Advanced and Certification Weeklong 2021

Advanced and Certification Weeklong 2021/Semana de Focusing Avanzado y Certificación - Weeklong 2021

Crossing and Belonging/Versionar y Pertenecer

July 19 - 24, 2021 (online)/Del 19 al 24 de julio de 2021 (online)                                                            Español

The Weeklong is the flagship event of The International Focusing Institute, begun in 1979. It is intended for all those who are advanced in their practice of Focusing. It is a warm and intimate event, and features a certification ceremony.

This year, we encourage attendees (if it is feasible) to find a place to be away from home while attending the Weeklong online. If possible, arrange to be somewhere with great internet service which will allow you to be away from your everyday life, in order to have a retreat during the week.

In the early days, anyone who wanted to become certified by the Institute was required to attend a Weeklong.  Now, the Weeklong is still a celebration of our international certification, but it is so much more. 

At the Weeklong, you are invited to connect or re-connect with our diverse international community.  It is a rare opportunity to be with an intimate group of advanced practitioners, to learn from one another and to share your wisdom. 

The Weeklong can reinvigorate or launch your work, and strengthen the foundation of your life-long participation in our global Focusing community.  It is led by a Facilitation Team of Coordinators from different countries and backgrounds.  They are supported by several Collaborating Coordinators, and together this team creates an event rich with learning and sharing.

At the Weeklong, you will deepen or learn new skills, connect with others through common interests, experience a variety of cultural perspectives, and build upon the legacy of Focusing and The International Focusing Institute. There are also ample opportunities to share your skills and your particular Focusing approach.

At the Weeklong, you will gain:

• A deeper understanding of your special place in the ongoing evolution of Focusing and the worldwide Focusing community;
• Deep and life-long connections to Focusers from around the world who share your passion and interests and can offer you continuing support and contact as you take your next steps;
• Practical skills to help you to deepen your Focusing practice, professionally and personally;
• A new or renewed sense of clarity and confidence about how you can offer your own gift of Focusing freshly to the world.

At past Weeklongs, people found they were able to more deeply discover themselves, their gifts, and their aliveness through the experience of deep connection in a profoundly accepting and supportive community — a community that has continued long after the week was completed. The Focusing Weeklong is not just about deepening our understanding and practice of Focusing, but deepening our understanding of ourselves and what we bring to the global community.

Daily Presentations – Each day the main presentation will be offered live but will also be recorded.  These presentations will include simultaneous translation to Spanish.

Home Groups – These are groups of about 10-15 people, facilitated by one of our Facilitation Team (or a Coordinator who has volunteered to lead one).  Home Groups give you a chance to form deep connections with an international small group. The Home Groups are a time to process what you're experiencing during the Weeklong.  They are an important part of the Weeklong.  Each will differ slightly based on the personalities of the leader and the group, and each will include Focusing time, sometimes as a whole group and sometimes in dyads or triads.  Depending on where you live, your Home Group will either meet from 3pm to 5pm Eastern US time or from 4am to 6am Eastern US time.

Opportunities For You To Present Workshops (optional)– You can submit a proposal for a workshop to offer during the Weeklong.  We will do our best to accommodate all who wish to give a presentation.  We will send you information about that very soon.

Opportunities To Hang Out For Fun, Conversation Or Focusing (optional)– We will create times during the week when the Zoom room will be open for you to be spontaneous with one another.

Certification Ceremony - We finish our week in celebration. It is a warm and intimate event. During the certification ceremony, whether you are being certified or not, you will be able to locate yourself and your teachers in the history of the Focusing movement on our Focusing timeline.

Read Schedule

IMPORTANT: IF YOU SIGN UP, YOU ARE COMMITTING TO ATTENDANCE  – The hallmark of the Weeklong is the building of community cross-culturally among Focusers from all over the world.  To maintain the nature of the intimacy of the Weeklong, if you sign up, you must commit to attending all Home Groups and all Plenaries. (Plenaries may be watched after-the-fact if you live in a place where the time of day is impossible for you, but we ask that you do your best to watch them prior to your Home Group.)  We also ask you to make an effort to attend as many of the optional events as possible.

Beatrice Blake, New Hampshire, US.  Focusing coordinator. Beatrice gives online classes, in English and Spanish, in Focusing, Thinking at the Edge, Nonviolent Communication for Focusers, and Trainer Certification.

Tom Larkin, Dublin, Ireland.  Tom is a psychotherapist in private practice in Dublin. He is a Certifying Focusing Coordinator, a Children Focusing trainer and a Forest Therapy Guide.

