Yes, Odoki attempts to bring about magic. Or, at least it can feel like that.
The Odoki Method is intended to help people resolve many psychological struggles, such as anxiety, insecurity, self-doubt, and more. Simple exercises help us unpack what is happening in these situations.
But where do these exercises happen?
To answer this, we need to explain a little about the brain.
For many, if you ask them what the brain does, they would say “it thinks”. But there is so much more than it does than that, so much more that is available to conscious experience I should say.
In the Odoki Method, we identify three types of processing that the brain does. The simplest is raw sensation. If we push a toe into the floor, we notice something. There is very little processing happening in this - we need a few concepts, e.g. toe, floor and pressure, but not too much else.
Then, at the other end of the scale, there is rational thought. We can think one thought at a time, but, potentially at least, with significant precision.
And there is a middle ground, between these two. A way part of our brain works that we often make use of, but commonly without much or even any awareness. It is the part of us that has hunches, and sometimes makes decisions by “just knowing”. It is often talked about as intuition, or gut feelings. Sometimes we talk about the “inner child”. But there is quite a bit more to it than that.
In the 1950s, Eugene Gendlin first described this as the “felt sense”. He explored the difference between therapy that brought change and therapy that didn’t. He identified that people for whom the felt sense was available were the people that saw success in therapy. He went on to explore in depth how it works, and how we can engage with it.
We draw heavily on his work in the Odoki Method. And, to answer our original question: it is in the felt sense where the magic happens.
This “felt sense” is how a part of our brain communicates with us,a part that can handle context, subtlety, nuance, ambiguity. It takes in a lot of information, and responds in feelings.
It takes care of many things for us in our lives, often unconsciously. If you’ve ever made a resolution and failed to follow through, it was likely because your felt sense wasn’t sufficiently involved.
“Magic” happens when we start to learn to work with our felt sense. We can start to understand situations faster, make decisions much more quickly, and further, the inquiry work that comes a little later in the Odoki Method all happens within the felt sense.
To finish: magic isn’t really magical. Magic is just when something happens that we don’t expect, and perhaps can’t explain. And learning to work with the felt sense can very much bring this kind of magic.