Oceania Focusing Roundtable - Two Ways of Knowing: Intuition and the Art of Felt Sensing

Oceania Focusing Roundtable
Two Ways of Knowing: Intuition and the Art of Felt Sensing

Saturday, 20th September 2025 - 10:00 am - 12:00 pm AEST (Sydney - Australia)

Saturday, 20th September 2025 - 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm NZDT (New Zealand)

Saturday, 20th September 2025 - 8:00 am - 10:00 am AWST (Perth, Western Australia)

Friday, September 19, 2025 - 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm EST (New York - US)

Times worldwide: convert to your time zone

Intuition has attracted growing interest across fields such as management and neuroscience, yet it remains an elusive concept with varied definitions across disciplines. Given its non-conscious, affective nature and holistic, non-linear form of knowing, some scholars have begun to draw parallels between intuition and felt sensing. Gendlin describes a felt sense as the wholistic, implicit bodily sense of a complex situation that contains a maze of meanings and a whole texture of facets. It has a direction and a life of its own.

In the Roundtable, we begin by examining areas of overlap between the two constructs, then move on to explore their key differences. We are particularly curious about the processes underlying these two forms of knowing: how does felt sensing become explicit, and how does intuition emerge? Nicole and Jennifer will share their understanding of intuition within the management literature, contrasting it with Gendlin’s philosophical underpinnings of felt sensing and the subsequent processes involved. The discussion aims to spark dialogue and deepen our collective understanding of embodied ways of knowing.

While the use of these two constructs may vary across contexts, as Focusing practitioners, we are intrigued by the practical implications. How do we use intuition and how do we use felt sense? This Roundtable offers a platform to share our experiences with intuition and felt sensing, including how they are felt in lived experience and how they support both personal and professional life. We will also engage in further discussion around their practical relevance, with a particular focus on decision-making.

Who might be particularly interested in attending this Roundtable?  Anyone who would like to discuss and share experiences about their understanding of the two concepts and how intuition and felt sensing can impact our professional and personal life.

CONNECTION>CONVERSATION>COMMUNITY

What to expect from Focusing Roundtables: 

We warmly encourage you to register and settle down with us to join other Oceania Focusers passionate to explore topics of interest and get to know each other better. If you have an area of interest, curiosity or passion you would like to see opened up in a future Roundtable, please let us know.

Each Focusing Roundtable is designed to promote informal peer-to-peer conversation. Rather than acting as expert presenters, the Hosts will serve as conversation moderators to encourage sharing and exploration of the topics from the participants’ own perspectives.  All participants’ sharings are welcome and valuable, no matter what level of experience or knowledge you have on the topic.

To preserve the nature of informal conversation, the program will be offered live only and no recordings will be available. Participants are encouraged to create follow up opportunities for connection among themselves after the Roundtable.

The TIFI Membership Committee is pleased to offer this series of Focusing Roundtables designed especially for members of the Institute. Roundtables will afford members a valuable opportunity to engage in casual peer-to-peer conversation with other members who share Focusing-related interests.  If you are not a member, please join at http://www.focusing.org/membership, then return to this page to register.

About your hosts:

Nicole Yeung PhD is a researcher who examines the relationship between Focusing practices and intuitive decision-making. In addition to over three decades of entrepreneurial experience, she is also a certified Focusing practitioner who works with both private and corporate clients. She designs Focusing-oriented workshops to assist SME entrepreneurs in developing non-linear, holistic understandings of situations, with a particular focus on decision making. www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-yeung-b613b4

Jennifer Dunbabin

Focusing has been an integral part of Jen’s life for 15 years. Since learning Inner Relationship Focusing she has been continually adding to her knowledge and experience, particularly the Wholebody Focusing approach. Studying A Process Model and other writings of Gene Gendlin with Rob Parker for 10 years has deepened and expanded her Focusing practice.

Jen lives in Tasmania, Australia, 42° south of the equator. She is part of a team that is lifting adult Tasmanians’ literacy and numeracy levels. As part of this work, she runs professional development workshops for Tasmania’s adult literacy practitioners.