Attention International Clients

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This is a space for experienced Focusers to continue learning.

Although not everyone in this community is geared toward Focusing certification, we understand and believe in the transformational power of our one-to-one relationships.

The Learning Community for Mastery in Guiding Change course has a pre-requisite of at least one year of skill training classes and regular partnership practice. This could be via my Creating Space for Lasting Change Parts 1-4 or equivalent classes or possibly a previous mentor relationship with me. We are excited about the variety of backgrounds coming together here and if you have trained in another Focusing modality other than Inner Relationship Focusing, let’s chat to be sure this will be a match for you.

The first 10 classes in Year 1 will ground us in guiding from an Inner Relationship Focusing view as a common experience and language from which to share and grow. You will receive Ann Weiser Cornell's Teachers Manual for Creating a Focusing Practice Working 1:1 and other supplemental reading materials. 

Professional Certification is an option.

This learning space provides flexibility for you to accumulate requirements for certification at your own pace. Your first step is always meeting with Sandy where we both sense into our relationship and how well this community meets your goals moving forward.

Some people meet with Sandy and begin the certifying process before entering the 1st Year Learning Community. Some people participate in this community for a few years before deciding to officially registering with TIFI as a Trainer-in-Training, finding a co-mentor and completing more of the requirements for Professional Certification that are listed on this page. Everyone certifying through the Learning Community will have Sandy as your primary mentor or Certifying Coordinator.

Marki Webber offers Teaching Support.

Marki expands our tools for dealing with Cultural and Intergenerational Trauma via her experience with Family Constellations. She will also co-teach a few other classes throughout the first year as well as bring fresh offerings to our Ongoing Learning Community space.

Guest Teaching Mentors for Year 1

Three of our classes will be led by Guest Teaching Mentors who have experience facilitating change one to one with clients. I am excited about the diversity they will bring to our learning.

Peter Strong, Ph.D. leads our 4th class titled: Mindfulness Therapy - The application of mindfulness and experiential imagery for healing anxiety, depression and emotional trauma. Peter is the author of "The Path for Mindfulness Meditation", a 271 page book that he offers us free as a pdf. 

Helene Brenner, Ph.D. leads our 8th class specifically to look closer at emotional blocks and pattern difficulties that arise in working with clients. Helene, along with her husband, Larry Letich (also a Focusing Orientated Therapist), have created loads of resources including books, audio 'innercizes' for our phones, the Art of Feeling blog and a YouTube channel. 

Beth Mahler is a Certified FOT and Coordinator who also offers a hybrid certification program in New Jersey. Beth helps us close out our year with an incredible experience in Self Care for Holding Space. 

I feel incredibly blessed to have each of these people in our program. 

Together During Our First Year We Will...

  • Utilize Gendlin’s philosophy to expand our understanding of ourselves and others as interaction first.
  • Empower confidence to TRUST Presence calisthenics. The Focusing process is resilient. Our body is on our side here.
  • Learn more about how to tell where we are in our brain and the myriad of ways we can exercise our neural system toward a sense of flexibility, integration and resilience.
  • Expand our ability to tell when someone would be open to Focusing invitations.
  • Learn and/or deepen the practice of landing in the “we-space”, and finding a fresh rhythm from there, together. 
  • Explore saying “yes” with equanimity to all that is here in our own and our client/friend/partner’s experience. Everything is welcome as it arrives and given a space to feel safe for however it is now.  
  • Develop experience in how mindfulness practices can help identify and transform core emotional patterns that create anxiety/depression or other interpersonal conflicts.
  • Explore the power of silence and our speech as music. How does sound contribute to a healing environment?
  • Explore the benefits of metaprocessing, pausing to reflect and highlight anything new as soon as it arises in small ways.
  • Deepen the practice of letting the Focuser’s words “land” in your body, then let that place speak naturally, rather than remembering or conjuring things to say back.
  • Explore why sometimes listening to others becomes difficult and what we can do.
  • Explore the subtle difference between “putting your own stuff away to be fully there for the other person” and the idea of “being there, just as you are, however you are” – i.e. Gendlin’s being a human being with another human being.
  • Trust that our client has the capacity to heal and helping them see their choice points.
  • Develop experience in cultural and intergenerational trauma to support yourself and others when these processes arise.
  • In addition to our large group activities, we will be invited to dyads and triads to experience each other's Focusing styles and to share what is alive for us around bringing Focusing into the world.
  • Continue to gather and grow as an ongoing learning community. Each year new members will merge in from their first year of training. We can return here to make connections, celebrate our successes, ask questions, share challenging experiences and learn new modalities emerging.

