The animistic dynamics of Wholebody Focusing

Focusing with our whole body embarks us on a journey of reawakening the energy and spirit of our natural body. Through connecting with, grounding in and using the whole body, we activate a larger awareness and sensitive attuning, freeing the spirit of life to flow in and through our body. Our moving spirit is an energy, power, and life force that initiates, activates, and mobilizes our whole body. The WBF process centrally involves returning to this inner core or source and learning to heed its messages and signals, to decode the communication in order to follow their guidance, needs and wisdom- to show the way.

In this group, we will learn and explore together ways to develop awareness of and connection to the body’s moving spirit. As we connect more deeply with our whole body, it comes more alive, as inner stirrings and movements that flow into physical movements, gestures, postural shifts. All of which spontaneously arise and unfold on their own. We will have opportunities to make contact with places within that emerge into awareness- and let each one open to their own spirit- the energy, needs and feelings that call out for attention.

When I was first exposed to Wholebody Focusing, I experienced something very powerful. It was new, enlivening and surprising- as energies and movements began to powerfully emerge on their own. Just the experience of standing while focusing was (and still is) a revelation. As I have continued this practice over many years, and incorporated in my therapy process, and in facilitating groups/ workshops, it has morphed into an animistic dynamic of sensing and contacting the spirit of our living body as a guide, support and resource. My own body has become more attuned to the stirring and movement of spirit and helps connect with the nascent aliveness and spirit of others, as well.

I would like to share this embodied practice with you- as a journey to recover and reclaim the body of spirit- and allow this energy to come alive. This sense of all-of-me (right here and now) is the anchor or touchstone of the WB process. Then we will notice and invite the body to come more to life, to notice spontaneous energies, impulses, sensations that arise on their own. These incipient stirrings, when allowed to come forth and play out from their own energy and agency animate our embodied living and enable the living motion of the spirit to play forth- to be a moving force and also being deeply moved.

And I have found that this process deepens when in group settings, It is the safety, support and encouragement of kindred spirits that empowers and enables more life to unfold.  Spirit is relational. The social-relational field of being together allows for the life in you to touch the life in me and thus bring alive more energy and vitality than I can alone. Our shared space also can provide a larger container, a bigger living body that often allows us to dwell deeper and stay longer with places within  so they can open outward.

This program offers a unique opportunity to experience WBF in an online group format. The series will provide specific training in WBF, along with experiential practices to enable you to tap into your body’s aliveness and intelligence. We will undertake a journey through the living body, reconnecting with lost parts of ourselves, and with feelings and energies that help restore wholeness and recover our body’s innate vitality and spirit.  

If you are new to WBF, this program will provide a comprehensive introduction, enabling you to practice WBF on your own and in focusing partnerships. If you have had previous experience and training in WBF, each group module  will bring fresh, new perspectives to your practice – and an opportunity to deepen and expand your WBF experience. The group will include: whole body attunements; specific practices; demos; break outs; group sharing. It can also be beneficial to therapists and helping professionals.

Won’t you join me and others on this sacred journey of awakening our spirit-body?

Module- Animistic Foundations of Wholebody Focusing    

Experience and learn the animistic foundation of WBF, including:

1.Grounded Presence- “All-of-Me Here” as a whole embodied self

2.Wholebody Awareness-animistic sensibility & relationality; body as resonating instrument to animate life energy

3. Five spaces- 5 concurrent fields of our embodied being-in-the-world- with self, environment, natural world, others, spirit

4. Awaken the moving spirit- letting bodily energy come alive; spontaneous movements, gestures, sensations...

5. Allowing to play out- inviting energy of inner places to come more to life, and express/enact themselves