Focusing is an experience, more than words can ever say...

Focusing is a way of being in the world, an experiential way of living from this human body we are blessed to inhabit when we are born. We learn the basics of how to do this from our initial environments: home, neighbors, schools, communities we are exposed to as youth. When we feel a sense of safety from these places, we are more likely to become trusting. There are many layers of trusting. In my experience as a teacher, many people drawn to Focusing are being called to heal trust in one of its many layers. They might say "I don't trust myself." or "I don't trust other people." or "There is more bad than good. Why bother?" 

Trust in the inherent life forward flow of the universe is one essential aspect of Focusing. Gendlin's philosophy and practicing these skills show us that when get out of the way, the steps that come are always toward our well-being (often we are blocking life forward flow from fear). This might be one way you are drawn to learn Focusing. 

Focusing is the essence of Change. 

“It took me a long time to affirm that the ongoing bodily experiencing has its own inherent lifeforwarding implying. The little steps that arise at the edge are creative, imaginative, and always in some positive direction.” Gendlin (2003)

There are many activities or techniques you may already use to help yourself adapt and make changes. Regardless whether you belong to support groups,  meditate, exercise, use gratitude practice, bodywork or somatic methods, therapists, coaches, retreats, etc., underlying anything that changes within us or around us is the experience of Focusing. Over time as we live more of our life from this state of being, we become more at ease with changes in the world around us. 

Ultimate self-empowerment is learning these skills yourself. You may still participate in those other activities AND you will also be more skilled at adapting and moving through life on your own or with a Focusing partnership. A Focusing partnership is an even exchange.

Focusing is a series of natural skills, accessible to All. 

 We will all be doing some of the Focusing skills some of the time. In the First-Time Guided Focusing Session that I offer, we pause after the session to review the beginner skills. I give you examples of where they were in your session. 

Unfortunately, our Western cultures discourage use of these skills and many of us do not access them often in our daily lives. Focusing does require a kind of slowing down that we eventually create as we practice more. It's also been compared to learning a language or learning to ride a bike. We must expect that we'll fall down many times in this type of learning process. And that is ok. 

I consider myself a natural Focuser in that I used them already as an infant and maintained them pretty well despite a typical suburban life style in Midwest USA. I supplemented my skills with nature, music, spirituality and retreats avidly for some of the years I made a lot of changes and before I learned Focusing. Since I've learned Focusing, my skills and ability to live a daily Focusing way has exploded. My regular Focusing partnerships are precious relationships that I value highly. I love my life. It's not that challenges do not arise. Plenty do. It's that I feel equipped, empowered and never alone in meeting them. 

This is interesting. The simple answer is that Focusing enhances everything you've already learned. The process meets you where you are.

Focusing also sometimes helps you see that you no longer need something you've learned earlier, it somehow no longer applies. This is not something we tell you. It's something that emerges from within you as your authentic truth. This is because Focusing invites us to beginner's mind, the freshness of the present moment and the potential that we might come up with a totally new perspective in the next moment.

Built into our brain design, everything we have learned about successfully being a human being, becomes something we want to 'hold on' to.

The skills we learn here are not truly successful until we incorporate them into our way of being. This generally takes practice. Keep in mind, no one teaches us how to use this magnificent gift of a human body. We each had to find our own way. Generally, we picked up ideas from our environments. Making this shift to living your life as process, will vary with where you start from and how much you incorporate these skills into your daily life.

Neuroscience has a lot to say that correlates with our experience of Focusing. It’s much more than I could ever do justice to on this page. We do learn and explore these concepts via our own experiencing in my classes. I’ll share a few key concepts here to give you a feel.

To begin with, this is a piece of art work gifted to me early on in my Focusing career. I was lucky enough to be guiding someone as they experienced their brain coming alive. This is their artistic rendition of what it feels like when neurons make a new neural connection. Focusing is often described as a sense of flow, connection or ‘aha’ moments. Often with your eyes close, one might see beautiful colors or experience an inner sense of spaciousness or lightness.

