Learning Community for Mastery in Guiding

What does it mean to GUIDE someone else in ways that bring life forward movement?

In our Focusing partnerships, we learn and practice relational skills that support being a Companion to someone else on their inner journey. Professional guiding is different from being a Focusing partner. It is fun and sometimes bewildering because each person we encounter is unique!

Maybe you are a coach, therapist, social worker, yoga therapist, spiritual director, health professional, body worker, or educator…

Essentially, you have some vocational path you already enjoy that brings you together one-to-one with others.

You often find yourself in situations of facilitating change for this other person and you would like to help them access their natural Focusing skills in these moments.

WELCOME! We’d love for you to join us here!

Beginning in 2021, we are building an On-Going Learning Community for Mastery in Guiding.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If your goal is to offer and market ‘Guided Focusing Sessions’ to clients as a Certified Focusing Professional, you will need to find a certification program. Although you may still want to join this group for ongoing support, this class will not provide certification. For certification programs see The International Focusing Institute.

Although this community is not geared toward Focusing certification, we understand and believe in the transformational power of our one-to-one relationships. The Learning Community for Mastery in Guiding class has a pre-requisite of Inner Relationship Focusing Levels 1-4 or Pathways to Lasting Change 1-2 via Focusing Resources. We are excited about the variety of training backgrounds coming together here and we also are grounding in Inner Relationship Focusing as a common experience and language from which to share and grow.

With IRF as our starting point, we will: 

– Utilize Gendlin’s philosophy to expand our understanding of ourselves and others as interaction first.

– Empower confidence to trust Presence calisthenics. Our body is on our side here.

– Learn more about how to tell where we are in our brain and the myriad of ways we can exercise our neural system toward a sense of flexibility, integration and resilience.

– Expand our ability to tell when someone would be open to Focusing invitations.

– Learn and/or deepen the practice of landing in the “we-space”, and finding a fresh rhythm from there, together. 

– Explore saying “yes” with equanimity to all that is here in our own and our client/friend/partner’s experience. Everything is welcome as it arrives and given a space to feel safe for however it is now.  

– Develop experience in how mindfulness practices can help identify and transform core emotional patterns that create anxiety/depression or other interpersonal conflicts.

– Explore the power of silence and our speech as music. How does sound contribute to a healing environment?

– Explore the benefits of metaprocessing, pausing to reflect and highlight anything new as soon as it arises in small ways.

– Deepen the practice of letting the Focuser’s words “land” in your body, then let that place speak naturally, rather than remembering or conjuring things to say back.

– Explore why sometimes listening to others becomes difficult and what we can do.

– Explore the subtle difference between “putting your own stuff away to be fully there for the other person” and the idea of “being there, just as you are, however you are” – i.e. Gendlin’s being a human being with another human being.

-Trust that our client has the capacity to heal and helping them see their choice points.

– Continue to gather and grow as a learning community. We can return here to make connections, celebrate our successes, ask questions, share challenging experiences and learn new modalities emerging.

Learning Community for Mastery in Guiding (LCMG)

LCMG is a 4 month class meeting ten times for 1.5 hours.

There will be reading between classes. Our first month of classes, we will be utilizing the deep wisdom in Ann Weiser Cornell’s Certification curriculum Working with Focusing Clients One to One.

The classes will be a mix of discussing new content or demos and experiential exploration via small groups or paired practice. 

Maintaining a Focusing partnership outside of class during this time will be valuable and supportive of what you take from our time together.

I will bring guests into class for us to practice with. You will be encouraged to find practice clients during the 4 months this class meets. These might be people you already work with and maybe not. Practice clients can be new to Focusing or have had minimal exposure. Sessions you offer can be 20-50 min. About half of our classes will have small group time where we share our client practice experiences with each other.

Three of our classes will be led by Guest Teaching Mentors who have experience facilitating change one to one with clients. I am excited about the diversity they will bring to our learning.

Our last class will involve short project presentations; possibly a case study or an exploration of a particular interest of yours in facilitating change one-to-one.

Most years, I will offer this class once in spring, usually on Sunday afternoons and once in fall, usually on Thursday evenings Eastern or New York USA time zone. Please plan to attend all sessions for the full time. Missing up to two classes is acceptable. Since we will often be in small groups, there may not be much that I can record for you. You are welcome to make up classes you miss in a later spring or fall session.

The course fee will include a digital copy of Ann Weiser Cornell’s curriculum she uses with Certification students. We will be working just with her Teachers Manual Part One related to Guiding One to One.

There will be a limit on class size of 10 – 12 participants. Please register early if the dates/times work well for you. If these fees are difficult for you, I do offer options to pay over time. Please reach out and contact me about your situation.

LEARNING COMMUNITY FOR MASTERY IN GUIDING (LCMG) SPRING VIDEOCONFERENCE CLASS – SUNDAY AFTERNOONS

10 Sundays – Starting February 7
4-5:30 pm Eastern New York Time, 3-4:30 pm CST, 2-3:30 pm MST, 1-2:30 pm PST or your equivalent

Feb 7, Feb 14, Feb 21, Feb 28, March 14, March 28, April 11, April 25, May 9, May 23

Prerequisite: Creating Space For Lasting Change Levels 1-4 OR Pathways to Lasting Change 1&2

Course Fee: $265

**Note Daylight savings time changes March 14 for me. This class will shift forward 1 hour for that day and those after. If you are not on the same time shift, take this into account.

For more information on the On Going Community, visit this webpage: https://sandyjahmi.com/learning-community-for-mastery-in-guiding/