Meet the Teachers
Peter Afford – Facing climate change with the felt sense.
I want to extend our appreciation of the felt sense and felt sensing beyond the personal practice of Focusing into the collective domain – our sense of ‘out there’ issues, our recognition of other people’s felt senses, our support of everyone’s capacity for felt sensing. Anyone and everyone can speak from their felt sense of what’s happening in the world, and can have it as an inner point of reference. Dialogue and discussion canbe rooted in the felt sense.
And of all the big world issues, climate change is surely the most threatening and perplexing: the scale of the danger we are in, the complexities of our personal responses, the powerlessness of individuals to turn the tide. What can we do? How can we adapt? How can we stay sane? I think the felt sense is the only sensible way forward.
This will be an experimental workshop with climate change as the topic. We’ll explore the felt sense: of self, of others, of the natural world. We’ll look at ways that support our staying in the ‘felt sense zone’, and call out behaviours that take us away from it. We’ll experiment with felt sense approaches for groups, such as embodied dialogue, appreciative enquiry, dynamic facilitation.
We’ll have dialogue, discussion, felt sensing and listening, both in the group and in partnerships. We’ll make space for feelings, views, and action steps that want to be expressed. No one will be pressured to do anything in particular around climate change, and we’ll aim to avoid blaming and shaming others.
Participants need to have learnt the basics of Focusing and listening in pairs.
Any questions, please email me:
To read more about Peter click here.
Greg Madison – Focusing Oriented Therapy is more than just Focusing, but what’s the ‘more’?
Gendlin was clear that therapy is more than just Focusing, but as FOTs we rarely talk about the ‘more’ and how it fits with our Focusing attitude. In these sessions we will work together to explore some more advanced questions of Focusing-oriented therapy. Does FOT indicate that we direct the client towards their bodily experience or does it mean that I, the therapist, am focusing, or both? Are we concerned about being directive with the client’s process? Does our felt sense during sessions tell us about ourselves or the client? Is there space for disagreement and challenge in FOT? Do we need theory to guide us during sessions? Are we working with parts or the whole? Is there one person in there or many? What do we mean by ‘body’ and what do we think a ‘feeling’ is? Are we consistent with Gendlin’s philosophical understanding or do we fall back into assumptions from other models, mixing them with our Focusing style? If we integrate other body approaches what happens to the principles we learn from Gendlin’s teaching and theory of psychotherapy? How do we defend the value of uncertainty and ‘not-knowing’ and being guided by a ‘murky’ felt sense when life demands answers? What are our challenges as FOTs working in a profession where our approach is little known and even less understood? Each session will include opportunities for experiential explorations, discussion, reflection on client work, anonymous supervision, and larger questions about whether our approach offers insights into making progress outside the consulting room.
Course prerequisites: People attending this course will need to have Focusing training to at least level 2 or equivalent and be comfortable with the emphasis on therapeutic material.
To read more about Greg click here.
Barbara McGavin – Creating the Environment of Change
We know that the Focusing process can make it possible to naturally align us with the living forward process of life. When we tune into the felt sense of a situation, the implicit next step of life can spontaneously occur.
However, sometimes thoughts and emotions can intrude. Feelings of self-criticism, frustration, wanting to get it fixed so you can get on with your life. Or maybe you experience feelings of overwhelm, sadness, fear, despair.
What Ann Weiser Cornell and Barbara have developed is a way of creating an inner environment in which those difficult and often painful experiences can receive the kind of attention they need so they can spontaneously release. They call it Untangling.
Untangling is based on a natural human ability we call Self-in-Presence, which is the capacity to be able to turn towards whatever needs your compassionate, open, curious attention. They have elaborated five ways in which Self-in-Presence can be expressed. They call them the “Powers of Presence.”
What Barbara would like to offer to you is an opportunity to experience the first three “Powers” of Self-in-Presence so you will be more confident in your ability to respond to whatever is in your inner world with the kind of attention it needs, creating the environment of change.
To read more about Barbara and her work, click here.