“The Learning Community was the
perfect next step for me after completing Level 4. The community is so warm and welcoming and was supportive for me to learn and grow in my personal and professional practice. Sandy holds such a safe and open space to explore what feels alive for us. This paved the way for very rich discussions as a group. I really enjoyed learning from the guest teachers that Sandy brought in, it expanded my horizons and opened the doors to different modalities and practices. I would highly recommend the Learning Community to anyone looking to take the next steps in their Focusing journey.”

~ Ash Hall, Inner Wisdom Yoga Instructor

"I cannot express enough how this community has supported me through the pandemic - From the time I started my focusing level 1 which coincided with the beginning of the pandemic and lockdowns, to now when we are in covid recovery. The regular meets ups of the learning community has been a structure, support and groundedness which I really needed through the chaos and the fluidity of the pandemic, lockdowns and the erratic ever changing environment. Besides the structure of attending the classes every fortnight, the content of the learning community helped to support me personally through the challenging past 2 years. Learning to slow down, listen with curiosity, listening from within and creating relationship with different parts of myself has been a real gift during this time. I love that with focusing we are encouraged to focus with a partner regularly. I have had several different partners and did various focusing sessions with as many experienced focusers as I could. Learning from others (focusers and teachers) helped me to not feel isolated during the period of isolation as I was able to focus with people across the world on zoom. It really made my world a smaller and less scary place by knowing that someone across the world was experiencing exactly the same thing I was as well. The focusing partnerships also helped me to really connect with myself whilst being supported by a companion, and it helped me to practice my companioning skills to become a better coach."

~Jeanne Tan (Life and Career Transitions Coach, PCC Certified)

Learning Community for Mastery in Guiding Change Year 1

Learning Community for Mastery in Guiding Change Year 1

$758.00

 

Learning Community begins as a year long program meeting twenty times for 1.5 hours and continues with regular 1.5 hr meetings as long as you wish to join us.

There will be reading between classes. Our first ten classes, we will be utilizing the deep wisdom in Ann Weiser Cornell’s curriculum Working with Focusing Clients One to One.

The classes will be a mix of discussing new content, demos and experiential exploration via small groups or paired practice. 

Maintaining a Focusing partnership outside of class during this time will be valuable and supportive of what you take from our time together. If you are currently training for certification, an active partnership is required.

You are encouraged to find practice clients. This will happen at the timing that feels ripe for you. These might be people you already work with and maybe not. Practice clients can be new to Focusing or have had minimal exposure. Sessions you offer can be 20-50 min. Our classes will often have small group time where we share our client practice experiences with each other.

Three of our classes will be led by Guest Teaching Mentors who have experience facilitating change one to one with clients. I am excited about the diversity they will bring to our learning.

The course fee will include a digital copy of Ann Weiser Cornell’s curriculum she uses with Certification students. We will be working just with her Teachers Manual Part One related to Guiding One to One.

Please register early if the dates/times work well for you. If these fees are difficult for you, I do offer sliding scale or options to pay over time. Please reach out and contact me about your situation. 

