NEW YORK METRO FOCUSING
January 30, 2015
Meeting Notes
We are pleased to share with you meeting notes from the January 30, 2015, meeting of New York Metro Focusing, which was attended by 20 participants. Susan Deisroth opened the meeting, welcoming the facilitator, Marcella Calabi. In introducing Marcella, Sharron Kaplan noted Marcella’s long time interest in the voice, not only personally, as a singer, but also in helping others to find their voice, as a voice teacher and as a communications consultant. The evening’s theme was to be finding a felt sense voice within the context of conflict resolution.
Marcella began by speaking about the term “resolution.” Linguistically, “Re” functions as in intensifier, so that resolution is an intensified version of “solve.” But the meaning of solve is deeper than finding the one right answer or making a problem go away. “Solve” means to loosen up, as in “dissolve,” to open up or unyoke things that are hooked together. The image came of a tangle or knot. If one string is pulled, the knot or tangle gets tighter. But with loosening, untangling is possible. Marcella sees conflict resolution and decision making as cut from the same cloth.
Marcella used two little action figures and an array of colored balloons to illustrate different outcomes to a situation in which one figure held a yellow balloon and the other held a blue one. These could be regarded as two people or groups in conflict with each other or two conflicting parts within a person. As members of the group expressed different ways that resolution could unfold, Marcella re-arranged the balloons accordingly. Some of the possibilities: one part imposes its view on another, there is a compromise such that blue and yellow become green, during a pause some new and unforeseen possibility emerges, expressed as red balloon, one side gives up and feels annihilated, a part feels truly heard and melts away, there is an agreement to disagree with a mood of loss, separation, and hopelessness, there is agreement to disagree with a mood of peace and of freedom from an endless struggle to change the mind of another.
Marcella pointed out that resolution may not be the same thing as getting everything one wants. Although there are fewer zero/sum situations than we often think, sometimes reality does require our choosing one side over the other. One of the more painful examples was of a person who values their membership in a group, yet finds one of the group requirements to be in conflict with their personal values. In such an instance, the person needs to make a choice and the choice will have consequences. Resolution in that case could mean coming to a kind of ok-ness about the situation, containing and being bigger than the “yellow balloon” and the “blue balloon” within one's-self.
After the opening discussion, we broke into triads and focused by ourselves on one of our conflicts. We shared what came, first in our triads, and then with the larger group. Some of the things that people expressed were: that experiencing a need for resolution feels physically tight, while experiencing the holding of two views that are in conflict, but are both honored, feels tender; that in focusing, something comes that is underneath the conflicting parts; that a shift can occur, even though the resolution has not yet come.
The group members expressed feeling supported in their triads, as they expressed the difficult and unresolved circumstances they were dealing with and experienced some degree of loosening and being able to hold the experience of being with conflict more spaciously than they could when the evening began.
Prepared by Diana Kirigin
January 30, 2015
Meeting Notes
We are pleased to share with you meeting notes from the January 30, 2015, meeting of New York Metro Focusing, which was attended by 20 participants. Susan Deisroth opened the meeting, welcoming the facilitator, Marcella Calabi. In introducing Marcella, Sharron Kaplan noted Marcella’s long time interest in the voice, not only personally, as a singer, but also in helping others to find their voice, as a voice teacher and as a communications consultant. The evening’s theme was to be finding a felt sense voice within the context of conflict resolution.
Marcella began by speaking about the term “resolution.” Linguistically, “Re” functions as in intensifier, so that resolution is an intensified version of “solve.” But the meaning of solve is deeper than finding the one right answer or making a problem go away. “Solve” means to loosen up, as in “dissolve,” to open up or unyoke things that are hooked together. The image came of a tangle or knot. If one string is pulled, the knot or tangle gets tighter. But with loosening, untangling is possible. Marcella sees conflict resolution and decision making as cut from the same cloth.
Marcella used two little action figures and an array of colored balloons to illustrate different outcomes to a situation in which one figure held a yellow balloon and the other held a blue one. These could be regarded as two people or groups in conflict with each other or two conflicting parts within a person. As members of the group expressed different ways that resolution could unfold, Marcella re-arranged the balloons accordingly. Some of the possibilities: one part imposes its view on another, there is a compromise such that blue and yellow become green, during a pause some new and unforeseen possibility emerges, expressed as red balloon, one side gives up and feels annihilated, a part feels truly heard and melts away, there is an agreement to disagree with a mood of loss, separation, and hopelessness, there is agreement to disagree with a mood of peace and of freedom from an endless struggle to change the mind of another.
Marcella pointed out that resolution may not be the same thing as getting everything one wants. Although there are fewer zero/sum situations than we often think, sometimes reality does require our choosing one side over the other. One of the more painful examples was of a person who values their membership in a group, yet finds one of the group requirements to be in conflict with their personal values. In such an instance, the person needs to make a choice and the choice will have consequences. Resolution in that case could mean coming to a kind of ok-ness about the situation, containing and being bigger than the “yellow balloon” and the “blue balloon” within one's-self.
After the opening discussion, we broke into triads and focused by ourselves on one of our conflicts. We shared what came, first in our triads, and then with the larger group. Some of the things that people expressed were: that experiencing a need for resolution feels physically tight, while experiencing the holding of two views that are in conflict, but are both honored, feels tender; that in focusing, something comes that is underneath the conflicting parts; that a shift can occur, even though the resolution has not yet come.
The group members expressed feeling supported in their triads, as they expressed the difficult and unresolved circumstances they were dealing with and experienced some degree of loosening and being able to hold the experience of being with conflict more spaciously than they could when the evening began.
Prepared by Diana Kirigin