2nd Section: Focusing Roundtable - The Deep Mystery: Focusing on our Relationship with Death

Thursday, February 4, 2021 from 1:00-3:00 pm EST (New York)

Times worldwide: convert to your time zone

The TIFI Membership Committee is pleased to offer Focusing Roundtables designed especially for members of the Institute. If you are not a member, please join at http://www.focusing.org/membership, 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.

Death is perhaps the ultimate unknown, though it intimately touches each of us at some point. In the larger scheme of things, death is a natural part of life and the “larger system.” But on a personal level, we know death will separate us from much of how we identify ourselves−our families, friends and pets; our homes, possessions and activities; finally, even our bodies. While death may seem like a failure to our survival instincts, many spiritual traditions envision death not as an end, but as a transition to another way of being. No matter what we believe, death challenges our capacity to meet uncertainty and radical change.

In this experiential Roundtable, we will gently explore our personal experience and cultural attitudes in relation to death and loss, and invite more to come freshly through felt sensing. Our exploration will include guided attunements, group sharing, Focusing breakout triads, and reflection as we harvest both old and new connections with gentle curiosity and embodied presence.

Questions and themes we may explore together include:

• What do our bodies already sense about this radical transformation?
• Does something in us know how to accept or embrace death or its uncertainty?
• Who is it that dies? (Does presence continue?)
• What is our relationship to grief and to losses such as the pandemic or the climate crisis?
• How does our attitude toward death affect our attitude toward life?

Other topics and themes may emerge from our mutual exploration during the Roundtable.

Who might be particularly interested in attending this Roundtable?

Anyone who would like to explore a more authentic relationship to this inevitable transition or to the challenge of meeting loss or uncertainty in general.

CONNECTION>CONVERSATION>COMMUNITY

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. Registration is limited and on a first-come, first served basis. Participants are encouraged to create follow up opportunities for connection among themselves after the Roundtable.

About your hosts:

Ellen Korman Mains is a certified Focusing trainer, Buddhist meditation teacher and author living in Boulder, Colorado. She studied closely with Tibetan meditation master, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and has led retreats and workshops in North America and Europe for over three decades. Trained in the Japanese art of Kyudo (Zen Archery), she also explored several body-mind and healing disciplines. Recently, Ellen has been exploring the cross-section of spirituality, collective trauma and ancestral connection. Her award-winning memoir is “Buried Rivers: A Spiritual Journey into the Holocaust.” Her website is www.EllenKormanMains.com.

Peter Gill is a Focusing coordinator and teacher based in the UK. He has spent the last few years training in Facilitating Nature connection and its connection to Focusing. More recently, Peter has been exploring the place of welcoming grief as a doorway to deeper engagement with our ecological crisis. He recently offered a TIFI Focusing Highlight class on that subject called "Navigating Sorrow and the Griefs of our Time”. His website is www.livingfocusing.co.uk.