There are many ways to learn Focusing skills...
taking classes in a group setting is one of them.
My intention here is to give you a sense for the types of courses you'll find here.
If you are looking for more information about WHY we take time to learn these skills, check out this page, Why Learn Focusing, in the side menu.
For the most part, the courses listed on this website are done live online via Zoom. We can teach in person groups; those will be arranged directly with us for a particular community or organization and not likely something we will open up to registration here.
These FREE Creating Space for Community webinars are an easy place to begin or to stay in touch once you've completed some training. We'll be exploring basic neuroscience patterns that can be very helpful in our daily life situations. The format is like a taster of the longer Smartview Conversations Course which will dive deeper into a particular book from the Smartview Stories series.
Smartview Conversations meet 9 times weekly for 1.5 hours. This course does not involve Focusing partnerships like the Creating Space courses. Here there is an emphasis on bringing Focusing into our daily lives. We will use individual and small group invitations, role play and embodiment exercises to improve our ability to access and act from felt sense awareness in more of our daily interactional life moments. We will cross concepts from the stories with our real life situations. We will deepen our understanding of our own brain neuroscience by becoming familiar with how it is embodied by the three Inner Companions in Smartview Stories. This can work well for beginners with some self awareness background as well as for advanced Focusers. A Guided Focusing Session is a prerequisite to help us all be clear on what type of experience we are practicing here. If you have not already had one, I'll arrange for you to receive one for no fee from one of my Focusing Certification students.
Creating Space for Lasting Change meet 6-8 times every other week for 2 hours. This is basic skills partnership training divided into 4 segments. Together, the four parts generally take 15-18 months. You can also pause longer to integrate or circle back to repeat. This is not linear learning.
The first two parts are very similar. We are unlearning our cultural conditioning and learning how to be in relationship with ourselves, others and the world in ways that bring a sense of fresh aliveness, self-empowerment and transformation. Focusing is the essence of change, we learn how to be what is needed for our own sense of thriving.
These classes do require partnership practice outside of class. You will be doing safely structured exercises with your cohorts, first in class and one more time outside of class. It's vital that you are able to show up here, both for class and the partnership exercises. Let's chat if you are aware this will be challenging for you.
In Part 3, we dip deeper into our understanding of body as process by exploring it as a dance of neurobiology and physiology. This expands our sense of Presence in an experiential way we notice in our daily life. We’ll discover more ways to bring Focusing into our daily life as we learn invitations here which very much adapt to our everyday relationships. The format changes here a bit in that we do not have assistants. You are invited to participate in short demos.
Our goal for Part 4 is to return to the essence of Focusing and ourselves as living process. We’ll gain clarity around these two normal states of being: Presence and Partiality and how they affect our experiencing. We'll explore what it is it to be a healing space for ourselves. Huge is that somewhere along this journey, often during the last two parts, our body comes on board. We'll now experience gentle reminders to pause or slow down from within ourselves. We've practiced enough that our body understands that thriving comes both from being and doing time.
For those who want to continue their exploration or incorporate Focusing into how they work with others, the Learning Community for Mastery in Guiding Change is for you. You can also use the Learning Community as a path to Certification as a Focusing Professional through The International Focusing Institute. Reach out to me and we'll schedule a time to chat about this.
In addition to courses I offer on my own, I am honored to be hosting Interactive Focusing taught by Barbara Dickinson. A regular practice of IF creates a sort of “space” between two people where they can bring their individual issues as well as issues that affect both people in the relationship. The potentials for improving social interactions is huge here.
If you are looking for online courses you follow on your own, I will be developing the Smartview Conversations Courses into on demand courses. There are a lot of these provided by other Focusing Trainers. You might check out Kathy McGuire's free programs. Ann Weiser Cornell has a free program Get Bigger Than What's Bugging You and also a variety of at your own pace fee-based programs.