BE your own best friend...

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BE your own best friend...

Most of us are not taught HOW to use our body/brain. Focusing is a way of living confidently connected to your own inner knowing in relationship to yourself and others. We can continue to look outside of ourselves for answers or we can show up as our own self-mentor. When we do this, our body naturally rewires behavioral, emotional and thought patterns that are no longer serving our well-being.

Just as our heart and our lung have jobs they do for us, there are infinite aspects of self potentially asking you to be seen and acknowledged. We are the space for all of this to belong and feel safe to be the way it is. Repetitive thoughts or emotions, addictive or stuck behavioral patterns, anxiety, health issues and spiritual angst are all signs that our body is seeking our attention.

Focusing reminds us that wanting to be seen is normal. Once we begin being our own best friend, holding space to listen within, we won't ever stop. No matter where we are in life, there are more layers potentially emerging. We could reference Rumi here, and imagine that each is sent as a guide from beyond. Life thrives on quality relationships and our body is our best teacher at what that means for us now.

Learning to BE our own best friend gives us the power to create the world within us that we would like to experience around us. A world with qualities like patience, kindness, courage, and authenticity.

Where are you now? What is it you want to create with your life?

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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 Focusing.

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, I approach what I do here as personal empowerment and community building, together, as one.

My 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.

"Sandy loves sharing the gift of Focusing and it shows! She sparkles with passion and commitment for the work and embodies a deep confidence and understanding of the process. She also gets things done – with large doses of creativity and courage. It has been a pleasure to mentor and work alongside Sandy as well as cheer her on as she continues to cultivate and support a Focusing community. I recommend her highly as a teacher and a Focusing guide." Cathy Pascal, LCSW & Focusing Coordinator

Guided Focusing Sessions

Guided Focusing Sessions

Creating Space for Lasting Change (Basic Skills)

Creating Space for Lasting Change (Basic Skills)

Learning Community for Mastery in Guiding Change (Advanced Courses)

Learning Community for Mastery in Guiding Change (Advanced Courses)

Smartview Stories™ Books

Smartview Stories Books

Creating Space for Community

Creating Space for Community

Being Your Own Best Friend Resources

Smartview Conversations Focusing Courses, crossing Neuroscience and Inner Relationship Focusing

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!

Community Support for Change

A community of Focusers from SWVA, USA, Canada and around the world gather here to practice these empowering life skills. We join thousands of Focusers worldwide. We practice in partnerships, mostly over zoom or phone, sometimes in person, around the model of Empowered Focuser, Relaxed Companion. We unlearn cultural assumptions like that we have to fix ourselves or get someone to fix us. Instead, we learn to trust that positive change is inherent in us. Aspects of ourselves that may have seemed forever tangled, unwind. We feel lighter, more spacious, whole, integrated. This happens because we are literally re-wiring our brain when we practice Focusing. The number of cells, the neurons that make up our brain stays the same. Throughout our life, we have opportunities to expand the neural connections, the wiring among and between various aspects of our mind and body. We can leave this up to random moments in which we feel safe and aware enough to be Present here NOW (very dependent on our current environment). Or we can educate ourselves on how new neural connections are made. With this knowledge and by practicing these skills, we can intentionally heal that within us which is broken and expand that within us which thrives and enjoys life.

It's true that we can be free...

“When we say that we are free, and it’s true that we can be, this means that how we behave is determined by what happens within us, within the brain, and not by external factors. To be free doesn’t mean that our behavior is not determined by the laws of nature. It means that it is determined by the laws of nature acting in our brains.” ~Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli

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

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."

From my Primary Mentor in Certification

Ann Weiser Cornell, Co-Founder of Inner Relationship Focusing

“I am so proud of the way that Sandy Jahmi Burg has deeply absorbed my teaching of Inner Relationship Focusing and made it into something dynamic and empowering to support her whole community. Sandy is warm, creative, and visionary, a person who blends the grounded and practical with the big view of possibility. She is one of the most active Focusing teachers and the Floyd community is extremely lucky to have her!”

Transform Your Life, Learn Focusing, Welcome the Way We Grow