Peter Ryan was certified as a Focusing Trainer in 2016, training with James Strohl, and as a Certified Coordinator in 2022 with Beth Mahler. He studied A Process Model with Rob Parker's 2020-2023 group. Peter is a licensed professional counselor in the Philadelphia area and a Zen Buddhist instructor at Community Zen in Doylestown, PA.
In 2021 he started Counseling Confidence & The Experience Studio in Doylestown with several Focusing and Zen students as as a place to offer affordable mental health services, a hub for training people in Focusing, and to host Focusing informed social groups for individuals who are isolated due to disability, trauma, and post-Covid loss of social networks.
A long time educator, Peter founded perhaps the first Buddhist high school in the US in 1997, Tinicum Art and Science, which closed in 2016.
The studio publishes a newsletter, Zen Lessons, and will be launching a Focusing newsletter and podcast in August, Way Beyond Words, available through Substack and all major podcast platforms.
"Focusing is, for me, the most practical philosophy I've studied, and as a clinical modality, the most useful. It strengthens trust and intuition like nothing else, and helps a person hold all the trouble in the world in an untroubled way."