You are welcome to download this pdf, Crossing Gendlin’s Theories with Neuroscience I created for a workshop on Three Ways of Experiencing. And in Spanish: Explorando cómo las teorías de Gendlin se Cruzan con la conciencia de los hemisferios derecho e izquierdo del cerebro y nos guian en el proceso.

Keep in mind that each of our brains is incredibly unique and that this information is simply guidelines to explore for yourself. Neuroscience also tells us that our brain is more complex than the entire universe yet discovered. Let’s pause here and say that again. Our brain is more complex than the entire universe yet discovered. What we can access here is often limited by what we believe is possible. And beliefs change. I have compiled here a table of a process that a typical human brain goes through in any given moment. 

Our brain is divided into two mostly separate parts. Our right hemisphere (RH) is where all of our sensory information feeds into. This is happening mostly subconsciously, most of the time. Thank goodness that it is! If we were aware of the endless communications that take place to keep our body humming away, we’d all be crazy! And yet, some of this information is useful if we train ourselves to ‘drop in’. Many of us are familiar with getting some type of body communication when we are stressed. People who feel they are empathic, intuitive, follow their ‘gut sense’ or are commonly sensitive to their environment would be hearing from their RH. People who feel like their emotions are somewhat ‘distant’ in general are not receiving that information (at least routinely) from their RH. Wiring is as unique as we are.

This is step 1. We can invite our body (RH) to give us ‘its broad perspective’ on any current situation. Our RH will tend to share its perspective as body sensations, emotions, images, short phrases or gestures. This can take some practice to interpret correctly and we practice this as Focusers by taking the understanding back to our body and checking with it. 

Next, whether or not we have any awareness of our RH communication, our body automatically moves over our corpus callosum (which connects the two hemispheres) to our left hemisphere (LH). Our LH stores everything we’ve already learned by labeling, forming categories and collecting this all in separate boxes. Everything that has been stored had a purpose relevant to that time. This memory storage typically happens during our sleep. Our LH also houses our language center, so typically our more wordy thoughts come from here. This information is vital for us to make sense of our current situation with what we already know. Important for us to understand is that the LH, because of its nature of storing only what is explicit or known, lives in the past or projects about the future. The information it offers us may not be true for the situation we are currently in.

This is step 2. Our mind (LH) gives us ‘its perspective’ on any current situation. Our LH will tend to share its perspective with lengthy phrases and opinions. There is likely a feel of control and purpose here: “I know”, “it is”, “should”. There may be competing perspectives from several boxes and a stickiness to being right. 

This division is between two very necessary perspectives that every moment provide us with information that could potentially contribute toward our well-being and also potentially keep us in somewhat of a negative feedback loop. This is where we tend to come up with only solutions that have worked for us in the past. We may notice quite a variety of different ideas about how to proceed arise from within us, they are all something we used or considered before, useful information that was stored in our LH because of some previous experience. And we might feel ourselves pulled between the two hemispheres here, as with each suggestion, our body has an emotional response we may notice. Our doubter voice comes from our RH and we can often get stuck for long periods in a tug of war between an idea from our LH and something in our RH that doubts it.

This way of utilizing our brain where we bounce around feels to me like the general state of brain evolution that humanity lives at. It shows up on those neural imaging scans and there are approaches where it’s all about what parts of your brain you are utilizing, like maybe doing exercises so that you are visiting more parts of your brain. This is all just fine, however, you are still using your brain in the same way. At any one moment, you have access to and are thus limited by, whatever that neuron is wired to. In Focusing, we call this state being “merged”.

In practicing our Focusing skills by inviting Felt Senses and staying with them from a state of being that models Radical Acceptance (that we call Self-in-Presence), we are using our brain in a very different way than “merged”. We intentionally hold space within us for neurons to connect in ways that always lead toward a sense of thriving for us as an organism.

This is step 3. We intentionally pause and move ourselves toward Self-in-Presence as a state of being.  Essentially, we bring ourselves back over to the RH in a way that holds all of the awareness we have from both our RH and our LH for this particular situation, this particular moment of time. Here we are not living merged with any part of our brain. We are creating a space to receive all of our bodies wisdom with a sense of honest curiosity, acceptance and appreciation. This is naturally the space from which new wisdom arises. 