In addition to our class time, you will be invited to:

  • Monthly Dyad Partnerships to explore guiding and being guided by other experienced Focusers. These rotate. 
  • Bi-Monthly Triads - a group of three that meets all year long for 1.5 hrs to focus and provide each other support in bringing Focusing into the world. 
  • Assist in Sandy's Creating Space for Lasting Change Parts 1-2, each course has six classes. This is dropping in for one date as I schedule a different assistant for each of the six classes. We will keep track and you can over time, assist with them all. 
  • Support Barbara's Exploring Interaction Free monthly Changes meetings. This space utilizes concepts of Interactive Focusing to expand felt sense listening in partnerships and our daily lives. 
  • Support Sandy's Smartview Conversaations Free monthly meetings. This space explores the crossing of Focusing with neuroscience that Sandy uses in writing Smartview Stories books to help make Focusing accessible to ages 9 upward. 
  • Those geared toward teaching can become Teachers-in-Training for some or all of Parts 1-4. You may develop your own teaching program or eventually teach or co-teach for Learn Focusing. 

Our next Year 1 cohort will begin in September, 2025. 

We will meet on Sundays from 2:30 - 4 pm ET New York time. Our schedule is every other week beginning Sept 7 through June 28, skipping near Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Sept 7, Sept 21, Oct 5, Oct 19, Nov 2, Nov 16, Dec 7, Jan 11, Jan 25, Feb 8, Feb 22, March 8, March 22, April 5 (Easter), April 19, May 3, May 17, May 31, June 14, June 28

Learning Community Agreements we bring to this space:

  • Bring all of yourself to this gathering, not just the “shiny parts”.
  • Presume welcome and extend welcome.  We all learn most effectively in spaces that welcome us.
  • Attend to your own inner teacher.  Pay close to attention to your own reactions and responses.
  • No fixing, no saving, no advising, no setting each other straight!  Each of us is here to discover our own truths, listen to our own inner teacher and take our own journey.
  • You may be extended an invitation to share in pairs, small groups and in the large group.  You choose, if and when. 
  • Speak your truth.  Respond from your center to the center of the circle, not to another speaker’s center.
  • Listen deeply without judgment.  By creating a space between judgments and reactions we can listen to others and ourselves more fully.
  • Identify assumptions.  Over time our assumptions of how the world works become invisible to us. 
  • Use honest open questions.  These are questions that we cannot possibly know the answers to.  They are free of opinions and agendas.
  • Maintain deep confidentiality.  Allow what is said in Learning Community to stay here.  
  • Respect silence.  After someone has spoken, take time to reflect and honor the words that were shared.  This concept applies to the speaker as well – be comfortable leaving your words to resound in silence, without refining or elaborating them.

When the going gets rough within, turn to wonder.

Ongoing Learning Community

Oh my, what a joy to be here! Here we will continue our journey in facilitating change. This space is for those cohorts that have completed the first year in the Learning Community for Mastery in Guiding Change and is open to new people that are already certified or already actively bringing Focusing into the world. My goal is for this to be a touchstone community for your journey toward holding space for change whether you are here as part of your certification path with TIFI or crossing these skills with something else you are already doing like coaching, therapy, body or energy work, etc.

We’ll meet 20 times a year twice a month from September through June. Our schedule is primarily first Monday evenings 7:30-9pm ET and third Sunday mornings 11am - 12:30pm ET New York time of each month. We record all meetings if both times are not convenient for you.

If you begin in September, then registration extends through August of the following year, all dates within that time frame. If you begin in January, then registration extends through December, all dates within that time frame. The exact schedule will vary with registrations each year. 

If you are certifying with me, you will take Year 1 and at least one additional year here.

Ongoing Learning Community for Mastery in Guiding Change

Ongoing Learning Community for Mastery in Guiding Change

$414.00

For those who would like to stay part of the Learning Community beyond two years, the beat goes on! We will have twenty monthly 1.5 hour gatherings. The schedule will vary a bit each year. Currently these gatherings will be on monthly on first Sunday mornings and third Monday evenings Eastern New York time. These will be recorded in most cases. 

