Fieldwork Quick Start
Introducing the Practice
Well, we’re underway, and it’s time for you to get your hands dirty. I’ve laid some groundwork in The Science, more or less. In there, I’ve described The Subtle Dimension of Feelingmind and presented A New Method for Observing Inner Experience. I’ve also invited you to Give Fieldwork a Try, and provided audio facilitation in a few posts linked there.
Now, as I get started in earnest here in the The Practice section of these Frontiers, I want to lay out the basics of the fieldwork practice. Right at the beginning, I want you to have enough to get started on your own experiments, with your own inner experience and perhaps that of others, and to be able to follow along with the further unfolding of The Science. I want you to be able to verify my discoveries within your own experience.
It is very important that you give yourself firsthand experience as you delve into psychotopology. Despite theories and methods that seem to echo this work in some ways, this new territory is not on existing maps. You won’t have any reference points to be able to make sense of it if you rely only on what you already know.
For those of you comfortable enough entering into your own feeling experience, the following will get you started. For others who may find this difficult at first, I will be providing much more support over coming months. Hang tight.
For everyone, what follows is absolutely bare bones. I had less than this to get started, and it brought me all the way, so theoretically you could use what follows to recreate the entire development of psychotopology. But I’m trying to save you from the stumbling blocks, the going around in circles, and the progress plateaus that I had to muddle through.
Using what follows will get you started. Yes, there is a lot more I want to share about how to use fieldwork skillfully and efficiently. For now, though, I do encourage you to go for it. Start exploring, examining, poking and prodding. Stumble around a bit, grope through a dark spot or two, and just start getting the feel of what it’s like to enter this realm of feelingmind with a bit more clarity and agency than you might be accustomed to.
Set Up
Before we launch, grab some paper and pencil, or a device that’s easy to take notes on, and something you can use to make a drawing. Perhaps you will want some colored pencils or markers, or maybe you have a drawing app that will work well for you. You will find it very helpful to document your steps as we do the following exploration into the actual territory inside of you.
One more thing. You are going to be applying your attention in a new way. Part of this experience may include a sense of being in a slightly altered state, something outside your familiar, everyday conscious activity. To support this effort, I recommend you continue only in surroundings that would be suitable for something like meditation, free of distractions or interruptions, and with plenty of time to re-equilibrate before taking on activities like driving.
Choosing a Feeling State to Work With
I recommend that you start small, with feeling states that aren’t at the center of your life’s most intractable issues. Pick that little annoyance with the barista at the coffee shop, or the momentary stage fright before you make a presentation, or the feeling that makes you read that one more article or watch that one more show when you know you should hit the sack or get out for some exercise.
The fact is, everything is connected to everything else inside of you, and even if you begin with something that seems trivial, you are likely to find its roots entwined with the core issues around which your life revolves. So no matter how insignificant the state you choose for your first mapping, you will very likely get to experience the benefit of the work very soon. But starting with something on the low end of the intensity spectrum will give you some latitude as you experiment with this new process.
At the same time, you do want to choose something that feels clear and tangible to you. You want something that provides a strong-enough feeling experience to make going through the practice pretty easy as you take your first steps. So avoid something that seems more abstract, more distant, more flat.
As you grow your skills, you will find that you will be able to map the feeling state of every conscious experience, including these more seemingly neutral ones. But that’s not a great place to start, so find a sweet spot that works. If you start the process and find it difficult, push pause and find a new feeling state to work with, sliding the intensity one way or the other in order to find that sweet spot for you.
Another recommendation I have for selecting a state to map is to choose something familiar. Mapping a state that feels like something you encounter regularly in certain situations will give you more of an opportunity to experience a significant shift when you take that state through the moving process.
Have you chosen a suitable feeling state and given it a name? Great. Let’s get started.
Quick Tip
We’ll go into this in more detail later, but for now I want to suggest you find a way to externalize the questions, so that your experience is more like that of being facilitated. You want to be able to lean into the questions, to allow them to support you in witnessing your own experience. Some possibilities:
Use the embedded audio below. (The Give Fieldwork a Try audio is good to lead you through your first time.)