There is a lot that could be said about this space. We study and practice being in this state of being as both Focuser and Companion in our partnerships. This is a continual unfolding that never ends. We may find ourselves with new insights about ourselves, our health, our jobs, our relationships, our daily patterns, or anything about our environment. It turns out this process has predictable steps and they apply not only to us, also to all that surrounds us.  Gene Gendlin, who first named “Focusing” skills, has documented this process in a variety of papers and especially in a book called A Process Model. There are thousands of people, identifying as Focusers, around the world practicing these steps and exploring their own particular ‘edges’ in development. The applications are endless. 

Unless we are aware, we must keep repeating the past. All of us can relate to times of frustration when something that always worked for us before is simply not working in this situation right now. Until we pause and can move our perspective to that of the RH that has access to big pictures and curiosity toward trying something else, particularly something new, we will stay in the past and just have access to ideas that have worked before. We prevent ourselves from learning something new.

Understanding how to access Presence is our key in moving in the direction of true human freedom, where we can make new life-giving choices that work for the world we live in now. Ordinary people can learn these skills. The structure of Focusing classes provides us a partnership model that makes this easier. Please contact me if you’d like to explore any of this more with experiential exercises.

GENDLIN’S THREE TYPES OF THEORIES

Wholistic: we are looking at wholes, everything here is interconnected and cannot be taken into pieces without losing something of value. It is easy to see this model in nature and ecology. On its own, hard to find an end.

Unit Model: everything is broken down into pieces we experience as fixed, exploring these pieces brings clarity around what they can do, how we can use them. If there is a piece we do not understand, we’ll ignore it for now. It is important that everything here has a purpose we can wrap around. We often live as though time and space follow this model and experience stress about that.

Functional Wholes: here we are looking at one situation, one moment in time, how this functions within itself.

There is a wonderful 10 min video of Gene explaining these types of theories HERE.

If you would like to explore the neuroscience concepts more, I highly recommend this short RSA ANIMATE video about Our Divided Brain by Iain McGilchrist HERE. His book is also amazing, though not an easy read and you can find it on amazon HERE. Iain has a newer book out, The Matter with Things, published in Nov, 2021, that has two volumes. The amount of referencing is phenomenal. There is also a documentary and many interviews with Dr. McGilchrist if you'd like to explore his work more.

44 Benefits of Focusing

 "I Believe in the Power of Focusing"

I am committed heart and soul to increasing awareness about how beneficial the skill of Focusing is. My vision is to seed Focusing skills locally and around the world to people who are naturally attracted. I see Focusing become an accepted mainstream skill, easily accessible to all who want to learn it. Schools, colleges, businesses, churches, community service and mental health groups, prisons, police and fire, medical institutions, entrepreneurs, people from all walks of life benefit from practicing the natural skill of Focusing. From birth to death, our brains are actively interacting with what is going on inside of us as well as what is going on around us. Focusing helps us experience more from all those interactive moments and from this, greatly expands the flow and richness we experience from life. 

"When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a Mom!"

My childhood dreams revolved around motherhood. I wanted to be a mom. At age 11, I had an intuitive knowing that someday I'd be mom to a blond-haired blue-eyed boy named Scott. Scott came 20 yrs later, letting his two sisters enter the world first. I was keenly aware as my children grew that the way they each processed emotional and other life experiences varied dramatically. Curiosity stirred and I began passionately exploring health, psychology, spirituality, emotions and communication. 

The Effects of What we Put in Our Bodies

I began by applying my 25 yrs experience working part-time as a Medical Technologist in hospital labs toward looking at how our bodies work chemically. I found that nutrition and hormones vastly influenced our moods. Thus began years of experimentation learning new self-care techniques, learning to eat what my body needed now and learning to prepare food in healthier ways. If you’ve ever tried this yourself, you know it’s a gradual process of bringing attention to your body, maybe noticing how clear or energetic you feel now.  It makes sense. Our bodies are miraculously versatile and yet, we can do so much more with a little care and the right building materials!

