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Introduction

Making art rejuvenates me and Focusing replenishes me. The language of Focusing allows for all of us to make a solid connection with the creative wellspring of our aliveness. The flavour of my Focusing is infused with a reality affirming earthiness and a gentle touch of artistic licence.

What services do I offer?

As a Focusing Practitioner, I will work one to one with you. I provide assistance to those who are looking to strengthen their creative foundations. The desire to strengthen creative foundations is to find the stability which roots growth. Various life experiences may prompt such a search. All are welcome. I am particularly familiar with the following three:

FOCUSING FOR CLIENTS IN THERAPY
The progress of a therapeutic journey can be eased and enhanced by engaging with auxiliary activities between sessions. I can provide invaluable opportunities for you to bolster your connection between your non verbal knowing, and scaffold your ability to find words to communicate from the felt sense of that knowing. Between your counselling sessions such Focusing time can be used to familiarise yourself with changing perspectives and to integrate insights. You may wish guidance and accompaniment for your own classic Focusing, or you may also wish to incorporate creative activities and/or companioned journeys into the great outdoors into your supporting practice. My background in psychotherapeutic Art Therapy means that I can work safely with you in a complementary way which respects the boundaries of your therapy journey.

FOCUSING FOR CREATIVES
Creative individuals can benefit from engaging in the Focusing process to enhance their appreciation of the intricate connections between their creative expression and their reasons for making as they do. Focusing brings a heightened clarity to artistic vision and abstract concepts, prompting us to understand how our uniqueness fits into the broader scheme of things in life and work.

Artists possess an ability to harness the non-verbal language of their chosen medium to explore and engage with paradoxes. However, Focusing enhances our capacity to tap into the same strength of creative expression with our verbal language. Well chosen words have authority and wisdom and aids our journeying through the unknown.

The practice of Focusing allows for our practice of trust in seeing the potential of paradoxes to break, not us, but the sod of new creative ground. By embracing and valuing our meaningful interaction with life process, our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world is stabilised and expanded.


FOCUSING FOR ACTIVISTS
Focusing serves as a powerful tool for discovering and strengthening alignment with your purpose, particularly when that purpose challenges mainstream narratives and disrupts the status quo. As a valuable resource for preventing burnout, Focusing allows for essential moments of rest, healing, pleasure and satisfaction derived from our connections with self, people and the Earth. Combined with action, Focusing supports our true and devoted unfolding of social and ecological justice.

My background in Focusing

It was my Focusing practice which led me to translate the psychodynamic Art Therapy (in which I had originally trained) into community Creativity for Wellbeing workshops. I then found the workshops instinctually morphing into expressions of process art activism. My Focusing journey has been my guide in taking one step at a time from where I am (and that’s okay) to where I go to next (and that’s even more okay in a mature, aligned and integrated sort of way).

In 2021 I was delighted to take part in the International Focusing Institute Conference on Embodied Liberation. By engaging in this crossing of Focusing with social justice concerns, my awareness was raised on how Focusing can help to shed light on the complex issues society has in regard to its intersectional oppressive mechanisms. Creating new narratives for ourselves in relationship is key to reckoning with blindspots. On an individual and a societal level, “relationship comes first”. Focusing has to cross with several conceptual fields in addressing the true experience of Adult Adoptees, and I currently enjoy some, and welcome more, collaboration in this misunderstood, neglected and stifled area.

As a Process Artist I engage in projects and run workshops which are now marbled with my Focusing practice’s illumination of the Theory of the Implicit. To delve more deeply into this theory, I am currently challenging myself by joining in with The International Focusing Institute’s group reading of “A Process Model” with Rob Parker.

I am delighted to be at the crossroads where the concepts of the mind and the possibilities and limitations of the physical world flow together in a reciprocal dance. For a decade now, Focusing sustains me with solar powered markers that assure me of the validity of my knowing, and highlights the worth for myself and others of my releasing my authenticity into the world.

Qualifications

2014 Certificate in Focusing Skills from British Focusing Association
2015 Wholebody Focusing workshops with Kay Hoffman
2017 Certificate in Existential Well-being Counseling: A Person-centered Experiential Approach
from KU Leuven
2020 Somatic Approaches to Healing Trauma Certificate from Somatopia
2021 Focusing Practitioner Certificate with Rene Veuglars and Harriet Teuw from Kinder Focus
Centrum Nederland

How do I practice?

• In person
• Online

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