Dan Schachter, Tel Aviv, Israel. Focusing coordinator, Focusing Oriented Therapist, and clinical psychologist in private practice. Dan teaches Focusing, TAE (Thinking at the Edge) and the philosophy of the implicit, and he is a member of the TIFI Focusing Weeklong Core Team.

How TAE helps us think from our own experience - Beatrice Blake

Thinking at the Edge shows us how to bring our felt sense of situations into our thinking process, thus complementing other forms of information. The challenges our planet faces will not be solved only by science and technology, although we very much need what they provide. Their data must be balanced by the very human data provided by felt sensing.

In this workshop, the first step is to get in touch with a felt sense of something that fascinates you, or something you have been curious about for awhile—something you would like to do, create, resolve, explain, etc.

Next, you’ll allow your felt sense to “hand you” two moments in your life that somehow relate to your felt sense--even if it’s not immediately obvious why those incidents are relevant.

We will work on identifying the details of our “instances” and discovering the unique "patterns" they form. Hopefully, we will have time to “cross” these patterns. Crossing  deepens our understanding of the original felt sense.

Focusing With Nature - Tom Larkin

Eugene Gendlin said, “There is no ‘body’ apart from the environment. The body generates itself in the environment, out of environment … Living things are always already both body and environment”*. This workshop will be an opportunity to explore experientially what this statement might mean as it relates to our natural environment. For participants it will open up the possibility to make or remake a connection with nature and will model a way of being in the natural world.

You are invited to participate, by phone, tablet or computer, from a safe and familiar outdoor space near you - that could be from a local park or from your garden or from inside your own home either looking out on the natural world or with house plants. Offering Focusing and Forest Therapy invitations, Tom will guide participants in a gentle exploration of their natural environment.
The process draws its inspiration from, and is a crossing of Focusing with Forest Therapy, a form of Shinrin Yoku (translated from Japanese as Forest Bathing).

Diversity in Process - Dan Schachter

Diversity is a central principle and guideline of Focusing and of the Focusing community. The Philosophy of the Implicit shows how all concepts are in process. This year we will have a fresh look at Diversity at this particular moment. How is our commitment to Diversity influenced by the pandemic? How do we relate to The TIFI board's initiative to update the Institute's Diversity Statement?

Are we diverse enough? What are the forces restricting Diversity?  How can we better live up to this ideal and principle?

Our collaborating coordinators will facilitate small group meetings - called "home groups" each day and may present a workshop.

Nicoletta Corsetti - Amelia Italy.

Nicoletta is a body-oriented Counselor, Trainer and Certifying Coordinator.

Nicoletta's workshop will be given in Spanish with English interpretation.

El modelo interactivo de Janet Klein

Cuando escuchamos a alguien compartir su profunda verdad humana, cada uno de nosotros es tocado en el lugar interior que alberga nuestras propias verdades. Janet Klein.

Como ya había hecho Gendlin, Janet Klein fue capaz de reconocer lo que la gente ya estaba haciendo en la práctica de Focusing en parejas. Por lo tanto, ha desarrollado un modelo en el que esta practica es "llevada adelante". Ella hizo hincapié en los momentos del proceso de Focusing en parejas en los que la empatía (y la auto-empatía) y la escucha mutua se profundizan e involucran a los practicantes en intimidad y auto-revelación.

Janet Klein ha creado un modelo que permite a los practicantes utilizar el proceso sobre un tema común, como un conflicto que los involucra directamente o un proyecto que quieren desarrollar juntos.
Además de la práctica en parejas, otras áreas de aplicación son: mediación, coaching, terapia de pareja y familiar, resolución de conflictos y soporte a la colaboración y a la creatividad en diversos contextos.

En el taller viviremos los momentos distintivos del modelo: Respuesta Empática, Respuesta Interactiva, Revisión de la Relación.

Workshop: The Interactive Model by Janet Klein

When we listen to someone share their deep human truth, each of us gets touched in the place within that is home to our own truths. Janet Klein.

As Gendlin had already done, Janet Klein was able to recognize what people were already doing in the Focusing partnership. She has therefore developed a model in which the Focusing partnership is "carried forward". She emphasized moments of the Focusing process in pairs, in which empathy (and self empathy) and mutual listening are deepened and engage partners in intimacy and self-disclosure.