Print out or have the questions visually handy, and read them out loud (or under your breath) to yourself at each step. (Download this PDF with the questions for printing.)
Team up with a friend to lead one another through the process.
Type out your facilitation as a conversation with yourself.
Name the question framework as “Mind,” “Facilitation” or something else, and actually type some version of each question as you move along.
After you type the question, shift roles and read the question as yourself, doing the inner feeling and mapping process.
Name your inner process as “Emotion,” “Feeling,” “Me” or your name, typing out your responses to the questions.
The key is, you want to be able to either seamlessly switch back and forth between being the facilitator and the explorer, or fully externalize the facilitation role.
The Mapping Questions
The following questions are designed to fine-tune your field of awareness to gather information in a new way from this mysterious territory of feelingmind. In your notes, write the date and the name of the feeling state you have chosen to work with. Begin by bringing your full attention to the actual, felt experience of this feeling state.
Don’t worry about getting the right answer. Go with your first impression and test it out. Is that it, or does another quality fit better?
Full Audio for Mapping
Prompts w/Audio & Text
First Impression
Describe in general terms, in a sentence or two, what it feels like to be you experiencing this [feeling state], as if you were telling a good friend.
Location
If you were to say that the actual, felt experience of this [feeling state] is located somewhere in or around your body, where would you say that seems to be?
And in this location, what kind of size and shape does this [feeling state] seem to occupy?
Substance
Inside this region, if you were to say that the actual, felt experience of this [feeling state] has qualities of substance, would you say it seems more like a solid… a liquid… a gas… some kind of light… or energy… or something else?
Does this [feeling substance] seem hard or soft, heavy or light, more or less dense, thick or thin? What finer details do you notice about the qualities of substance of your experience of this [feeling state]?
Temperature
If you were to say this [feeling substance] has a temperature, what temperature would you say that seems to be?
Color
If you were to say that this [feeling substance] has color, what color or colors would you say it seems to be?
And would you say it seems more transparent, translucent, or opaque? Is the color vivid or flat? Dark or bright? What other qualities of appearance do you notice in your experience of this [feeling state]?
Movement
If you were to say the actual, felt experience of this [feeling substance] is moving in any way, would you say it seems to be flowing… pulsing… vibrating… moving in some other way… or does it seem to be perfectly still?
And do you notice any force or pressure? Are these qualities of movement, force or pressure steady, rhythmic, or random in any way?
Sound
With your attention on the felt experience of this [feeling state], when you listen internally, do you notice any inner sound? Is it natural, artificial, mechanical, vocal, or something else? Is this sound steady, or does it vary in a way that is rhythmic or random in any way? If there seems to be no sound, is it more the case that there is no sound of any kind, or is there in fact the presence of a distinct silence?
Thoughts and Beliefs
How would you capture in words what seems most true, or real, or important, from the perspective of yourself when you are feeling this [feeling state]?
How might you complete the sentence:
I am, or I’m not…
I can, or can’t…
I have, or don’t have…
I need, or don’t need…
I want, or don’t want…
I should, or shouldn’t…
I have to, or don’t have to…
Review
Is there anything else you want to notice about how this [feeling state] actually feels before you move on? Is there any other sensory information like taste or smell to capture? Are there any adjustments you would like to make to your notes?
Take some time now to draw what you have described.
Summary
As you become familiar and comfortable with the mapping process, as you pick up the knack, learn the skill, you will be able at times to shorten these prompts. If you are getting vivid, clear information about the qualities of the feeling state, you might shorten the prompts all the way down to a bare bones, “What about the substance?” Some people find it so easy to dive into this realm and report back that they just stream-of-consciousness weave the image with no prompting at all.
But there will also be times, even if you are one of those people to whom this comes easy, when you will be grateful for the leverage of the full questions. Sometimes the feeling states we are reaching for have been buried so deeply, for so long, that accessing them is a major undertaking. In these cases the fully-expanded questions will be an invaluable tool.
