The PUPA process: Focusing metamorphosis from ‘caterpillar’ to ‘butterfly’

This is the story of how the PUPA process came to be: the creation of a safe space for inner transformation and personal growth.

A few years ago, my dear friend, Jenn Wesanko told me that the stage between a caterpillar and a butterfly is a chrysalis. I looked it up and discovered that the generic term for this metamorphic stage in insects is called a pupa. This tranquil stage is usually enclosed in a cocoon (e.g. for moths) or some other protective covering. The pupa is when the larva undergoes internal changes to become the imago, or mature adult.

This was back in April 2018. I immediately bought the domain name pupa.ca, I was so drawn to the metaphor. Over the past two and a half-years, the PUPA process has emerged. The PUPA process combines Focusing practice, Theory U and the 8Cs of Self-Leadership.

The Egg and the Caterpillar

There are four metamorphic stages to becoming a butterfly. The first is that of the eggs, laid by the butterfly. The eggs hatch by themselves, revealing small caterpillars; the second stage. The caterpillars eat and eat. As they grow, they undergo four to five instars. This is where they molt or shed their old skin, to become bigger caterpillars.

Our felt shifts in Focusing, that carry us forward a tiny bit, are like these instars. We're different, and we're still a caterpillar. Eventually, we’re ready for a felt shift that will truly change us. We’re ready for metamorphosis.

Pupa

The third stage is that of the pupa. The caterpillar's final molting reveals a chrysalis, a hard outer shell. This creates a protected space for transformation to a butterfly. The length of the pupal stage varies, from anywhere between a few weeks to up to 15 years! Similarly, our human process to shift an issue or birth a project can take time.

I've taken the pupa stage and pulled out five phases, to create a safe space for transformation, through the PUPA process. This process combines the classic six steps of the practice of Focusing, the movements of Theory U, and the eight qualities or 8Cs of Self-Leadership. While the phases and steps as laid out can can be done in one go, they would often involve multiple Focusing sessions, where some Cs would be revised, while others might only be needed once for a given change process.

Using the 8Cs of Self-Leadership provide extra good energy to resource the process, by way of positive neuroplasticity, or as Rick Hanson calls it, experience-dependent neuroplasticity. Thus, a preparatory step is often to identify that ‘C’ quality in us. We can do so using a memory with that quality.

1. Pause—the caterpillar realizing it is time for change, and creating a safe space to do so

• Calm: sink deeply into your body, in a centered and grounded way, using your breath, a body scan, etc.

  • Clearing A Space (Focusing Step 1). While this step typically involves going through our list of four to five items, one at a time, one can also clear a space by going directly to the body. A nice way of doing so is the GAP: Grounded Aware Presence exercise in David Rome’s book Your Body Knows the Answer: Using Your Felt Sense to Solve Problems, Effect Change, and Liberate Creativity.

• Connection: creating our safe cocoon, by connecting to ourselves and the context. This can include the communities and environment involved.

  • Activate your heart energy (Focusing Step 6 of Receiving): empathize with all involved, including ourselves. This is akin to activating the Focusing Attitude, a non-judgemental way of being. In Theory U, this includes listening to stakeholder voices, and listening with an open mind and heart. This doesn’t always come naturally, as we can judge our experience, so it is good to remind ourselves that whatever comes from the body will be helpful somehow. And to take a moment to connect with that part of ourselves to ensure it is active.

2. Understand—what is innate in the caterpillar needs clarity in us. What are we wanting here?

• Curiosity: understanding the issue/project in an embodied way. This includes the broader perspective of your right brain, for a whole-brain approach.

  • Invite a Felt Sense: (Focusing Step 2) let your body show you more meaning and knowing about this issue. Allow physical sensations, feelings, thoughts and memories to come into your awareness.

• Clarity: discovering what this is really all about

  • Get a Handle and Resonate (Focusing Steps 3 & 4): find the word, phrase, image or sound that captures the essence of this issue or project. What is the crux of what you are wanting or needing? And resonating the handle back with the felt sense until it matches just right.

  • Asking (Focusing Step 5) the felt sense what it knows now. There will be more than you already know about this issue or experience.

3. Permutation—a future way of being emerges. Metamorphosis.

• Creativity: felt shift in the body, followed by a paradigm shift in the mind

  • Not a formal Focusing step, but something that happens regularly in Focusing. It's a felt shift that changes the constellation of the whole problem. There is a global change in the way we view the situation. A way or ways forward emerge. In Theory U, this step is called Presencing.

  • There are specific exercises that can catalyze this kind of felt shift, including Joe Shirley’s Feelingwork, the stuck exercise and seed dance in Arawana Hayashi’s Social Presencing Theatre, and Rush Wayne’s Shift-Intensive Focusing.

  • More Asking (Focusing Step 5). Making it concrete by asking into the felt sense what the right next step is, if it doesn’t automatically emerge with this felt shift.

4. Prepare—the new butterfly breaks through the chrysalis, dries its wings and gets ready to fly

• Compassion: dealing with the blocks that are in the way, such as the critic. Connecting with your compassionate self.

• Confidence: Visualizing yourself doing the action, by bringing in the part of you that has agency. Planning: what other details you’d like to ask your felt sense/body for assistance with? Can also use prototyping to further evolve the plan.

5. Act—the butterfly takes flight

• Courage: Act in real life with grit. Do so even if some fear is present; as Brené Brown says “Courage and fear are not mutually exclusive.” And thank your body along the way or Welcome (Focusing Step 6).

Butterfly

Once we’ve undergone the PUPA process, we are not only a butterfly, but a flying butterfly. We’ve come up with a creative idea for how to be, and found the courage to implement this new way of being.

Of course, as mentioned earlier, we’re talking about neuroplasticity, and we can sometimes fall back on old pathways, especially in times of stress like our current covid19 pandemic. Another example is with trauma work. As Judith Herman says in Trauma and Recovery, “each new stage of the lifecycle will inevitably reawaken the trauma and bring some new aspect of the experience to light.” So some issues we must revisit and again transform. Such is life. It is, after all, more complicated than an insect lifecycle, as helpful as the metaphor is.

Learn more about the PUPA Process in the video below, created in September 2023.

Want to dive into Focusing or the PUPA Process. Check out our courses for more!