Transform Your Life, Learn Focusing, Welcome the Way We Grow
BE your own best friend...
We're in this together
Most of our world cultures encourage fast responses. As much as I naturally prefer a slower pace and more space, I've also found myself easily swept along juggling life's daily demands best I can.
For much of my life, when my fast juggles crashed, I would first find a friend to chat with. This was helpful, like a temporary bandaid. Ultimately, I would find ways to spend time alone, processing my experiences, holding space for all the parts within me to find peace and a sense of my next step.
During those years, I carried an understanding that this aspect of life, my inner world, was mine to walk alone. All of my personal growth and spiritual studies confirmed this. And yet, something in me was sad and longed for someone to take my hand and say‚ "I'll go too". Possibly, that longing is part of how I found my way to hold space for the learning community that gathers here.
We are not alone here. We are in it together. We learn not only to accompany our own process, also how to hold space for each other. With this understanding, the team at Learn Focusing approaches what we do here as personal empowerment and community building, together, as one.
Being You
Josh and Sandy explore the basics of Focusing here with a very cool demo session. There are great timestamps outlining valuable aspects of how our perception changes when we experience ourselves as 'living process' from Gendlin's philosophical understanding.
Healthy Self-Regulation builds Strong Communities
"Sandy is very good at creating supportive community in which people can learn to follow their inner guidance in their human, quirky, individual life journeys. We find people who learn though her program become more thoroughly themselves, as well as able to interact helpfully in community. We are very happy to have her energy in the Community Wellness Focusing world."
From two of my mentors in becoming a Coordinator for The International Focusing Institute (left to right):
Nina Joy Lawrence, Certifying Coordinator for The International Focusing Institute and member of the Community Wellness Team at Focusing Initiatives International
Pat Omidian, PhD, Co-Founder of Focusing Initiatives International and a Certifying Coordinator for The International Focusing Institute
Find Your Unique Way of Supporting Change in the World...
Certification via the Learning Community involves these three applications of Felt Sensing:
1 – Our Relationship with Self
2- Our Relationship 1:1 with Another Person
3- Our Relationship with Community and the Greater World Beyond
Sandy's Course Goals
As a Focusing Coordinator, I enjoy working with individuals and teaching groups. I offer introductory talks and classes, year-long basic skills training and an ongoing Learning Community for Mastery in Guiding Change. This ongoing community is for advanced Focusers who support others in change processes. It also can be a path to certification for you as a Focusing Professional with The International Focusing Institute.
I have at least three goals in teaching:
1- Self-empowerment in your daily life by incorporating the power of the pause into your natural way of being. In slowing down how we live, we access more of our capabilities as a human being, with numerous mental and physical longterm health benefits.
2- We are here to connect and grow. Inner Relationship Focusing training is ingenious in that we unlearn social-emotional patterns that do not work first in order to build healthier authentic relationships with ourselves and others. The benefits of a regular partnership practice develop here.
3- Understanding Gendlin's concept of crossing. I personally crossed Focusing with emerging neuroscience in developing Smartview Stories as a way to bring Focusing into schools and other educational settings. The Learning Community is intentionally designed to encourage all of us to cross Focusing concepts with other life experiences we have and then, bring what we learn to share with others in the community. We are all valued here.
I also weave passions for families, local community, health, well-being and spirituality into what I do here. I work mostly from home and enjoy a simple life, with garden time galore, pet play, and nature walks. Visit my About Sandy page for more about my personal journey.
A New Frontier in Focusing!
Using Interactive Focusing, we can form bonds, strengthen relationships, and build better teams and communities through empathic listening and the sharing of the deep wisdom of both Focusing and Interaction.
Barbara Dickinson and I have joined forces to provide resources and learning opportunities for Exploring Interaction. Check out this page for our latest news!
Focusing was named by philosopher Eugene Gendlin.
"Your physically felt body is in fact part of a gigantic system of here and other places, now and other times, you and other people–in fact, the whole universe. This sense of being bodily alive in a vast system is the body as it is felt from inside."
Ann Weiser Cornell, Co-Founder of Inner Relationship Focusing