Janet Klein has created a model that allows partners to use the process on a common theme, such as a conflict that directly involves them, or a project they want to develop together.
In addition to the partnership, other areas of application are: mediation, coaching, couples and family therapy, conflict resolution and support for collaboration and creativity in various contexts.

In the workshop we will experience the distinctive moments of the model: Empathic Response, Interactive Response, The Relationship Check.

Suzanne Noel - Costa Rica.

Suzanne is a Certifying Coordinator for the International Focusing Institute in New York.She developed Recovery Focusing (the crossing of the 12 Steps for addictive process with Felt Sensing), out of which she developed her H.O.W. We Heal model for group process. She enjoys dabbling in poetry and different kinds of art.  Her passion is riding her motorcycle in beautiful Costa Rica.

Workshop: The H.O.W. We Heal Model for Group Processing

This is a two-hour experiential introduction to Facilitating Wellness Circles based on Suzannés three-phasemodel for group work, which she developed for Recovery Focusing groups.
Please bring pen and paper.

Taller: Modelo "Cómo Sanamos (AAA)" para grupos
Un taller experiencial de dos horas que introduce Cómo Facilitar Círculos de Bienestar, basado en el modelo de tres fases para trabajos grupales desarrollado por Suzanne para sus grupos de Focusing de la Recuperación.
Favor traer papel y lapicero.

Florentina Sassoli - Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Florentina is a Focusing Certifying Coordinator, Focusing Oriented Counselor and Focusing Trainer.

Taller: Dolores del Cuerpo - Dolores del Alma

Los dolores del cuerpo no están separados de los dolores emocionales, si tomamos en cuenta la definición de cuerpo de Gendlin:
  “Cuando empleo la palabra Cuerpo, me refiero a mucho más que la maquinaria física. No solo vives físicamente las circunstancias que te rodean, sino también aquéllas en las que piensas. Tu cuerpo físicamente sentido es parte de un sistema gigantesco de aquí y de otros lugares, de ahora y de otros tiempos, de ti y de otras personas; de hecho,
de todo el universo”

Gendlin y el Focusing implican “un cuerpo en interacción", con lo cual no podemos desconocer el vasto entramado, lo intrincado y la implicancia contenidos en un dolor o un síntoma físico, como parte de un proceso que pide escucha y espacio para desplegarse e integrarse.

Apoyándonos en el modelo de Inner Relationship Focusing de Ann Weiser Cornell, exploraremos cómo relacionarnos con cualquier tipo de dolor, físico o emocional, de un modo que nos pueda entregar la información desconocida, fresca y nueva, que llevará adelante el proceso, trayendo alivio y energía a nuestra experiencia, lo que dará lugar al paso siguiente hacia la vida y la sanación, deviniendo en una mayor autonomía, libertad personal y enriquecimiento en nuestra calidad de vida o en la de nuestros consultantes.

Workshop: Body Pains - Soul Pains

Body pains are not separated from emotional pains, if we keep in mind Gendlin’s definition of Body
When I use the word “ body ”, I mean much more than the physical machine. Not only do you physically live the circumstances around you, but also those you only “ think “ of in your mind. Your physically felt body is in fact , the whole universe. This sense of being bodily alive in a vast system is the bodies it is felt from inside.

Focusing as the inner act, imply “ a body in interaction “, whereupon we need to address the vast intricate framework, the implying contained in a pain or  physical symptom, as part of a process that requests space and listening so as to unfold and integrate.

Relying on Ann Weiser Cornell’ s Inner Relationship Focusing model, we will explore how to relate to any type of pain, physical or emotional, in a way in which it can bring us the unknown information, new and fresh, that will carry the process forward bringing relief and life energy to our experience and allowing the next step towards life and healing, leading to a sense of autonomy, personal freedom and nourishment to our life quality as well as to our clients.

Being multi-lingual is an important value of The International Focusing Institute and of the Weeklong.  We will offer simultaneous translation to Spanish for all main presentations.  We can offer a Home Group in Spanish.  Certainly, a Home Group could be created in another language as well, if there are enough participants who wish to speak that language. 

If you paid your certification fee with TIFI after January 2017 and have not yet attended the Weeklong, we will deduct $300.  Please email [email protected] before registering to apply this discount.

Record and Upload Zoom sessions - English (2)

Record and Upload Zoom sessions - Spanish (2)

Tech host back-up (up to 4) - to be called on if tech host is unavailable

Spanish/English translation assistant back-up - (up to 4)

To apply for or ask questions about workstudy: email [email protected].