by Iqra Sohail, Sema Çiçekli, Jess Griths, Oleksandr Bazhenov, Jérôme Desquilbet (Oct. 2025)
Discomfort
If you attend a Focusing training course, you can expect to practice in pairs or groups of three. If the course is taught in English and has an international audience, English will be used by default.
This can place significant constraints on participants who are not fluent in English when they take on the roles of Focuser or Companion. They must express themselves, listen, reflect, and give reminders in a language they don’t fully understand. And yet, generally speaking, discomfort and pressure on the cognitive mind are the opposite of what we are looking for when practicing Focusing.
Presence
Remember, the first exercise in any Focusing learning process is most likely listening in silence. Later, the Focuser learns to use their Companion’s reflections to refine their sensing, and the Companion learns to reflect and give reminders as they engage themselves in a kind of silent solo Focusing process and empathize with their Focuser.
From the beginning, Presence has been more important than words. Presence is the most important skill for both roles. This is not to say that words are unimportant, but rather to remind us that a Focusing space is full of Presence and also silence, not just words. And companioning can include reflecting gestures, paying attention to body language and intonation. “Mmmh”s are also useful, and understood internationally.
Experiment
As the four of us — three of whom are non-native English speakers — were planning a Focusing circle, we decided to experiment with a simple process: each person would Focus in their own language, and their Companion would not speak English or attempt to mimic what they heard in a foreign language.
• Iqra spoke in Urdu, companioned by Sema.
• Sema spoke in Turkish, companioned by Jess.
• Jérôme spoke in French, companioned by Iqra.
• And since Jess is Canadian, they decided to mute themselves to speak in English, companioned by Jérôme who could not hear a thing Jess was saying.
(10 minutes each turn.)
A few days later, Jérôme and Oleks experimented the same process.
• Oleks started in Russian and switched to Ukrainian at some point
• Jérôme spoke in French.
(20 minutes each turn.)
Basically, no Companion could understand what their Focuser was saying.
Like the designated Companion, the Witnesses/Observers were silent listeners. They could also take a step back, appreciate the musicality of a foreign language, and observe the interaction, all the while amplifying Presence in the space.
Outcome
Everyone was happy with the process and experienced deeper, new inner relationships. By using our own language(s), we made discoveries we wouldn’t have made otherwise.
More about that in the following comments from our debriefs:
• Reflecting on our experiment made me feel that the difficulties I experienced were understood and acknowledged. It also reminded me that these difficulties are not unique to me, but rather a universal experience.
• I feel so nourished by this experiment! A big takeaway for me was that I can be doing a lot less and still be with the Focuser. I felt so held through mirrored gestures and presence from my Companion(s) and I also felt so much connection with the Focuser who I companioned, despite not being able to follow along cognitively/with language. I can see and feel that there is another language being spoken by the body and tone that I feel more tuned to.
• Doing the Focusing process together in our native languages, which we didn’t know or understand, was truly impressive. It wasn’t a distant experience for me; especially in moments when I missed parts because of the language, I would try to focus on the facial expressions or body language of the Focusers and reflect how what they were focusing on looked physically and emotionally. I did this once during this session as well, but this time I wanted to try accompanying more through silence — with simple “mm-hm” sounds and eye contact. For a while now, I’ve been noticing that Focusing or accompanying is possible not only through words but also through silence, and I felt this very deeply as a Companion.
• As the Focuser, starting to speak in my own language was difficult for me. Although I asked myself, “You’re not that good at it, so why would you want to speak English?” I realized it was a reflection of my need to be understood and to share. This experiment reminded me of an art therapy class where we worked in pairs without speaking, communicating only through gestures and facial expressions. Then, we expressed what we understood in the same way. Understanding and being understood can also happen heartfully and spiritually, even without words.
• As the Focuser, I spoke more than usual at first to explain the situation I wanted clarity on to myself. I really felt the presence of my Companion and Witnesses, and that provided significant support. As the Companion, I mirrored the gestures, which mainly involved the hands moving to different places on the body. This helped a lot: it was like indirect communication through our hands in the same Presence space.
• Overall, it was really interesting, and even exciting to experience Presence beyond hearing/listening/understanding.
• I can’t wait to do that again!
• As the Focuser, I had a sense of empowerment, more freedom to lead my own session. At the same time, I was very aware that my Companion couldn’t understand me and aware that, generally speaking, understanding is important. In this case, I knew my Companion was more focused on Presence and I could feel it.
• As Companion, I could feel the need for my Focuser to be understood, by all the expressive gestures he made. I tried to reflect them and could partly understand what was going on.
• As the Focuser, first of all, I tried to ask myself what language would be acceptable for me in Focusing. With this question in mind, I started Focusing. Towards the end, I felt physically lighter. I also wanted to share this physical relief with someone else. The words that came to me at that moment were in Ukrainian.
• I want to clarify the situation with language use in my region. For a long time, two languages have been used equally in our region: Ukrainian and Russian. My mother tongue is Russian. Since the beginning of Russia’s aggression, the language issue has become more acute. As a teacher, I can only communicate with my students in Ukrainian. I speak and write quite fluently in both languages. I felt that the unexpected appearance of Ukrainian at the end of the Focusing session came along with relaxation, as my way of coming to terms with the problem I had set for myself as a goal. Thus, in the part of searching for felt-sense, I used sign language; in the second part, naming and describing, I used Russian; and the acceptance stage came with the use of Ukrainian.
• I always get to learn something new every time I focus. I had always thought of English as a way to help us connect with others across the globe. However after our session, I realised that despite being that, it can sometimes limit us too. Most of us in the group had English as our second language and we never realised the limitation until we had the opportunity to try another way. Focusing in our native language helped to truly connect with our inner self and express ourselves in a way that was authentic to its meaning.
Next
We will try again and perhaps discover useful variants. And we would love to hear from the Focusing community about successful or unsuccessful experiments to bridge multilingual gaps in a Focusing circle.
