participants gave their personal contributions as gifts to the person they had chosen. Sometimes, most of the group members gave their gift to the same person. At other times, the person in most need from communal Felt Sense was more than one person. This part of the workshop was done in silence.

The most intense feeling for everyone was that those who gave their gift, felt enriched, more connected, and more at peace with themselves and the group after doing this act of Relational Empathy (Maureen O'Hara). After this lived experience of Ubuntu, there was a time of sharing where participants could reflect on and communicate about their inner process. They especially took their lived act of Relational Empathy into conscious reflection. To engage more into Ubuntu-informed Relational Empathy, participants were invited to Ubuntu prompt practices for daily life during the meetings.

After two years, I closed the FOUR project because I felt the participants had become too comfortable with the free workshop offer. They seemed to take the offer as an opportunity to enjoy a cozy group atmosphere without any further consequences in their personal lives which spoke of the Ubuntu spirit. This became evident when we reflected on the participants' experiences with the Ubuntu prompts for daily life, which was part of the opening at each meeting.

I began reflecting on what had prevented the project from cultivating the kind of community I wanted to see. When I started the FOUR project, I had planned to build a strong community in my area that would encourage people to practice letting go of personal interests, and learn to detach from an ego-centric worldview. However, I helped build a community that resembled the characteristics of community life in my area. Regional community life was conservative rather than experimental. It was characterized by sticking together and enjoying repetitive rituals with only like-minded people. As my mentor, Workineh Kelbessa, said, it was driven by tribalism. Focusing alone, or in combination with the arts, was not powerful enough to alter the influence of these collective cultural patterns or encourage people to act in ways that embody Ubuntu beyond their reference groups.

I also reflected on my role as a facilitator. Clearly, guiding a group through the different phases of a workshop caused participants to become consumers, even though the program was part of Focusing oriented transformative adult education. What could I have done differently?

Although I saw myself as someone in service to others, I realized that my intention to bring Ubuntu into the daily lives of my group participants was an expression of imposing my worldview on them. Despite the deep emotional connection to the Ubuntu spirit experienced by the group participants during the four meetings, I had not fully embodied the true nature of Ubuntu myself.

Years later, I realized that I should have taken part in the artistic process as part of a co-creative group instead of taking on the roles of group leader and facilitator. This would have prevented me from assigning Ubuntu 'homework' between group meetings. At the time FOUR was running, I was still identified with my professional background as a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, which demanded abstinence from participatory group activities.

Participating as an artist while facilitating a co-creative process same time is an enormous challenge. Maybe I had just lacked the courage to try holding the space while doing art myself. But knowing when to offer a Focusing invitation that might reveal the artistic process of the participants while staying connected with my inner artist is exactly what the art of Relational Empathy suggests. It's about the pendulation between the needs of the group and the needs of the individual, depending on the situation. It means giving up the advantages associated with an ego-centered worldview and committing to being equal among equals throughout the process (social-centered worldview). In retrospect, I realized that I had asked my participants to do something that I had not done myself—incorporeiting Ubuntu into the understanding of my social identity. A more co-creative approach to facilitation would have prooven that.

Today, I would change the way to fascilitate the art-making part of a FOUR workshop. Trusting in the healing power of art would best create a natural flow of interconnectedness and a strong Ubuntu spirit that can ripple out. This implies that the facilitator offers fewer Focusing oriented art invitations. All that is needed is for the group participants to be invited to pause during the art-making process every once in a while, reconnect with their Felt Sense, and take their time sensing the unknown that is evolving beyond what is already known and to be seen in their art. This new perspective on using Focusing and the arts to understand Relational Empathy can be summed up in one sentence: It's about less Focusing engagement and engaging more in Felt Sense-based studio art. 

Appendix

FOUR Project Questions That Help Coming to Community and Building Relational Empathy:

• How would you like to join in and participate? 
• What does it need for you to feel connected here?
• What would it take for you from the Felt Sense to join us? (when the body says NO to participate). Can you find a way to connect to the part of you that longs to participate? (And the part that does not long for?). I invite you to keep company with both parts without judging
• What makes you participate at your best? 
• What does your body know is missing for the whole?
• What's missing here to make it complete?
• What does the whole need to be contributed?
• What does it want you to contribute?
• What do you miss here that could help balance things out for the whole group?
• What could you add in your very personal way to balance things out?
• How does your body feel our WE-ness right now?
• What makes a difference to fulfillment for all of us?

FOUR Project Invitations Leading to Art Expression and Finding Meaning:

•  Holding your bodily feelings inside, you may ask:
• … with all this, what's the weather like on the inside?
• … what kind of landscape matches this inner weather?
• … what country or continent might match that landscape?
• … what kind of flag might match the country or continent?
• … what are the colors of the flag?
• Go ahead and start expressing the colors of the flag with crayons/water colors on paper.
• Just place some marks and see where they take you (they may take you to some representative or some non-representative art).
• Take a moment to appreciate your artwork. 'This artwork is my way of showing how my body feels our WE-ness!' - 
• Ask yourself: 'Am I ready to share my artwork or would it be better to keep it to myself?'. Follow your intuition and decide whether or not to share. You may find: 'Yeah! This here is so different (or alike) to the symbolization of the others!'. Notice without judging.
• Then, go back inside and ask yourself:
• ... 'What does my body know about nurturing our WE-ness so that it can grow?' 
• Take a moment to wait for something to come. It might come as an image, word, phrase, guesture, movement or sound. Express and add whatever you like to your picture
• Now take a look at your picture and see if it is completed. Allow yourself to dialogue with it. You may ask:
• ... 'What does my artwork tell about what is needed to carry our WE-ness forward?'
• ... 'What does my artwork show that is bringing our We-ness further for the benefit of all?'
• Write down what comes to feeling and mind.
• Place your writing next to your picture and take in both of them. Take a moment to let yourself feel the heart of the matter. Allow a Felt Sense to come to the whole of it. Write some words that capture the Felt Sense of the whole of it in a title and add it to your picture or write-up
•  See if you want to share your title, picture or write up. Allow your share to speak for itself. Just read aloud or show your picture without commenting on it (explaining, interpreting)