Focusing Roundtable - Embracing what we naturally avoid: Welcoming conflict in the Focusing community

Embracing what we naturally avoid: Welcoming conflict in the Focusing community

Wednesday, August 26, 2026 - 12:30 pm-2:30 pm New York Time

18:30 - 20:00 pm Central European Time

Times worldwide: convert to your time zone

Free for members.

Live attendance required - no recording.

The TIFI Membership Committee is pleased to offer this series of Focusing Roundtables, designed especially for members of the Institute. If you are not a member, please join at this link and then return to this page to register. This program will afford members a valuable opportunity to engage in casual peer-to-peer conversation with other members who share Focusing-related interests.

Roundtable Topic:

Many of us are drawn to Focusing and other Mindfulness practices because we value harmony. We have a natural tendency to perceive conflict as threat. But avoiding conflict impoverishes our experience of interactions.

This Roundtable is an invitation to share our experiences and resources for engaging with conflict in a way that fosters a deeper collective experience. That is, engaging with conflict allows us to experience the complexity of human interaction.

This way, we can develop at the level of our groups and community what we deeply value in our individual work. That is, the Guest House described by Rumi, where even difficult feelings are welcome guests. And, in so doing, appreciate the complexity of being in community for its richness instead of fearing it and stifling it.

We want to live with the implicit intricacy of life instead of just paying lip service to it as a philosophical concept.

Our goal is not to change human nature so that it doesn't feel threatening any more. It is to develop, individually and collectively, the capacity to stay present despite the sense of threat.

We invite you to join us in sensing together how conflict and complexity can be part of the way we are in community.

Who might be interested in this Roundtables

Focusers who want to explore their relationship with conflict or who have experience interacting with conflict and uncomfortable situations.

CONNECTION>CONVERSATION>COMMUNITY

What to expect from Focusing Roundtables:  

We warmly encourage you to register and settle down with us to join other Focusers passionate to explore topics of interest and get to know each other better. If you have an area of interest, curiosity or passion you would like to see opened up in a future Roundtable, please let us know.

Each Focusing Roundtable is designed to promote informal peer-to-peer conversation. Rather than acting as expert presenters, the Hosts will serve as conversation moderators to encourage sharing and exploration of the topics from the participants’ own perspectives.  All participants’ sharings are welcome and valuable, no matter what level of experience or knowledge you have on the topic.

To preserve the nature of informal conversation, the program will be offered live only and no recordings will be available. Participants are encouraged to create follow up opportunities for connection among themselves after the Roundtable.

The TIFI Membership Committee is pleased to offer this series of Focusing Roundtables designed especially for members of the Institute. Roundtables will afford members a valuable opportunity to engage in casual peer-to-peer conversation with other members who share Focusing-related interests.  If you are not a member, please join at http://www.focusing.org/membership, then return to this page to register.

About your host:

Serge Prengel is a Focusing-oriented therapist, coordinator, and a co-founder of the Integrative Focusing Therapy online training program. He explores creative approaches to mindfulness at ProactiveMindfulness.com.