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Marie Connors

An embodied relational experiential course

The Focusing Foundation Training program is designed and taught by Marie Connors, a certified Focusing Professional and Trainer. This course is structured as two 10-week blocks. The first 10-week block covers Focusing Foundations Level 1 and Level 2. The second 10-week block covers Focusing Foundations Level 3 and Level 4. It is possible to do block one without committing to both blocks. Each block consists of 10 weekly online sessions, weekly practice partnerships, one individual guided Focusing session with the trainer and email support between classes. This training places emphasis on our bodies as open receptive environments that include our relationships, with vast intelligence and knowing about our life situations. There will be many experiential practices to explore this embodied knowing, inside safe relational meetings.

This course is suitable for complete beginners as well as a first step for health and healing professionals in bringing Focusing to their clinical practice.

Some benefits from doing this training:

Be part of an embodied empathic, warm group of human beings who can listen deeply to one another and inside themselves.

Gain an understanding of what sets Focusing apart as a life-giving transformational practice.

Learn the qualities and skills you need to use Focusing as a supportive practice in your life, with yourself and with others.

Get enough personal attention in your experiential learning inside a small group (Maximum 8 people).

Become skilled and practiced at finding a grounded stable sense of self.

Learn how to listen deeply with your body as well as your brain.

Learn to pause, slow down, and regulate uncomfortable states by coming into relationship with your direct experience of this present moment.

Learn to be with the pain of life in yourself and others in ways that bring relief, transformation, and a return to wholeness.

You may experience relief from physical and psychological tensions and chronic pain.

Connect to the authentic truth within your embodied self.

Gain more clarity and direction about what you need to bring your life forward.

You may experience more fulfilment in your relationships and your life situations.

What is Focusing?

Focusing is a process of allowing our bodies to show us the way to deeper self-knowledge and healing. It is a doorway to your true self. Our bodies have their own consciousness, aliveness, and intelligence. They carry wisdom and knowledge about what is happening in our lives, about where we are stuck or holding ourselves back, about what we need to heal from our past hurts and what are the right next steps to bring us more vitality and fulfilment in our lives. Focusing shows you how to form a trusting relationship with your body, to begin to turn towards your body as a place of goodness and intelligence and slow down enough to notice how you are on the inside. You learn to have a conversation with your body and listen to what it wants you to know. When you let your body speak to you, you are allowing yourself to open to the depth and truth of your whole self. It can feel like something held tight has come unstuck, providing more space and aliveness and sometimes a new sense of direction and fresh energy can emerge. Focusing offers a rich potential for change. It opens a doorway to a space where it is possible to transform your life in a way that feels right for you. Focusing is a practice everyone can learn without undertaking years of professional development or going to see a therapist. With a little training, you can learn to access the space beyond your thoughts to find the “more” that is happening in any situation. When we are in contact with our direct experience of the “more”, small steps of change begin to emerge, and this can lead us on to fresh life-giving directions. The wonderful thing is that when learn focusing you can use it whenever you need it for the rest of your life.

Course Layout and Content

Block one: 10 Weeks.

10 weekly sessions, 2hours 15 mins.

Level one and Level two

In Level one and two trainees gain the ability Focus and Listen inside a Focusing partnership. They learn the basics of the Focusing process and how to be a nurturing companion to both your own and your partners process. Focusers are taught to guide themselves through the process of being with what they are sensing on the inside. The Focuser learns to be in charge of their own Focusing process and to ask for what they need from their companion. We spend time with developing the qualities of presence and how we can support these qualities when we are companioning our Focusing partner. Advanced listening skills are taught such as reflecting our understanding of what the Focuser means to convey and using the word something as an empathic prompt to stay a bit longer with what is not yet clear or know. Companions are also given a script for a “Leading-In,” and ask the Focuser before the session starts if s/he would like to be led in.

Booking link (offsite)

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