Start learning psychotopology fieldwork by giving it a try. This audio will take you through the mapping process for one feeling state.
Make sure to listen to Try It #1: Fieldwork Preparation to learn how best to prepare for mapping and select a good feeling state to work with.
Here are the posts with audio for the preparation and moving phases of fieldwork:
Below is a PDF with outlines for drawing, and here is a link to a ZIP file with PNG outlines for adding to a drawing program.
Transcript:
(In case you prefer to read instead of listen)
Okay, let's map the feeling state you've chosen to work with. So, I'm going to be asking you a series of questions about what the actual felt experience of this feeling state is for you, what it feels like for you on the inside. We're going to translate it into qualities of location, substance, temperature, color, things like that, and developing this map of what that feeling actually feels like.
So, take pretty detailed notes as we go. You will need those when we go into the moving process. Okay? So, as we get started here, the questions that I ask you might or might not be familiar to you from other kinds of processes like focusing or hakomi work. For most people, you'll find they're unfamiliar.
Nobody has ever asked you these kinds of questions about what you feel. And because it's a little unfamiliar, it might be like a skill that you need to learn, maybe a little awkward at first, so give yourself some flexibility. There are no right answers, and I'm going to encourage you to give yourself permission to just make it up.
It's literally kind of like that. The way you test out your answer to one of the questions is to try it on. So, I'm going to be asking you about substance, for example, and you might imagine, well, what if it was a solid? You try it on. No, that doesn't feel quite right. Well, maybe it's more like a liquid. Ah, yeah, that feels like it. Definitely more like a liquid.
Okay, so, you're going to be guiding yourself using your own sense of what feels accurate. And the choices that I give will help you zoom in on that specific image.
So let's just dive in right here. You can close your eyes if that helps you go in a little bit more deeply. Pause the audio when you need to take some notes or go back and listen again.
So, if you were to say that the actual felt experience of this feeling that you've named is located somewhere in or around your body, or in and around your body, feelings can extend beyond your body, where would you say that is?
And if you were to say it had a size and shape, what is the size and shape, where inside the feeling is there and outside of it it's not?
And in that space, in that region where you feel that feeling, if you were to say that the actual felt experience of this feeling has qualities of substance, would you say that it seems more like a solid, or a liquid, or a gas, or perhaps more like light, or energy, or something else. And we don't have to obey laws of physics here. In fieldwork, there are things like hard gases, or liquid energies, things like that.
So go a little deeper now with the substance. What are the finer qualities? If it's a solid, is it hard or soft? Heavy or light? More or less dense? If it's a liquid or a gas, is it thick like honey or thin like water? Just notice the qualities of the substance there, and maybe texture is important too.
Okay, let's move to temperature. If you were to say that this feeling substance has a temperature, what temperature would you say that seems to be? Is it warmer or cooler than body temperature? Or hot or cold? Or it could be more of a neutral temperature, like a body temperature or a room temperature. What temperature would you say this feeling substance seems to be?
And if you were to say that this feeling substance has a color, if you were able to see it, what color would you say that seems to be? And would you say that it seems dark or bright? Is it possibly transparent or translucent or opaque? Is there any luminosity or glow to it? What else do you notice about what it looks like and what the appearance is?
And if you were to say that this feeling substance has qualities of movement, does it seem to be flowing, or pulsing, or vibrating? Is there any other kind of movement that you notice? And does there seem to be any kind of force or pressure? What's the direction of the movement, or the force, or the pressure?
And, what are the patterns of this movement, or force, or pressure through time? Is it steady, or is it rhythmic, or erratic? What do you notice about the directionality of the flow, and any circulation that might be there?
And if you listen now, internally, Do you notice any kind of sound? It might be originating actually in the space of the feeling, or it might be originating elsewhere but strongly accompanying the feeling.
What are the qualities of that sound that you notice?
So just scan through now what you've described here, and see if there's anything else to notice about what this feeling state actually feels like to you on the inside. Is there anything else to add to your notes? And finally, let me ask you about the atmosphere of this, the attitude that comes with it, the perceptions, the beliefs.
If you were to capture in words what seems true, or real, or important to you, from the point of view that you're inhabiting when you're in this feeling state, what would you say? You might start such a sentence with, I am or I'm not, or I have or I don't have, or I can or can't.
Those are just suggestions. You capture whatever statements come to mind for you and give yourself a moment to write a few of those sentences here.
So I will make available a template that you can download and print out or incorporate into a Word document or a drawing program, that has the outlines of a human body on it, or you can just sketch one yourself.
But grab some colored pencils or pens, or a drawing app, and draw what you've just described. The drawing process is itself a discovery process. You will notice things in doing your drawing that you didn't notice going through just verbally. So, make sure to give yourself the opportunity for that.
Okay, so, in the next section, Try It #3, Fieldwork Moving, we're going to dive into this feeling that you've just mapped and use a process that unpacks it, opens it up, and reconnects it to its origin, to its ideal state. And through that, you will discover power, resource, and freedom that you didn't know was there. So, I look forward to seeing you for that one.
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