We gather here to receive support and to provide support to others as we continue exploring our edges in holding space for and guiding change within ourselves, others and the world around us. 

All gatherings will be facilitated by me or Marki Webber on zoom. Following up on our format from the 1st year, community members are again encouraged to bring case studies, to offer 45-90 min workshops to practice teaching something you’ve learned/explored outside of our class and also to bring topics for small group Focusing/felt sense sharing. Once a year, we'll schedule a Changes style format. Changes groups were developed by Gendlin and other early Trainers both to make Focusing practice easily accessible and to introduce new people. (Note Learn Focusing Trainer, Barbara Dickinson, offers Exploring Interaction Changes meetings once a month on Sundays HERE.) 

We will have a few Guests Presenters each year. It looks like Bruce Nayowith will become a regular. He has explored many other modalities that glove well with Focusing and will help us understand both the essence and limitations of Focusing. Marki is also trained in several other modalities and will particularly bring Family Constellations to give us more depth in exploring cultural and intergenerational trauma. 

I am excited about the unique life skills you each bring with you to our space. I am honored to be a companion and fellow traveler with you all. Cheers for the beginners mind of self-in-presence and for having fun together in the process!

Registration lasting for 1 year opens each September and January.

If you are new here, please contact me to schedule a 30 min free chat. We can sense into whether this is a good fit. Plus, the more I understand what you are looking for, the more likely you'll find it here. :-)

Our 1.5 hour gatherings will generally have one of these structures:

  • Two 40-45 min segments (with a 5 min break).
  • A 30 min small group felt sense conversation around a relevant topic and a 60 min segment for a workshop, case study discussions or a client video. 
  • A 1.5 hr presentation from a paid facilitator we have invited. These will often be Focusing related and not always. We may also explore related modalities that facilitate change in ourselves, others, organizations, etc.
  • A Changes Meeting format designed to help you feel comfortable leading these yourself.

The Learning Community is a particularly rich place to explore edges as we are all advanced Focusers. Topics that you bring can be something outside of Focusing that you are crossing freshly with us. Those on certification paths will be bringing a 20 min first-time client video at some point. We’ll share appreciations and explore potentials together.

What we do each year will vary with the interests of the particular cohort. We will record classes if you miss and most of what happens here will lean heavily on being here in person for an experience. For those on certification paths, missing more than 2/10 classes at a particular time classes will need to be made up in some way.

Registration is for a year and includes both Sunday and Monday dates. Even if you cannot attend at both times, you will have access to recordings. 

One year starting September 2024 and ending June 2025 

First Sundays 11am – 12:30 pm ET. A few of these will move to the Monday or Tuesday following the Sunday listed here, same time.

Sundays: Sept 8, Oct 6, Nov 4 (Monday), Dec 1, Jan 5, Feb 2, March 2, April 6, May 4, June 1

Third Mondays 7:30 – 9 pm ET.

Sept 23, Oct 21, Nov 18, Dec 16, Jan 20, Feb 17, March 17, April 21, May 19, June 16

*September will generally be second Sundays and fourth Mondays due to Labor Day holiday.

Similar to Year 1, Ongoing Learning Community members will be invited to:

  • Monthly Dyad Partnerships to explore guiding and being guided by other experienced Focusers. Also, an opportunity to chat and learn more about each other. These meet just one time and rotate each month. 
  • Bi-Monthly Triads - a group of three that meets all year long for 1.5 hrs to focus and provide each other support in bringing Focusing into the world. 
  • Assist in Sandy's Creating Space for Lasting Change Parts 1-2, each course has six classes. This is dropping in for one date as I schedule a different assistant for each of the six classes. We will keep track and you can over time, assist with them all. 
  • Provide support in Sandy's Smartview Converations free webinars monthly on Tuesdays. 
  • Opportunities to assist in Barbara Dickinson's Exploring Interaction Changes Meetings monthly on Sundays.