What is Focusing?
The essenceFocusing is a natural and gentle practice of listening to your inner sense of knowing, listening to your body.
How is it done?
Very simply, we turn our compassionate attention inward and listen. My courses will teach you how to pause, listen and tune into the body’s wisdom… on your own and in the company of others. Once learnt, it becomes a resource you can use in your everyday life, at every moment.
Focusing can help you to:
Understand your emotions
Make clearer decisions
Untangle lifelong issues
Trust your inner wisdom or intuition
Deepen therapy or bodywork
Feel more present to yourself and others
Ground your meditation and spiritual practice
How could you use it?
As a practice, Focusing can be practised in its own right, on your own or in Focusing Partnerships, or mixed with many other disciplines and practices, such as: Counselling Bodywork, Body-based practices like dance, yoga or qi gong, Meditation, Creative artistic practice and Creative thinking and reflection
Who is it for?
Anyone who wants to live a more alive and embodied life
People who find it hard to connect to their feelings and values
Therapists who want to support their clients to get unstuck
Creatives who want to tune into new ways of working
and more…
What is Focusing Partnership?
Focusing Partnerships are a profound form of exploring Focusing, where you are simply and empathic listener to one another.
No advice, no questions… just pure listening. You don’t even have to know what the person is talking about.
During your weekly Focusing partnership practice on the course, your partner simply listens to you without judgment or agenda. The presence of someone who is completely present and accepting in this way has a profound effect! You’ll also learn how to give that same level of presence to your Focusing partner.
And Focusing partnership is free
“Your body is not a machine, rather a wonderfully intricate interaction with everything around you, which is why it "knows" so much just in being.”
Eugene Gendlin
The Origins of Focusing
Focusing was developed by Eugene Gendlin and his then colleague, Carl Rogers, when they were investigating how and why therapy works. What they discovered was that the main factor in the patient’s success in therapy was not the therapist or the type of therapy, but the clients own relationship with their inner experience. If, in the session, the client paused in their speech, searched within for the right words, fumbled around for an image, for a sense of rightness to what they said or heard… then the therapy was a success.
From that research Focusing, as it is known now, was developed and taught. Today there are many styles of Focusing and it has dozens of applications in all walks of life.
