Recommendations

"As someone new to focusing, I found Manju to be an excellent teacher.  I enjoyed both individual and group sessions and learned a great deal.  He managed the very mixed group with sensitivity to individual needs and got us doing things outside our comfort zones but without pressure.  The mixture of practical tips,  inspiring thoughts and guided practice helped me to find a way of  doing focusing that I have been able to use in my daily life. I am happy to recommend Manju to anyone".
Linda west


"I found Focusing to be an empowering tool - it equips you well for meaningful self-inquiry and gives you a new language to express what is happening"
Jilna - Charity Programme Manager

I have found your workshops on focusing to be wonderfully clear and understandable, and at the same time humorous and very enjoyable.You seem to have the knack of delivering deep insight within the process and the language of children at joyous play... I found your own energy loving, warm, and yet very solidly grounded and boundaried. I find the practice of focusing you've taught me to be profound. Its like suddenly hearing a fountain speak the storey of its flow - my flow.
Adam Langer. Counsellor

 

"Focusing has helped my being more open to what comes. Your workshop brought how worthwhile and useful the practice is. I think of it as a form of assisted, enquiring, engaging and reflective meditation. A valuable practice in furthering awareness. I notice how it contributes to my being present, more mindful, including in my therapeutic approach.

I experienced you as warm, friendly and approachable, guiding a fair balance of information, techniques and the experiential to process.

I'm thankful your workshop helped my Focusing develop, and happy to recommend you"
G Stewart Counsellor & Psychotherapist

 

"Focusing has helped me to find something within that I thought I had lost. It has helped me to discover some truth about myself, release creativity and quieten anxiety. Manjudeva is a calm, steady, accepting teacher who makes the learning process fascinating and, often, quite amusing too! I can't recommend Focusing or Manjudeva highly enough."
Karen, Mental Health Support Worker, West Midlands


"I went on a focusing retreat that Manjudeva was leading and found, for the first time, that I was able to settle down and meditate with awareness, probably for the first time in many years of trying!  Focusing has helped me to develop awareness of my body and to listen to what it is telling me.   On the face of it, focusing seems to be such a simple thing to do but it has given me many new insights about the way I am.    There is a real genuineness about Manjudeva's teaching; his desire to help others become more aware and to develop self-understanding is evident in every session.   He's an inspired and gentle teacher".
Anne Fairlie, nutritional therapist


"I first came across focusing when I was on a Buddhist retreat and overheard an enthusiastic conversation about it. I've now completed 2 weekends of training with Manju in Manchester. It's inspired and amazed me how quickly I am able to tune into and learn about myself. I regularly use focusing with a friend by phone or face to face. It has also been insightful using focusing by myself. It was particularly useful when I needed to make a decision about work. I regard focusing as an important method to help me broaden my understanding of personal and work situations; to listen to more than just what my head is telling me. I have discovered there are quieter parts of me that don't get heard normally. There is relief and sometimes clarity that comes with listening and acknowledging those parts of myself. I am really glad to have discovered focusing and be able to apply it whenever I want"
Kirsty, Occupational Therapist


"I can warmly recommend focusing with Manjudeva for anybody that is ready to be with themselves in a more connected, integrated way, and who would like some support in doing so. He helped create a safe and experimental environment to explore the feelings and sensations in the body, and did so with openness and generosity. It was a pleasure to work with him."
Millie, London


"I just wanted to tell you how much I feel I have benefited from your teaching on the focusing retreat...I've come back home with a different & braver approach which is allowing me to ask for support where I need it and be a lot truer to myself. Your enthusiasm for what you do shines through and I feel privileged to have been taught by you - I think you are quite gifted. Thanks for the great intro to focusing".
Lindsey, Scotland



"I like focusing because it honours my sense of what is right, my pacing and my wisdom - it doesn't try to impose ideas or hurry me."

"I like focusing because it reflects my own intuitive sense that 'the answers' I'm looking for lie in my body and not in my mind and that life involves an on-going unfolding and discovery of who we are"

"I have really enjoyed Manjudeva's worshops. The always seem very relaxed and unhurried but by the end I have really gone places and learnt loads. I have a sense that he deeply understands and honours what focusing is about and is able to communicate it in a very sensitive and clear way"
Joy McKeith - Consultant


"I really enjoyed the workshop and found it very useful. I work as a counsellor /psychotherapist and would be very much into this therapeutic tool as an intervention. I found the workshop personally challenging and found the group work really good, the dynamics within the groups that I was in were really good. I really enjoyed the amount of time we were given for the practical work. Your handouts and explanations were very easily understood.
Dave Murrey, Dublin



"I love focusing because it is simple, short and sociable.It works in a precise way with everything in us that is imprecise. It considers the small, vague and half-formed parts of ourselves as important as the louder, clearer, more certain parts.

A teacher of mine once told me that great art is two things: inevitable and surprising.  For me, focusing is a little like that.  We already know how to do it, we already have all the tools, nevertheless there is so much to discover.  It's tempting to say that focusing is like many other healing practices, yet it isn't really.  In my view, it sits somewhere between meditation and therapy.  But with focusing, even though it was invented by a therapist, you don't need to pay one to do it.  You can practise it on your own, or with a friend.  And it's sometimes easier than meditation because it works directly with all those indirect, niggling feelings and thoughts we try to acknowledge and struggle to 'put aside' in order to get on with meditating.

Manjudeva once said that whereas meditation is like meeting a friend on the street, saying hello and moving on, focusing is more like stopping to have a chat.  Manjudeva certainly makes it easy to have that chat.  His approach to teaching focusing is passionate yet unobtrusive.  He meets you as an equal and fosters an environment where you might finally, quietly, discover your potential"
Sinead Rushe - Actress/performer, London