To see Barbara’s new book, click here.
Fiona Parr – Deepening your Spiritual Connection Using Gene Gendlin’s Thinking at the Edge (TAE) practice
This course is an experiential exploration into the meaning and significance that spirituality has for you. What is bigger than everyday concerns? What is the larger context for the content of your living? What qualities does it have and how does it live in your life? What sustains and supports you spiritually, and how does it do this?
Through Focusing you have direct access to what is important to you about your spiritual connection. What is it that only you could say, because no one else has exactly that take on it? When you find what that is, and find ways to give expression to it, you add something to the world that only you have, that no one else has.
The 14 steps of TAE were developed by Eugene Gendlin, in collaboration with Mary Hendricks-Gendlin and colleagues. The purpose of TAE is to enable embodied thinking; to draw out your implicit knowing about a subject. It’s the crossover between thinking and sensing. It helps you articulate something that you have always found difficult to say, and yet you know something about this subject because you have experienced it, and your body knows what it is.
This course will support you to dive into the first 6 or 7 steps of the process. The first stage of TAE (Steps 1 – 5) aims to facilitate speaking from your felt sense. Then you can begin to identify examples from your life experience, (and find patterns that link them). It will be a challenging and very enjoyable adventure in thinking, Focusing, self-exploration and questioning.
Prerequisite: Level 2
To read more about Fiona click here.
To read more about TAE click here.
René Veugelers – Dynamic Expressive Focusing
This course is suitable for both beginners and experienced focusers.
Back to what you really ‘know. A Dynamic Expressive approach towards your (implicit) inner child experience and a way to being with children and adults.
Does it sometimes seem like a challenge to find words to fit your Felt Sense? Wouldn’t it be relaxing to invite your body to express itself in colour, in movement, in symbols instead of words? Nonverbal communication, bodily expression, creativity and Focusing seems four different categories. In my work as a Children Focusing Professional and art therapist, I combine and connect these aspects to one whole approach. This supports ‘the living forward energy’ to glow, to move and to grow. I will invite you to create your wondering space and be surprised in this non-verbal attunement and expression, which will support your natural process and give a new and unexpected dimension and depth to your Focusing process, using your bodily wisdom in an interactive process. It will be a Seriously Playful Focusing journey using Listening in three directions! I will show and share some examples of these processes and expression!
Come and see and with your eyes and feel with your hands and create your inner wondering space for fresh discoveries and integrate this flexibility and aliveness in your life, and your work with children and adults.
To read more about Rene click here.
Astrid Schillings – Sensing the Existential Ground in Us – Focusing with the Whole Body (FWB) in Challenging Times.
Echoes of war, tensions in society, the critical environmental situation and on the personal level with times of transition or crisis. How can we stay informed and caring human beings in the face of these situations as well as supporting ourselves in our forward living every day? Astrid will present Focusing with the whole body as a way to provide many trauma-prophylactic process elements as well as some of the process-elements that she has developed over the course of her work: The Body-Process Language, Relational Em-Bodying, Grounding into Being Here, Life Living from Itself, Pendulating between what is more and a life situation.
The Pre-requisite for this course is Level 2, or equivalent.
To read more about Astrid and this workshop click here.
Paula Charnley – An Introduction to Focusing
Introduction to Focusing
Paula invites those who are new to Focusing or would like to refresh their skills to join her course at the summer school. We will learn the basics and have time for plenty of experiential practice.
By the end of this series, you will feel more confident in your understanding of Focusing practice and have the basic skills needed to Focus alone and with a partner.
What you’ll learn:
- The background of Focusing including a little about Eugene Gendlin & Ann Weiser Cornell
- What Focusing can bring to our life.
- How to Focus safely.
- How we cultivate a Focusing Attitude.
- Developing listening skills
- Cultivating a relationship with our inner world
- Learning the key steps in the Focusing process.
- Focusing with a partner and safety guidelines.
- Lot’s of time for sharing and Q& A
To read more about Paula click here.
