Transform Your Life, Learn Focusing, Welcome the Way We Grow
If you curious about Focusing and looking for a gentle introduction, this space is for you! It’s also an ideal space for an experienced Focuser to work on these particular types of challenging tangles with the benefit of a weekly structure.
This course series is centered around exploring and improving your relationship with yourself from wherever it is now. You will deepen your sense of trust within. This could include getting clearer around ‘who I am’ or ‘where am I going’. We might explore how to deal with self-criticism, doubting oneself, all this about making decisions, or how one stays grounded in the face of constant change. We will explore how our brain works using current neuroscience concepts. We will use various body awareness, mindfulness and Focusing activities to become familiar with our own individual inner processes around what it means for us to be our own best friend.
Each course consists of five weekly 1.5 hour classes.
Classes will include time for sensing within yourself, mindfulness exercises to adapt into your daily life, opportunities to become more familiar with how to navigate your inner landscape, Presence language exercises, writing, art and body awareness/movement activities and a few Demonstrations of Focusing-in-action. There will be some reading and handouts provided by email. We will not be partnering with others in the class here, only working individually. Focusing experience is not required, although it will certainly add to what you get from this class. You will be able to go deeper on the themes offered here if you already have experience.
The uses of Focusing that apply particularly to the space we create here are:
• practicing self-care and compassion
• making clear decisions
• knowing what you really feel and want
• releasing emotional and intergenerational burdens
• transforming inner critics to supportive protectors
• nurturing a sense of self-worth
• being an accepting understanding friend
• improve overall communication skills
• increase patience, intentionality, gratitude and body awareness
Click the link for details on upcoming topics and dates.
Hello Loneliness....
Have you felt lonely or struggled to understand someone else who was this year?
Within myself, sometimes I see an image of a turtle wanting to crawl back in its shell. It's often tired of the muchness of the world while also craving to belong.
What IS IT that someone who feels lonely is really looking for?
Being with loneliness is not easy as we'll have a variety of protectors happy to distract our attention elsewhere. Loneliness is not comfortable.
This course is a great opportunity to get better at connecting authentically or ‘being with’ uncomfortable aspects of ourself that we tend to avoid. For those who have had Focusing classes, this is acknowledging followed by the invitation to 'sense HOW it would like you to be with it' and then meeting it there for as long as it would like. Our culture certainly does not encourage us to practice this.
'Being with' is a vital Presencing skill for transforming the more challenging emotions like loneliness, shame, and pain of all kinds. Now things that have been uncomfortable are able to shift themselves. The cool thing is we do not need to practice this skill with difficult things; the skill works on the other side of the coin as well for being able to embody more joy, connection and love into our lives as well. Topics are always the Focusers choice.
Join us in November, 2025!
Hello Self-Criticism...
Do you ever say "I am my worst critic?" This is true for many of us.
Inner Critics and Judges can be tough to understand and develop trusting relationships with. Here, I'll share a process of consistent clarity and radical gentleness that transformed my inner critics into my most avid cheerleaders.
Ready for more peace within? This is the place.
This course is a great opportunity to bring more clarity to how we maintain a sense of safety within ourselves. The Self as Self-Mentor that we practice in Focusing is not realistically available in many moments of our day. How do we make it clear that 'whoever is running the show in this moment' understands our values?
During our time together, we will intentionally rewire with clarity that our inner world is a safe place. As we do this, our inner critic dynamic naturally becomes less useful. We will learn the nuances of acknowledging our inner critics and judges. We will get better at recognizing hidden assumptions that create chaos.
And importantly, we'll practice patience. Our inner critic dynamic is a complex mesh of tangles that developed over time. In fact, these dynamics are often intergenerational. Life becomes lighter as we consistently show up, convey our team spirit, and trust in ourselves as living process.
Join us in January and February 2026!
Hello Self-Care...
Why, oh why is it so hard to prioritize our own mental, physical and spiritual daily care?
We are seeing more and more how our world was designed to benefit a few and keep most of us distracted from noticing. These top-down societal rules and structures are now rapidly disintegrating around us. Gendlin's philosophy helps us understand that with any problem, there is an implicit solution waiting to be discovered.
Self-care and addiction behavioral patterns are two sides of the same coin. We will look closer at the societal environments that keep us in addictive behavioral patterns that do not support our health and well-being. Changes here involve inviting shame to step forward from where it often hides.
Living forward emerges naturally with self-care when we truly follow our body as our best teacher for what this means for us now. This course emphasizes the skill of holding it all and the small actions steps that bring about long term change.
Join us in March and April, 2026!