Learning Community for Mastery in Guiding Change

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.

Or maybe you are looking for a community wellness focused certification path that offers ongoing community support. This space is designed to encourage us to live Gendlin's concept of "crossing". You can choose to integrate this crossing further by teaching us. We are all lifelong learners here.

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

The Learning Community for Mastery in Guiding Change course has a pre-requisite of at least one year of skill training classes and regular partnership practice. This could be via my Creating Space for Lasting Change Parts 1-4, IRF Parts 1-2, or equivalent classes in another Focusing modality. We are excited about the variety of backgrounds coming together here and if you have trained in another Focusing modality other than Inner Relationship Focusing, let’s chat to be sure this will be a match for you. The first 10 classes will ground us in guiding from an Inner Relationship Focusing view as a common experience and language from which to share and grow.

Grounded in our own experience as Focuser and Companion, we will: 

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

– Empower confidence to TRUST Presence calisthenics. The Focusing process is resilient. 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.

- In addition to our large group activities, we will be invited to dyads and triads to experience each other's Focusing styles and to share what is alive for us around bringing Focusing into the world.

- Continue to gather and grow as an ongoing learning community. Each year new members will merge in from their first year of training. 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 CHANGE  – 2023-24 THURSDAY EVENINGS

20 Thursdays – Starting September 7, 2023
7:30 – 9 pm Eastern New York Time, 6:30 – 8 pm CT, 5:30 – 7 pm MT, 4:30 – 6 pm PT or your equivalent

Sept 7, Sept 21, Oct 5, Oct 19, Nov 2, Nov 16, Nov 30, Jan 11, Jan 25, Feb 8, Feb 22, March 7, March 21, April 4, April 18, May 2, May 16, May 30, June 13, June 27

Beginning in March, 2024, every other Thursday will be small group reading of selections of Gendlin’s philosophy. Once I get you going, I will not generally be present for the small groups.

Prerequisite: Creating Space For Lasting Change Levels 1-4 OR 1+ years of equivalent Focusing skills training. 

**Note Daylight savings time changes November 5 for me. The Nov 16 class will shift backward 1 hour for that day and those after. If you are not on the same time shift, take this into account. In spring, time will shift forward 1 hour on March 10, 2024.

First year fee: $485 

Payment plans and sliding scale options available. 

In addition to our class time, you will be invited to:

1. Monthly Dyad Partnerships to explore guiding and being guided by other experienced Focusers. These rotate. 

2. Bi-Monthly Triads - a group of three that meets all year long for 1.5 hrs to focus and provide each other support in bringing Focusing into the world. 

3. Assist in Sandy's Creating Space Parts 1-2, each course has six classes. This is dropping in for one date as I schedule a different assistant for each of the six classes. We will keep track and you can over time, assist with them all. 

If you already certified, reach out to me. We will chat about whether entering here or joining the OnGoing Community below is best for you. 

For more information on this first year in the Learning Community, visit this webpage:

https://learnfocusing.org/collections/learning-community

For more information on using the Learning Community as a pathway to certification, visit this section which has several sub-pages: https://learnfocusing.org/pages/professional-certification