We Must Feel Safe to Make Changes

In 2002, I met Parker Palmer and began studying Circle of Trust, a retreat method that he had developed with a team of facilitators to create safe spaces for professions like teachers to nurture personal and professional integrity and the courage to act on it. I began facilitating Wholeness Circles within a few years, a safe space focused on inner work inspired by poetry, art, music, movement and the seasons of nature. These were generally 2.5 hour evening programs or day long retreats. 

Oh, the Challenges of Human Communication!

Meanwhile, a creative entrepreneurial opportunity landed in my lap. I had an opportunity to create educational content for a cooperative communication computer game titled Peace Navigator in partnership with a 501c3 called The Peace Learning Center that I adored. I became a partner in an LLC called Software Training Institute. Here I studied Non Violent Communication (CNVC) by Marshall Rosenberg and any other model of peaceful communication I could lay my hands on.  I coordinated 30+ students to create the audio/visual effects for the computer game.

The Gatherer Finds Beauty in All She Finds Along the Way

In 2007, I became a Sufi initiate. Sufism is a way of life in which a deeper identity is discovered and lived. This deeper identity, beyond the already known personality, is in harmony with all that exists. Jahmi is my Sufi name. One of the 99 names of God, Jami means The Gatherer. It reminds us to enjoy the process of gathering, whether of people in your life or the resources you need at this moment.  What is gathered has beauty in and of itself, it is not simply a means to the end result. As Sufi’s experience our inner life as reflective of our outer life, it also refers to gathering parts of yourself to help you better reflect your purpose in life.
 

Abwoon is the Aramaic Word for the Power of the Universe to Give Birth to New Life Every Moment 

From 2007 – 2010, I studied with Neil Douglas-Klotz, an Aramaic scholar and Sufi teacher in his Abwoon Interspiritual Leadership Program.  The intent of this program was to develop leaders in interspiritual practices for peacemaking and service, in ministries of spiritual direction, counseling, teaching and ritual. Oh, the juiciness here! This program centered around the teachings of Jesus in Aramaic, Genesis and older Creation stories, Simple Presence, Heart Awareness, Gratitude, Celebration, Sound and Embodiment as well as Sufi Spirituality.  Lots of dances, chants and meditations.  The focus in Aramaic with Jesus’ teachings were around The Lord’s Prayer, Beatitudes and his ‘I AM’ teachings in his last year. As much as he tried, Jesus could not seem to convince his disciples (other than Mary), that they too, could do what he did and eventually even more…

 
Valuing Humans and the Natural Earth Cycles in Balance 

In 2007, I also took a 17 Day Immersive Permaculture Design Apprentice Training. Permaculture is another study of process that takes years of observation to understand. Ideally, permaculture implemented is multi-functional, diverse, life-supporting, aesthetically-pleasing, appropriately-scaled, energy-efficient, and functionally connected – patterning landscapes, demographics and species assemblies to provide ever-evolving, permanent food and resource systems. I observed, practiced and applied permaculture theory to what was already years of Landscaping experience with low-maintenance and natural habitats. I still enjoy offering Sustainable Landscape Design Consults.

Circle Toward Wholeness

From 2008 – 2012, I founded and ran a 501c3 called Circle Toward Wholeness.  This logo which I still use was designed by John Sledd. The vision of Circle Toward Wholeness was to provide innovative education for inner peace and wellness to people where they were already gathered in workplaces, businesses and community centers (host sites). I met many amazing people on their own healing paths and was proud to connect them with others when I could. My own studies focused on new information emerging in the field of neuroscience, the scientific study of our nervous system. I came to understand that our bodies work at least as much on electrical principals as they operate biochemically. New research and understandings emerge daily toward integration of our right and left brains toward wholeness.  What an exciting time for us all!

We All Deserve a Safe Thriving Environment to Call Home

One of the facilitators I interviewed for support with a Circle Toward Wholeness video project called Wellness Moments was a musician named Bob Grubel. Bob and I fell in love and have been life partners since 2010.  We live in a charming home Bob built himself where we grow most of our own food and share resources in a small intentional community in Floyd, VA. I closed Circle Toward Wholeness not long after I came across Focusing.

My Skill Has a Name – Focusing!!

