Focusing Roundtable - Focusing on Politics, Part 2: “Focusing, Structural Oppression & Alienation"

Friday, March 26, 2021 from 1:00-3:00 pm EST (New York - US)

Times worldwide: convert to your time zone

Thank you for participating in the Focusing Roundtable entitled “Focusing on Politics: Focusing Needs a Structural Political Consciousness, Part 1” on March 4. We invite you to continue your explorations of this important and timely topic by attending Part 2 of this Roundtable series.

Part 2 expands the understandings, skills and practices developed during our first “Focusing on Politics” Roundtable.  In this follow-on Roundtable, through discussion and Focusing, we will explore Structural Oppression and Alienation and learn to recognize them. In particular, we will explore how these occur in racism and patriarchy. Participants will begin to learn how to identify and challenge underlying, implicit structural oppressions & alienation.

Some questions we might explore together are:

• How can we recognize oppression and alienation?
• How do we relate to oppression of ourselves and others?
• What is the role of consciously understanding society and further developing our Focusing?

Other questions may emerge from our mutual exploration during the Roundtable.

CONNECTION>CONVERSATION>COMMUNITY

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. Registration is limited and on a first-come, first served basis. Participants are encouraged to create follow up opportunities for connection among themselves after the Roundtable.

About your hosts:

Dave Young is a retired Licensed Clinical Social Worker, who worked with individuals & families. A Focuser since 1981, he was in close contact with Gene Gendlin during the last several years of his life. Dave and his wife Jane were trainers in Gendlin’s Focusing workshops and in McMahon & Campbell’s Biospiritual Focusing workshops, as well as leaders in the Hyde Park Changes Group for several years. Dave has published and presented on various Focusing-related issues for 35 years. He also worked with Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication. 

Gisela Uhl became a certified Focusing teacher in Toronto in 1997. Originally a German city-planner, she has always been very interested in psychology, social questions, and philosophy, areas which she studied extensively while living in England, former British Guyana/South America, and Toronto/Canada. She studied Gendlin’s philosophy with Rob Foxcroft in Scotland, and became a friend of Gene Gendlin, with whom she was especially close during the last 1-2 years of his life. Gene introduced her to Dave, and since then, the two of them have had regular intense discussions about the relation of Focusing and Politics.