EXPRESSIVE ARTS FOCUSING

Felt Sense-based studio art is at the heart of Expressive Arts Focusing

"A felt sense is an internal aura that encompasses everything you feel and know about the given subject at a given time–encompasses it and communicates it to you all at once rather than detail by detail." –Eugene Gendlin, from: The International Focusing Institute

Felt Sense-based studio art, the art-making from the Felt Sense, is a creative, body-focused meaning-making process. It is both therapeutic and an art form in its own right

Felt Sense-based studio art, or 'Felt Sense Arts' for short, comes from the living body and from the body's forwarding of the creative life force

Art-making itself is a carrying forward: 'Any action or interaction is a carrying forward of the body' (Eugene Gendlin, The Process Model)

The body's forwarding is a fundamental force of nature, as is creative expression. Any art activity, whether receptive or active engagement with the arts, induces a More of something that generates new life

This is especially true when art is formed from the 'Felt Sense' or body sense. Eugene Gendlin created the term 'Felt Sense' to describe an inner kinesthetic sensation or bodily feeling of vague quality. It's speaks through intermodal expression in the form of images, words, phrases, gestures, movement, and sound

According to Gendlin, the Felt Sense is a felt direction toward, a living and a pointing to something where a more of creative life is generating. Felt Sense-based art activties are part of this

More about the Felt Sense concept

The Language of Felt Sense Arts

Art speaks for itself. As Eugene Gendlin would say, art has a language that cannot be looked up in a dictionary

The language of Felt Sense Arts transcends psychological, philosophical, and artistic concepts. Its vocabulary is thicker than aesthetic descriptions or analytical observations can reveal

Any artistic engagement is Felt Sense-based art when the body takes the lead in artistic expression, processing and meaning-making

No matter how small or unskilled, artistic efforts manifest artistic language and authorship. The artistic language that stems from the Felt Sense can lead to a new and groundbreaking understanding of the individual's authorship, regardless of the quality of their artistic product

How The Founder of Focusing Prof. Eugene Gendlin Would Have Said It

Please note: These are not the original words of Eugene Gendlin. They stem from an "inner Gene" that emerged from in-depth studies of his work and a thesis on generating meaning through the Focusing method. They also stem from meeting him in person in Berlin in 1996

Words are social forms. Arts are social forms. Arts themselves are not moving forward alike words are not moving forward when you use words or arts only. So taking arts only is not moving forward and interpretating arts only is not moving forward unless you approach arts experiential

This means to ask if there is a step coming when you are refering to your art. What I mean here is a step opening up to something. Even when you interprete a piece of art in best ways, the whole stays within a certain social form and social forms do not change. What changes the form and brings a shift, this little step forwarding, is to pause and wait for art to come

Art does not come from talent or skills only. What comes as art comes through the body, and what comes through the body is social or cultural and with a More of that is not part of the social and the cultural. This kind of art has forwarding life energy in it. This kind of art is what I call experiential art

A Gendlin lecture at Humboldt House Achberg GER, venue of Gendlin's European teachings 1992-97. Video presentation of the German-Swiss Focusing Network (2023) at the hall where Gendlin gave this lecture

© Monika Lindner

Through art-based Felt Sense processing, we create a supportive environment that encourages genuine creativity and transformative insights

EXAF: A Multiplicity of Therapeutic Understandings for Best Practice

The Expressive Arts Focusing (EXAF) approach uses various therapeutic understandings to help individuals and groups get the most out of their engagement with Felt Sense-based studio art

When using approaches of various therapeutic understandings, we work in an integrative manner while following the ethics of the person-centered and experiential approach

Our understanding of 'integrative' is defined by crossing, a concept introduced by Eugene Gendlin. Crossing brings out the very unique way in which the More of all therapeutic methods can elevate the session. We cross different therapeutic understandings in ways that keep Felt Sense studio art at the center

The moment of crossing cannot be willfully induced by the therapist but comes from the client's living body as it actualizes its felt knowing (a term coined by Dr. Rappaport). This kind of knowing is the touchstone that helps determine which type of crossing might be best

The body sense (very often of both client and therapist) provides information about what is needed next. It tells about the quality of the therapeutic co-creative interaction and shows ways to move the therapeutic situation forward as a whole. Its serves as a guideline for the therapist to choose the most helpful method in the current situation

In artistic terms, crossing is like mixing colors. A new hue is created. It did not exist before. It contains a More of all the colors that have been mixed in

EXAF Principles