Drawing
For now, at this early stage of your work, it’s just fine if you go with the simplest solution possible and just sketch a rough body outline to make your drawing. We’ll get into more involved drawing solutions in a later chapter. It’s great if you have colored pencils or other art materials to draw your state, (if it needs that sort of treatment). Otherwise, capture it the best you can with a simple monochrome sketch. You have the notes to specify just what the color is.
To give you a sense of what drawings look like for a variety of feeling states, take a look at these posts with vivid examples:
If you’d like to use some standard body outlines, including androgynous, female, and male versions, download this PDF document for printing, or this ZIP file with the following PNG images that can be imported into any drawing program.
Next
When you finish mapping a feeling state, there’s no hurry to move it. Take your time, look around. Hang out with this state for a little while, and notice what you can about what it’s like to be you when that state is active. Explore whether there might be other, related states you might want to map before taking the next step into moving this one.
The Moving Questions
When you’re good and ready to explore what it’s like to more deeply inquire into this state’s nature by engaging with its virtual material properties, this is where you’ll start.
Proceed as you did with the mapping, taking notes and drawing the final feeling state. As you begin, note the name of the feeling state you’re moving. When you’ve finished, you’ll name the final, ideal feeling state and add that to your notes.
As you enter this process for the first time, go easy. Take your time, and notice what there is to notice as you take each step. There is a massive amount to learn through this practice, and as you get started, small steps are best.
In this process, it is very important that you retain the attitude of the scientist. That means being very curious about what will unfold, leaving your expectations at the door. You’re not going for total personal transformation here. You’re not going for enlightenment. You are entering a new space within yourself to discover what might lie within, beyond what you already know.
The moving practice is not unidirectional. The idea is not to drive your currently mapped, more-or-less-reactive state into a state of bliss. Instead, you are expanding the range of motion of this part of you. Get curious about this part’s range of motion. You might even consider what it might be like to move things in the direction of “worse,” as a way of shedding light on the role this part might play in certain patterns of inner experience in your life.
Yes, it will be nice to arrive at a state that feels better than the original one. And as we go more deeply into the practice, we will seek the ideal in each case as a way of revealing the deeper nature of each part, and enabling more effective integration of parts into the whole of your being. For now, though, your priority should be one of exploration. What can you discover, using this unprecedented tool for observing and interacting with these inner parts of yourself?
Getting Ready
Now, bring your attention to the feeling state, using the map you captured in the mapping process, reviewing your notes, looking at the drawing, recapturing within yourself the actual, felt experience of that state. As we go through the following sequence of prompts, we will be letting go of the name of your originally mapped state. Instead, we will refer to it as “this part of you.”
This is because, as soon as we begin to engage, as soon as the virtual material properties of this state begin to change, the state becomes something different from what was originally named. We want to provide maximum freedom for this part of you to find its way, to sense into the directions it wants to explore, without being constrained by the name it was given.
Full Audio for Moving
Prompts w/Audio & Text
Preamble
Before we begin, we need to set three frames.
First, this part took on this feeling state form in order to serve you. You’re going to move this feeling state, but you can always put it back if that is what is needed. Therefore, it is safe to move.
Second, because it is safe to move, you might as well go for it. What could this part of you be in an absolutely perfect world, where all your needs are met, fully and completely?
Third, this part of you is connected to other parts. We invite these other parts of you to participate in this process passively, as witnesses only, learning from the process what is possible for all parts of you, all feeling states.
Now, in the spirit of exploration, in a perfect world, if this part of you were free to become anything at all, what would it most want to be?
Temperature
If this part of you were free to become warmer or cooler, what would feel better? What would this part of you prefer? And in becoming warmer or cooler, if this part of you were free to take on any temperature at all, what temperature would it most want to be? What would be this part’s perfect temperature?
Substance
So, in taking on that new temperature, if this part of you were free to become harder or softer, heavier or lighter, more or less dense, what would feel better?