I first read about Focusing in a Tricycle magazine in Nov 2011. It was an interview with Eugene Gendlin, the philosopher who named Focusing. I immediately recognized it as something I was naturally good at and knew I wanted to take the training to learn how to teach Focusing. I studied with Ann Weiser Cornell (Focusing Resources) and additionally mentored with Cathy Pascal, a Coordinator from Chapel Hill, North Carolina until March 2014 when I completed my requirements as a Certified Focusing Professional for The International Focusing Institute (TIFI).

Floyd Focusing Increases Local Awareness

Oh What Happiness! A lifetime searching for 'Live Connections' and now I live it. Offering Guided Focusing Sessions and educational training in the skills of Focusing brings the most amazing people into my life. I began locally here in Floyd, Virginia. I offered Changes groups at The June Bug Center, free talks at the library and staffed booths at various local events. My early students were super supportive and became assistants in my classes which soon expanded online. 

Partnering with Mindfulness Organizations

In 2018, I was blessed to be hired by InStill Mindfulness as a teacher for their InSchools program. We provided a weekly semester long program in mindfulness training for groups of teachers in districts around the area. At first, this was very much an inner journey. As we went along, teachers were encouraged to incorporate some of what they had learned into their classrooms. Toward the end, we worked 1:1 with teachers in their classroom supporting their way of bringing mindfulness to life in their workday. I had a blast! I also developed deep, deep respect for the teachers I worked with. 

Smartview Stories are Born!

On a new moon in July 2018, a very new idea came forth around writing a children's book series makes Focusing skills accessible to children. What a journey this has been! Besides gaining skills as an author, I have accumulated photo editing, graphic design and marketing skills I never imagined I would need. Over 4 years in and this project feels fleshed out enough to really bring out into the world. Blessings to everyone who has supported me this far and cheers to those I'll meet on the way forward! 

Support for Bringing Focusing into the World

The Learning Community for Mastery in Guiding Change emerged as a request from experienced Focusers wanting to improve their ability to share Focusing with others. I set it up with a format that encourages students to connect with the greater Focusing world and bring back what they learn to our community. Wow, together we are so amazing!

In Sept, 2021 I applied as a Coordinator-in-Training with TIFI and expanded this program so that it can be a pathway to certification as a Focusing Professional.  A year later, I have over a dozen students in various phases of certifying. I have completed my requirements and anticipate becoming a Coordinator early in 2023. 

Maybe you have been inspired by my story to join us. There is no prep. You begin from wherever you are. Contact me, join the movement and step proudly into your flow!

SAFETY in this process, in general, is an important topic Focusers take very seriously. If you are concerned about safety or engaging trauma, no wonder! Many common forms of support can be traumatic in themselves. Focusing is different because we are following your body's natural sense of living forward. Like an acorn finding it's way to becoming an oak tree, your body has its own gentle steps it would take toward healing. Focusers learn to trust this process and follow it.

Focusing is not a tool or technique. It is the very essence of change. It's the HOW change happens in the universe on all levels. This might involve behaviors, thought patterns, physical health, essentially any aspect of being a human being. If you have specific questions here, reach out, I can send you more information. I would be glad to have a more in-depth conversation around this as well. 

Privacy as we find our way through complex situations is often integral to healing. Many of us carry deep fears in our DNA of being excluded or abandoned. The practice of Focusing reminds us that we are not fixed with labels for life, rather a living process. We learn here to experience ourselves as human beings always evolving and never done.

In Focusing, we are primarily working with an inner experiential process and if it feels best, each of us can keep ‘what’ the experience is about, to ourselves. All content that might come up in a Focusing Session with me is always 100% confidential. I am not a therapist and will not be making mental health judgements. I am here to meet and support you where you are. This same confidentiality is taught in classes. The role of a companion unfolds gradually ensuring a sense of self-empowerment for each Focuser. Companions learn to let go of fixing and saving to trust each of us will find our own way.

Next, Focusing is relationship building and we will be encouraged to honor what feels right to the inner relationship.  One shares what is wanting to be acknowledged and accepted out loud. Anything which feels tender or needing to be protected would be acknowledged as that or silently to yourself. This sense of safety and trust in the Focusing partnership process builds gradually over time.