What Is Focalizing?

Understanding Focalizing

Focalizing is an embodiment approach that helps people tap into the innate intelligence of their body to enable positive changes in their life. The human body constantly provides signals and communication when a person is suffering and feeling stuck. Rather than seeing these signals as distraction or a barrier, Focalizing fosters a mind-body connection that helps reveal the way these natural signals are a roadmap pointing towards what needs to be addressed. With Focalizing, the client is empowered to deeply and compassionately listen to their body and allow it to help them process complex emotions, find their strength and create a stronger inner-connection - mind, body, and soul.

Nick is one of the leading practitioners of Focalizing in the world and teaches the approach to wellness practitioners, coaches, therapists and individuals of all backgrounds at retreats and online trainings. The Focalizing process was pioneered in the 1980s by Dr. Michael Picucci and is inspired by his experience with Somatic Experiencing, Focusing and Dr. Picucci's own research and observations from his 30+ year career.

Although Focalizing relies on cultivating the client's connection with their body, the approach does not involve physical touch. Instead, Focalizing sessions guide the client to work with their body by directing their conscious awareness to the felt sensations of the body. The result is an effective and holistic process that can be done with a trained facilitator or individually as a method of self-support.

The Focalizing Process

From an observer's perspective, Focalizing can look like a mixture of coaching and guided meditation whereby participants may choose to close their eyes to aid in bringing their conscious attention inward. When working with felt sense, a facilitator guides the Focalizer through a step-by-step process that allows the body's innate wisdom to take the lead and help uncover what’s gone unacknowledged or unmet in the client’s nervous system.

A Focalizing session starts with intention. An intention can be to shift a pattern of behavior, wanting better sex, understanding if it's time to leave a job or simply to feel less stress. What's been observed time after time is that when a client sets an intention, connects deeply with their body and watches what unfolds without judgement or labeling, the body naturally begins to surface what needs to be acknowledged and worked with in order to create movement.

What comes to light can take the form of memories, images, felt sensations and/or emotions; some of which were long forgotten in some manner. As the session continues, the facilitator supports the client by suggesting specific approaches for moving deeper into these experiences in a safe and supported manner.

The lasting power of this process unfolds after a short period of time of deepening the mind-body connection. In as little as 10-15 minutes of watching what surfaces, the body's natural mechanisms that help us deeply process, recalibrate, and integrate past hurts can come online. Without much conscious effort on behalf of the client, their body can help them release what’s been stored in their nervous system - the unresolved content that may have been keeping them stuck in repetitive patterns of being and behavior for decades.

Focalizing is also a coaching approach to having more embodied, goal-oriented conversations. And so sessions can be a mixture of inner and outer work. Whereby the coach, therapist or facilitator will attend to the client’s body language, ask questions about nervous system shifts, and share tools that promote resilience, capacity, and processing.

Why Is Focalizing A 'Lifeline' For So Many?

Focalizing is founded on the understanding that deep, sustainable change doesn’t necessarily come from re-living the story or brainstorming solutions to complex emotional issues. Instead, it comes from accessing a part of the mind and body that most people have lost touch with. Focalizing is a lifeline for so many because it gives anyone the ability to fundamentally improve the quality of their life in a way that doesn’t require them to understand what caused it. Instead, clients work with what is currently stuck, and they let their body be an asset as they move to reshape their future.