And in moving in that direction, if this part of you were free to take on qualities of any substance at all, would it prefer to be more like a solid… or a liquid… or a gas… or some kind of pure light or energy… or something else?
And going into the finer qualities of that substance, does this part want to be hard or soft, heavy or light, thick or thin? What other qualities do you want to notice about what this part of you most wants to be?
Color
So in taking on these new qualities of substance and temperature, if this part of you were free to become darker or brighter, what would it prefer?
And in shifting in that direction, if this part of you could take on any color or colors of the rainbow or beyond, what color or colors would it most want to be?
And would it want to be transparent, translucent or opaque?
And would it want to have any qualities of being luminous, iridescent, shimmering or sparkling?
What other visual qualities of appearance do you notice this part of you wants to take on?
Location
In taking on these new qualities of color, substance and temperature, if this part of you were free to locate itself anywhere in or around your body, or in and around your body, where would it want to be located? And what kind of size and shape would it most want to be?
Movement
In locating itself in this new location, how does this part of you want to be moving? Does it want to be flowing, or pulsing, or vibrating? Does there want to be any sense of waves or ripples? Does it want to be radiating in some way? What directions or other qualities of movement does this part of you most want to have?
Sound
In taking on all these new qualities, if this part of you were free to generate an inner sound as a way of more fully expressing its true nature, what would that want to be?
Would it want to be some kind of music or a sound from nature? Some kind of voice? One voice or many? Male or female? What age? Or would it want to be perfectly silent? What would be the optimal inner sound to express this part of you?
Review
Going back through the different qualities, are there any other adjustments you want to make? Is there anything else you want to notice about what this part of you wants to be?
Thoughts and Beliefs
If this part of you were free to express in words what seems most true, or real, or important, what would it say?
How might this part of you complete the sentence “I am…" or “I have…" or “I can…"? What else do you notice?
What does this part of you most want you to know?
New Name
Finally, what name would you like to give this new feeling state? Another way of thinking about it is, what name would this part of you like to be called?
Drawing
And now, take some time with the drawing, in the same way as you did with the original feeling state map.
What else do you notice?
In going through this experience, whether your first time or after a few, what catches your attention? Where did your experience differ from your expectations. As you reflect on your experience now, do you notice any places where your previous understanding of your inner world might be called into question? What would you like to do with these observations?
You’ll have plenty of opportunity for more methodical exploration in coming articles. I recommend you use this time to dip in from time to time, to map a few different states and move some of them, just to start getting to know your way around. Try mapping some really good states as well, to see what new insights might come there.
Good luck!
Reflections and Sharing
Please consider sharing the results of your mapping in the comments below. You won’t want to reveal personal details, of course, but sharing the answers to the mapping and moving questions should be both private enough and valuable enough to others. Ask any questions and let me know any places where things didn’t flow so easily, and I’ll do my best here to support your explorations.
Also, please do consider signing up for a paid subscription to participate in the ongoing Engage meetings.
This page is literally life-saving!!
I was just using this page for supporting a friend who needed relief ASAP, and I would like to make a formatting suggestion that would've helped (me help) them better.
Would you be willing, in the transcript, to somehow make it easier to skim and find the wording for the last half of the sentence?
For instance, instead of
"In taking on these new qualities of color, substance and temperature, if this part of you were free to locate itself anywhere in or around your body, or in and around your body, where would it want to be located? And what kind of size and shape would it most want to be?"
(which, BTW, has a typo in that "in or around your body" is duplicate)
would you be willing to format it more broken-down, and with *bold portions* like, for instance:
"In taking on these new qualities of color, substance and temperature,
if this part of you were free to locate itself *anywhere in or around your body, where would it want to be located?*
And what kind of *size and shape* would it most want to be?"
That would help me skim multiple questions and skip the ones my friend has already naturally answered...
I realize that the headers do this, but they don't give me the sub-questions, e.g. types of movement to inquire about, and so they leave me distracted from my friend and reading... when she is SO FAST and so impatient that her system will bring in other parts if I don't stay focused on her more than the script.