Focusing on the Focuser: And other directions for Innovation

Saturday, October 8, 2022 from 2:00pm to 4:00pm New York time

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Class will be recorded for all registrants and available for viewing for one month.

Focusing on the Focuser adds another dimension of depth to the Focusing process. 

Focusing on the way a person focuses is an approach to discerning underlying patterns that keep the transformative possibilities of felt-shift within an unnecessarily restricted range. When deep-seated patterns are more consciously felt, they become raw material for a greater artistry of self-sculpting. This opens the way for further innovations we will begin to explore about bringing variations of Focusing into ever-expanding recesses and dimensions of the being. 

While at the University of Chicago, Marty and Gendlin became Focusing partners, alternating doing Focusing sessions with each other every week. In this Highlight, Marty will share some anecdotes from his time with Gendlin, as well as exercises based on the ramifications of how he and Gendlin Focused together. There will also be time for questions and reciprocal learning opportunities.

Some familiarity with Focusing will be helpful, though all are welcome to attend.

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 to 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 view 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

Marty Cohen has been a teacher both within and outside academia, with the intention of bridging and enlivening the various realms. He received his BA degree from University of California at Berkeley in an individual major he devised called Integral Human Development: Psychology, Religion and Dance. Then he left academia for years, teaching consciousness classes on a kind of radical communion and empathy for which he coined the term “perceptual feeling.”

He eventually enrolled in the Institute for Liberal Arts Great Books Graduate Program at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, where he was asked to join the school’s faculty during the third semester of the four-semester MA program. After teaching there for three years, he chose to leave and pursue a PhD at the University of Chicago, where he received his degree with the Committee on Social Thought for his dissertation “A Hesitant Dionysos: Nietzsche and the Revelry of Intuition,” supervised by Professors Eugene Gendlin, Paul Ricoeur and David Tracy.

He did postdoctoral work as a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions on his respectful critique of notions of ultimate mystical enlightenment. For decades, he co-chaired the Philosophy, Poetry and Religion seminar at the Harvard Humanities Center, while teaching humanities full-time in the Boston College Honors Program. Now he is shifting to offering his work with Focusing, consciousness and healing in sessions with individuals and groups.