Sydney Changes Group on Zoom - for monthly Focusing partnerships

Hello Focusers,

I apologise for the lateness of this notice, but I am recovering from a bout of COVID, brought back or caught on the plane returning from Spain, last week. Merilyn is in Japan, enjoying all its delights, so I will be hosting this Saturday’s meeting. 

We will continue in our group discussion, sharing about Chapter 4 -‘The Focusing Manual’,  in Part Two of  Gendlin’s book Focusing. This chapter is a brief introduction to the Six Steps of Focusing that Gendlin, with the help of his students, developed to teach Focusing. It’s a brief chapter, but a pivotal one, a summation of years of research, thinking and philosophical enquiry, condensed into six simple, teachable steps – and the rest, as they say, is history.   (In Chapter 5, Gendlin goes into more depth about each step).  I’d love to hear your reflections about this brief chapter, what steps you found/find easy, hard, are still learning about. Has Focusing become a smooth, follow the felt sensing flow, where the steps tend to merge into a smooth process? Do you return to the simple structure of the steps when your Focusing session gets stuck, or you feel lost or overwhelmed?

As usual, after our sharing time, and attunement, we will pair up for Focusing turns, of at least 30 -40 minutes each, with time for chat/sharing allowed for as well with your partner. Then the last 20 minutes or so, we return to the main room, for sharing, before finishing at 11.00 am.

Please reply to this email if you plan to attend, and I will send you the link. Life is at times unpredictable, so if there are any problems with receiving the link, I will be using my Zoom personal room number – 317 346 4920,  so you can join by inputting this number on the Zoom app. Please check the starting time for your time zone – TimeandDate.com, or whatever means you normally use.  As well,  make sure you join before 9.30am, to avoid disturbing  breakout room sessions.  If you want to do a Focusing session with a partner, please make sure you can be there for the whole of that time.

While in Spain, I walked the last 100 kilometres (actually only 80+ because I got sick in Spain as well) of the Camino to Santiago de Compostela with a friend. Merilyn walked the whole route from France 21 years ago, with her husband (over 700 kilometres, so quite a feat!). It was a wonderful experience, so rich in many ways, the beauty of the countryside, the challenge of the walk, and regular changes of accommodation most days, sightseeing, amazing food, different culture and language, conversations along the way (offset by days of laryngitis!). I really appreciated bringing my Focusing sensibilities and skills to all of it, consciously opening up to the wide variety of bodily, emotional and thinking responses to all this diversity, without locking on to any one aspect as being ‘it’, the defining thought, feeling, meaning.  As I did this, more unfolded – the complexity kept unfurling, which was a lovely way of experiencing.

As Gendlin points out in his aptly titled A Process Model, life is an ongoing process of complex interactions, between living things and our environment, and the first principle in his philosophical model of our world is ‘Interaction first’. Learning to embrace complexity, diversity, and being in continual process is one of the wonderful gifts of Focusing, and a Focusing attitude to life. I really hope you can join me on Saturday, for a time to enjoy more of this wonderful process, exploring our inner and outer worlds.

When you reply to this email , also include Merilyn, as she may have time to pick up any last minute responses. And remember, you can just use my Meeting Room number to join, you don’t need the link.

Warm regards,

Sue Burrell.

And Merilyn Mayhew  -  [email protected].