Touching the Earth: Focusing and Meditation
Saturday, March 16, 2024 from 1:00pm to 3:00pm New York time
Class will be recorded for all registrants and available for viewing for one month.
We will explore how to integrate Focusing and deeply related transformative emotion-focused processes into meditation and into sharing meditation experience together.
Eugene Gendlin emphasized the difference between meditation and Focusing. He also described how integrating Focusing into meditation would be helpful.
John Welwood, a psychologist familiar with Focusing, described his Buddhist mindfulness meditation practice as allowing the felt sense to arise and wordlessly letting feelings go into “emptiness… what is beyond all words… the spacious boundlessness of being”.
The problem is some things are difficult to let go. In Touching the Earth meditation, when frozen suffering arises, we focus experientially on it, coming alive to the felt sense of it. We symbolize the felt sense to help deepen our experiencing of it, creating ripe conditions for a transformative release. This can open into spacious aliveness and a more coherent engagement in meditation and life.
The webinar will include a talk with slides, silent meditation and journaling, the opportunity for a couple of people to share their meditation experience, and questions and answers.
Some familiarity with Focusing and meditation may be helpful but no prior experience is required. All are welcome to attend and participate.
Format
We use Zoom videoconferencing for our online classes. In this webinar format, you will see the presenter and host, but you will not be seen. You will be able to ask questions during the webinar by typing them. Highlights presenters may at times invite a small number of participants to unmute or join them onscreen during the webinar (optional).
You will need to have a computer/mobile device. Calling in by phone is also possible but not preferred. All registered participants will be sent a link to the video recording approximately two weeks following the class. So if you are unable to attend the live webinar, you will still be able to view it for one month.
Bio
Bill Gayner, BSW, MSW, RSW
Bill is a registered social worker who provides online individual, couple and group therapy in Ontario, Canada (cpeh.ca/bill-gayner). He has integrated transformative experiential and emotion-focused processes into mindfulness for therapy, creating Emotion-Focused Mindfulness Therapy (mindfulfeeling.ca), and for peers practicing in community together, creating Touching the Earth practice. He is the founding president of Touching the Earth Mindfulness Ontario, a mindfulness practice community for registered professionals providing psychotherapy and counselling (ttemo.ca).
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