The Four Building Blocks of Presence
A 5 Minute Guided Practice by Guthrie Sayen
Why Presence Matters
Your biggest impact on others is usually not what you say or do but your Presence, how you show up energetically. It is your vibration that others are processing and responding to, usually unconsciously. Your energy either contributes to or distracts from trust, clarity, and connection.
As a practitioner, you are ideally building a relational field that supports the regulation of your client’s nervous system. The quality of your energy determines how people feel about you and how they feel with you.
And how they feel impacts the relationship and the potential for healing and awakening.
We each have a personal energy field that surrounds us like a bubble. Some call this bubble an aura; science calls it an electromagnetic field and can measure it. Regardless of the term used, this luminous field radiates information about your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual wellbeing.
If you are in a state of coherence, your vibration is more refined, and you broadcast harmony. If, on the other hand, you are out of balance, you broadcast dissonance.
Presence, which is a synonym for Self, is naturally coherent and calming. It fosters harmony and safety.
Dissonance dissolves in the presence of coherence, so Presence is the ideal condition for facilitating healing and awakening.
Presence has four building blocks: ground, core, field, and focus. Each is a step toward preparing you to be in a healing, creative, and intimate relationship with another as well as with yourself.
Make these skills second nature.
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Connect to what supports you.
The first step is ground, that is, being connected to the ground or feeling an energetic connection to the Earth.
Our principal grounding points are the feet when standing and walking and the perineum — between anus and genitals — when sitting. The perineum is called the root chakra for good reason.
Grounding is essential for knowing where we stand and what we stand for. It also keeps us safe from the emotional storms of others, like the rod that sticks above the roofline of a building and diverts lightning harmlessly into the ground.
In the same way, our bodies, when grounded, can let energy pass through us into the ground.
We feel safe because we are supported.
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Relax and imagine a connection between your key grounding points and the Earth.
You can do this standing with your knees slightly bent or sitting with your weight falling fully onto your buttocks.
Imagine the connection as roots growing from the bottoms of your feet and/or from your perineum and going deep into the Earth, anchoring and stabilizing you.
Sink into the feeling of connection.
Let gravity draw you closer.
Let your energy flow down into the Earth and let the Earth’s energy flow up into you.
You may feel an aliveness come into your system.
Savor the nourishing connection with the Earth.
This is your base of support. This is how you stabilize your system.
In Your Healing Work
Before turning toward another person, notice whether you can first feel what is supporting you.
When emotion intensifies, when you notice yourself working hard, or when you begin to feel swept into someone else’s experience, return to ground.
You do not have to leave the relationship in order to regain your footing.
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Come back to yourself.
The second step is core, being able to reference the center of your body.
You can think of your core generally as your torso or trunk. When you sense into your trunk, you begin to be in-formed about what is present in your system: sensations — pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral — and emotions of all kinds.
This is information about the state of your body-mind system.
And since we are social creatures who resonate with other members of our species, it also contains information about our clients and other people.
You can also think of your core more specifically as the central channel within your torso that runs from the crown of your head down to the perineum — from the crown chakra to the root chakra.
It is an energy column that includes the spine and connects you to the Earth below and the heavens above.
When you want to know what you need, want, or feel, core is the place to look.
Simply ask your core:
What do I need, want, or feel right now?
And wait for an answer.
This is where you are most you.
When you have core, you have a sense of completeness and confidence. You know you have a right to exist, and you know what’s right for you.
You have authority.
A Note for Empaths and Helpers
People who are empaths, who pick up on the emotional and mental states of others, especially need to develop a felt-sense of their core.
They are adept at referencing other people’s cores, which is why they are good at helping and healing. But many empaths, in developing the skill of referencing others, neglected the skill of self-referencing.
Being able to do both — reference your core and reference others’ cores — is critical to being effective both as a healing professional and a citizen of the world.
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Imagine the central column of your body.
Exhale completely.
Inhale through your perineum up to your crown.
Pause.
Exhale slowly through pursed lips, down the column and out through your perineum.
Repeat three more times.
Then release the breath and rest your attention on your core, that central channel.
Savor what it’s like to feel embodied and centered.
This is core.
In Your Healing Work
As you sit with another person, notice whether you can remain connected to your own center while also sensing them.
You might quietly ask yourself:
What am I feeling? What belongs to me? What might I be sensing from the relational field?
Core allows connection without losing self-reference.
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Recognize the awareness that is already here.
The third step is field, but “field” here refers not to our personal energy bubble but to the vast, limitless field of awake awareness, which surrounds us and permeates every cell of our being.
Awareness is not the thinking in our head, but an infinite and intelligent space, which is calm, clear, and alive.
It is the space in which the contents of conscious awareness — the thoughts, emotions, and sensations — appear.
This field of boundless awareness contains everything and excludes nothing.
Instead of focusing on objects like thoughts, emotions, or sensations, recognize awareness itself as the ever-present background.
This is nonlocal awareness: there is no center; awareness is everywhere, not limited to a little being behind our eyes.
Awareness is not a point; it is everywhere all at once.
And it was always there.
All we have to do is recognize it.
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Let your awareness expand outward by noticing sounds near and far.
Notice that the field of awareness can easily encompass sounds from all directions.
Allow awareness to become increasingly panoramic.
The field of awareness can even imagine sounds far beyond the range of our physical ears.
It can imagine sounds on other planets.
It can encompass the Big Bang that brought the physical universe into being.
For a few moments, allow yourself to rest as this spacious awareness rather than focusing on any one thing appearing within it.
In Your Healing Work
Field allows you to loosen the grip of narrow attention.
Rather than becoming absorbed entirely in a client’s words, an emotion, a problem, or your own internal response, see if you can remain aware of the larger space holding all of it.
The client is here.
Your own experience is here.
The room is here.
Sound is here.
Sensation is here.
Awareness is holding all of it.
From field, there may be more room for curiosity, possibility, and something unexpected to emerge.
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Direct your attention consciously.
The fourth step is focus, the ability to put our attention on one or two things to the exclusion of other things.
We can focus our attention on a person, an object, or a task.
Focus is selective; it allows us to isolate something for deeper analysis and understanding.
Field, on the other hand, is inclusive or panoramic.
Field and focus are two different ways of knowing or processing information.
To be effective, we need both:
Field for the big picture.
Focus to meet the demands of the moment.In our society, we overuse attention and underuse awareness.
With access to the field of awake awareness, we can use attention with conscious intention, which is essential for skillful living.
With access to field, we can stabilize our attention on a consciously chosen object, rather than jumping from object to object.
We are at choice in how we use attention, rather than being hijacked by the constantly changing objects in peripheral awareness.
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Begin by sensing the larger field of awareness.
Then consciously choose one object for your attention.
It might be your breath.
A sensation in your body.
The person sitting across from you.
A sound.
Notice what it feels like to focus without losing awareness of the larger field.
Then soften your focus and allow the field to become primary again.
Move gently between the two.
Field. Focus. Field. Focus.
The practice is not to remain in one mode. It is to become increasingly flexible and intentional in how you use both.
In Your Healing Work
Focus allows you to turn toward what needs your attention without becoming consumed by it.
You might focus closely on a client’s words, a subtle change in expression, a sensation they describe, or a particular part of their experience — while remaining connected to the larger field.
When field and focus are in optimal balance, we have mindfulness; we are in flow; we have access to the intelligence of the field and can direct it with precision.
Join us for a free informational webinar
Meet founders Guthrie Sayen and Barti Bourgault
Bring your questions about Awakened IFS-2
Wednesday, October 7, 2026
12:00 - 1:00 pm Eastern Time (New York)